One of the Best Fishing Fly Tyers: Pat Cohen

If necessity is the mother of invention, then we can be grateful that Pat Cohen, who was living and working in Cobleskill, N.Y., when he became fascinated with fly-fishing, wasn’t closer to a shop where he could simply buy pre-made flies to target his local trout and bass.

“The closest place I could find deer-hair bass bugs was an L.L. Bean in Albany, so I was buying a bunch at a time and losing them as quickly as I bought them,” he says. “That’s when I decided to learn how to tie these things.” The hour-long drive to Albany’s L.L. Bean forced Cohen’s hand, and becoming an adept fly-tyer in his own right was the only logical avenue toward continuing with the sport. Since then, his skill, artistry and ingenuity have only grown.

CREATURE COMFORT

Cohen has become one of the most esteemed tyers in the country, and he regularly ships his creations to pike, bass and trout anglers all over the world. The flies are vibrant, eye-catching and unique—evidence of his dedication to his craft. But his start was a relatively modest one.

“There was a gentleman by the name of Tom Brewster who worked in a shop that’s now closed called Goldstock’s Sporting Goods in East Glenville,” he says. “I went into Goldstock’s and told Tom I’d bought a few of these deer-hair bass bugs, but that they were expensive and always fell apart. He told me, ‘I don’t know how to tie them, but I can give you all the materials to get you started.’”

Cohen ties a variety of flies that appeal to a host of species, but his warm-water bass bugs are particularly popular. He developed a metal tool that he calls the “fugly packer” to get the hair that he’s tying as densely packed on the hook as possible. He’s able to pack the hair so tightly onto the hook shank that he can trim it with a razor blade to achieve specific shapes. If his bugs are unique, it’s not by accident.

“I approached it with no rules because I didn’t have any formal fly-tying training. I didn’t have a mentor, as far as someone saying, ‘This is how you tie a fly,’ so I just kind of went out and figured out what would work and got creative,” he says. “I brought the art end of things into fly-tying and said to heck with it, I’m just going to have fun and make whatever I want.”

Cohen’s creatures were too colorful to stay hidden in a basement, though. “I had been going back and forth to Goldstock’s and showing Tom what I had tied,” says Cohen. “There’s this small show in February every year called Cabin Fever, and he invited me to tie at the show.”

Cohen’s response, as he remembers it, was something like: “You mean in public? You want me to sit there and show people what I’m doing?”

Cohen remembers some members of the tying community being very welcoming, though he laughs about some less inviting interactions.

“One guy saw me tying at a show and walked by and goes, ‘Nobody ties bass bugs like me,’ and just walked away.”

The fact that Cohen recalls the story while laughing is demonstrative of the type of personality that has allowed him to innovate and grow in the industry. He clearly loves his work and his time on the water, but he’s not taking himself too seriously.

A fly-tying magazine called Hatches caught wind of what Cohen was doing, and before he knew it, he was tying at a show in New Jersey.

“They asked if I would like to tie at their booth and I was like, ‘I don’t know what that entails but hey, giddyup, let’s do this,’” says Cohen. “They saw what I was tying, and there was this buzz and excitement, and more and more people were coming by and buying flies and checking out what I was doing. Once they got over the fact that I didn’t look like them, everything was wonderful.

“From there, things kind of exploded overnight. There was an instant demand for what I was doing, and I got invited back to the shows and I started on this path that I had no idea would eventually lead to a career.”

His bass bugs were widely met with acclaim and appreciation, though the fact that Cohen was utilizing unconventional materials to create larger, non-traditional flies ruffled a few feathers in the fly-tying community.

“I heard things like, ‘That’s a lure, not a fly,’” Cohen says. “I guess maybe if you’re out there splitting a piece of bamboo and building your own rod…” In the early days, Cohen’s tying and creativity were continually fueled by frustration.

“Long story short, I went to this show and ran into a guy who had all these cool products made out of fabric. The theory was that they would behave like soft plastics, so I got really excited and bought everything he had. When I tied with them, they sucked, so I went on a quest.”

A NEW GOAL

Cohen’s quest was to find materials that would allow him to tie large flies that would behave in the water the same way soft plastics do for conventional fishermen. Large soft-plastic baits have been enormously effective in catching huge pike, muskies, striped bass and largemouth bass in recent decades, and Cohen saw no reason why the same physics couldn’t apply to big flies.

Cohen eventually discovered a material called Ultrasuede, which suited his purposes exactly. The fabric is extremely flexible, especially when wet, allowing it to flutter and undulate enormously well under water. However, unlike a number of other materials that move naturally under water, Ultrasuede is surprisingly tear-resistant, meaning it can make for some durable streamer patterns that offer natural movement in a potentially long-lasting fly.

He had the material laser cut and began tying all manner of flies with the stuff. He then sent them to everyone he could think of.

“I was like, ‘Fish with these things and tell me what you think,’” he says. “I had crawfish bodies, hellgrammite bodies, twister tails, all sorts of stuff. Eventually I developed this product called Cohen’s Creature Bodies, which are white, but you can die them or paint them or stain them, and tie them into flies, and they act like soft plastics.”

One such Creature Body, the Dragon Fly Nymph, is a product of Cohen’s fascination with pike behavior and studying their diet beyond what most fisherman might consider. His curiosity and relentless attention to detail led him to create the nymph body, which is characteristic of the thought process that goes into so much of his work. He has developed an understanding of exactly how different species behave in given bodies of water.

“I used to do a lot of steelhead fishing in Pulaski, and so many anglers would miss pockets of water where these fish would be hanging out because they thought they had to wade in up to their chest before they could start casting,” says Cohen. “You just spooked half the fish in the river walking out that deep. Look for the obvious places where they could be hiding.”

Once you understand fish behavior and the environments they live in, there’s one other major factor that goes into creating an effective fly.

“Understanding material is a big part of fly-tying,” Cohen says. “You can throw a bunch of fancy stuff on a hook, and it could do nothing in the water because you have no idea what you just put on. You need to know whether a material is hydrophobic, whether it repels water or turns into a clump when it gets wet.” Once you understand the behavior of materials, you can “build a fly that moves and breathes,” says Cohen.

Lately, Cohen has become increasingly interested in carp, which he calls an underappreciated sport fish.

“They’re gigantic, you can sight-fish for them, they’re very smart, have great vision, can hear very well and they’re the most humbling fish,” he says.

“They’ve got tens of thousands of nerve endings in their mouth to determine if your fly is the genuine article, and they release a pheromone in the water if they’re spooked to let other carp know there’s danger,” he says. “You are basically stalking them, hunting them. You have to watch the shadow of your cast, land a fly on a target about the size of a dinner plate in a spot where you preemptively know that fish are going to be. But first and foremost, the fly has to work, because none of this matters if it doesn’t catch fish.”

In the end, Cohen is a pragmatist at heart, creating flies that are tremendously effective at what they’re meant to do. Of course, that is what makes them so endearing in the first place.

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• This article was featured in the June/July 2025 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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