The annual East Idaho Fly Tying Expo is planned at the Mountain America Center in Idaho Falls on Friday, Feb. 14 and Saturday, Feb. 15. This year’s event is happening about a month earlier than normal due some scheduling conflicts with the Idaho Falls Spud Kings hockey team, but expo organizers are confident that the event will be just as good and perhaps even better than the venerable expo’s past editions.

“We greatly enjoy being in the new Mountain America Center,” said Dave Pace of the Snake River Cutthroats fly fishing club and the chairman of the expo committee. “The venue offers a much larger space to host the show with a separate location for the main show and our side activities.”

The annual event is one of the largest regional fly-tying and fly-fishing expos in the West. The 2025 event will mark its 29th birthday, and more than 100 fly tiers from around the country will descend on Idaho Falls to help the local club mark the milestone.

Over the course of the two-day event, all fly-tying creators will climb behind the vise and show attendees how to tie certain patterns. Three of the tiers in this year’s line up — Scott Sanchez of Jackson, Wyo., Bruce Staples of Idaho Falls, and Al Ritt of Montrose, Colo. — are winners of the Fly Fishers International Buz Buszek Award, the most prestigious fly tying award in the world.

But it’s not all about accolades. Each of the tiers appearing at this year’s expo will bring their own unique perspective to the art of fly tying, and some of the names and faces might be a bit surprising.

Take Madison Hyde, for instance. Hyde grew up in the fly-fishing industry. The granddaughter of Lamoyne Hyde, the founder of Hyde Drift Boats, she’s now managing the Fly Fish Food Jimmy’s fly shop in downtown Idaho Falls. At 26, she’ll be one of the youngest fly-tying experts at the expo, and she’ll be only the second woman to have her tying featured in the Expo’s Fly Tying Theater. The theater is a revolving presentation starring the fly-tying glitterati from around the West, so Hyde’s inclusion is quite the honor.

“Yeah,” she said, “I was pretty surprised to hear that I was invited to do that. I’m honored to be a part of the expo — I grew up going to the show every year with my dad and my family.”

Indeed, Hyde’s father, Matt, is the vice president of marketing and sales at Hyde Drift Boats, and he and his family have long been contributors to the annual Idaho Falls show.

But, ironically, when Hyde tied her first fly, it wasn’t at the Idaho Falls expo.

“I think I was 11 when I sat down at a kids’ tying table at a show in Chico, Calif.,” she said. “We traveled to expos all over when I was a kid, and, for some reason, the time just seemed right. So that’s where I tied my first fly.”

As the manager of the longstanding fly shop in Idaho Falls, Hyde has a deep appreciation for the significance of fly fishing and fly tying to the region. After all, she said, with rivers like the Henry’s Fork and the South Fork in her own backyard, it’s easy to see why the area is considered by many to be the “center of the universe” for American fly fishing.

The shop she manages was owned and operated by Jimmy Gabetas for years. Just a few years ago, Gabetas sold the operation to the Orem, Utah-based Fly Fish Food brand, which operates a network of fly shops in Utah, and has a large online retail presence.

“You know, I really have a lot of autonomy at the shop,” Hyde said. “The owners will come up and see us about once a month, and they’ve really invested in the business up here, so I feel really lucky to get to learn from them.”

Indeed, the shop at the corner of Shoup and A streets in downtown Idaho Falls has been slightly redesigned to carry more inventory and, of course, more flies for consumers to choose from. But, surprisingly, Hyde doesn’t tie flies for the shop.

“I tie them mostly for me, or to show others how to tie certain patterns,” she said, as she worked on a stonefly pattern at the shop’s tying vise recently. “I love doing it, and I still love to fly fish, so I guess I can thank my family for a pretty unique childhood.”

But she’s not a child anymore — she and her husband just welcomed their first daughter recently. Her name is Melrose, after a small town in Montana on the Big Hole River.

In addition to Hyde, tiers at this year’s expo hail from as far away as Texas and Minnesota, and they’ll tie patterns many are familiar with, and some that attendees at the expo might never have heard of. Tiers will tackle everything from traditional trout patterns, to saltwater flies for bonefish and permit, and from flies for the musky and pike of the north woods to bass bugs and tried-and-true carp flies.

The expo is more than just a tying event. More than 40 vendors will be on hand, both inside MAC’s arena and in the concourse — the latter is a new development and allows the expo’s organizers to accommodate more vendor displays for attendees to peruse. Additionally, the larger venue allows the expo to have an indoor casting pond on the arena floor. This allows for indoor casting seminars (a nice touch, given that this year’s event is in February), and for attendees to test gear that many vendors will have on hand for sale.

Additionally, different seminars and presentations ranging from destination discussions to fishing techniques are planned at the Blue Cross Convention Center that’s attached to the MAC.

On Friday night (ideal for a Valentine’s date?), the expo will host the annual International Fly Fishing Film Festival at the MAC. Doors open for the film festival at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 7:30. Then, on Saturday, the Cutthroats will host the club’s annual banquet featuring a gourmet dinner, live and silent auctions, and a very popular raffle event. Tickets to the banquet

are $50 per person and must be purchased in advance, either online at srcexpo.org, or at the banquet. Doors open for the banquet at 5 p.m., and the program gets under way at 5:30.