Designing The Eddy Guide

A Collaboration With WorldCast Anglers

By Stio

Fly fishing has hooked its place in the mountain life, which is why we needed a shirt that has the technical features essential to a fishing guide with the everyday aesthetic of life off the river. Meet the Eddy Guide. Designed and developed in collaboration with fly fishing guides at WorldCast Anglers in Teton Valley, this shirt combines everything they’ve always wanted and nothing they don’t.

When we set out to design the Eddy Guide, the first thing we wanted to understand is how fishing guides want to dress and what they need when they’re on the water.

"The most paramount needs for an everyday fly fishing shirt are mountain town versatility and cleaned up, sophisticated storage details. Beyond that, subtle textural fabric mixes and subtle tonal fabric accents."

- Michael Dawes, Owner of WorldCast Anglers

With this info as our baseline, we infused the Stio aesthetic and designed a few options to share with the lead guides at WorldCast Anglers, a local fly fishing outfitter and shop here in Jackson, Wyoming. Their feedback shaped the direction we needed and with a few tweaks we were on our way to testing prototypes.

Through three phases of the proto process, the WorldCast guides tested the product in the field and provided feedback to our development team based on their experience wearing the shirt. Along the way we learned what designs they felt the most connected to, what feature sets felt the most practical and what fit felt the most natural. In the end, we arrived at a product the guides would wear as their daily go-to and still carried the Stio aesthetic.

"I threw everything I had at this shirt. Through blasting sun, relentless bugs, sunscreen, summer sweat and pack horse grime this shirt performed with ease." - Michael Dawkins, Fly Fishing Guide, WorldCast Anglers