About Firehole Outdoors

Barbless. On purpose. Since the beginning.

Firehole makes two things: barbless fly tying hooks and tungsten beads. That is the whole catalog, and it is deliberate.

Twenty-eight hook models, sizes 5/0 down to 26, across six series. Every one of them manufactured barbless from the first step, not crimped flat after the fact. Tungsten beads in slotted and round, 1.5mm to 4.5mm, in twenty-three colors.

Born in Bozeman.
Reforged in New England.

A letter from the owner

Valley Creek in Valley Forge taught me to fish. Small water, wild browns, close enough to Philadelphia to be pressured accordingly. You learned to move slowly and tie small or you went home without touching anything.

Nothing came out of that creek. Everything went back. That was not an ethic anyone handed me, it was just the rule, and by the time I understood the reason behind it, it had already become how I fish.

I picked up a rod there thirty years ago and started tying not long after. The two have never been separate for me.

I make my living growing things. Seasons that do not negotiate. Weather you cannot argue with. Work that pays back in years instead of quarters. That job taught me patience before fly fishing did, and it is most of the reason I think about this business the way I do.

I still tie most nights, and what I tie depends on the time of year. Some months it is filling holes in the trout box. Some months everything on the bench gets bigger because there is a saltwater trip coming. In summer it is streamers for smallmouth.

I did not set out to buy Firehole. I was a customer. I had Firehole hooks in every drawer of my bench and had never once thought about the brand behind them, which is close to the highest thing you can say about a hook.

When the chance came to take it on, I took it, because I did not want to watch it go.

Then I started calling shops, and I expected to spend most of those calls apologizing. Mostly I did not. What I heard was that they liked the hooks and their customers liked the hooks, and they had stopped ordering because they could not count on getting what they asked for. More than one told me they did not think Firehole had come close to what it could be.

That is a specific problem, and specific problems can be fixed. Nobody had to be convinced the hooks were good.

So I did not buy this to reinvent it. The designs were right and they have not changed. The work has been everything around them: getting product made on schedule, getting it on the shelf, answering the phone.

None of that is interesting to write about. It is most of what the last year has been.

I am not going to tell you everything is fixed. I will tell you what we have built, and you can judge the rest by whether your order shows up.

Tight lines,

John Place
Owner, Firehole Outdoors
@farmerjohnplace

What we make

Firehole Sticks. Twenty-eight hook models and three shanks. High-carbon steel, black nickel, chemically sharpened. Organized in six series so you can find what you need by what you are tying:

• 300 — continuous curve, for scuds, pupae, klinks
• 400 — dry fly
• 500 — jig
• 600 — nymph and wet
• 700 — specialty and all-purpose
• 800 — streamer and predator

A handful of these exist nowhere else. The 520, 570, and 714 are Firehole originals with no direct equivalent from any other maker. The 718 and 511 were Firehole designs first and have since been copied.

Firehole Stones. Tungsten beads, slotted and round. Slotted runs 1.5mm to 4.5mm; round starts at 2.0mm. Twenty-three colors. Clean bores, consistent slots, finishes that do not rub off in the tray.

When you order a 2.5mm Stone, you get a 2.5mm Stone. That sounds like a low bar. In this category it is not.

Brass round beads are next, in the same colors, for tyers who want the profile without the weight or the price.

Why every hook we make is barbless

We did not add barbless to the line. We built the company around it.

A hook manufactured barbless has cleaner point geometry than one that has been crimped flat, and that shows up where it matters most, at the small sizes. It also comes out of a fish faster, which is the part that counts when you intend to let it swim away.

Barbless is a fish-handling decision and a craft decision at the same time. We are not interested in arguing about it. We just do not make the other kind.

Stupid Sharp. Always Barbless.

Read the full case for barbless →

What happened in 2025

Firehole was founded in Bozeman in 2016 and earned its following the honest way, by making hooks that tyers stopped thinking about.

In 2025 the company stalled. Supply went unreliable and shops that had carried the brand for years could not get stock.

I bought the company in September 2025. The hooks came back in stock that November, in every size. The beads followed at Christmas. They have not gone out since.

Firehole is now part of Next Bend Outdoors. The designs did not change. What changed is whether the box arrives.

Start here

• Shop Firehole Sticks → — 28 barbless models, 5/0 to 26
• Shop Firehole Stones → — tungsten, slotted and round
• Find a dealer → — shops carrying Firehole
• From the Bench → — how to get more out of what you tie

Free shipping in the US on orders over $75.