Welcome to Dogtown

My town’s year-round population hovers slightly north of 3,000 people. The town center is typically American. There are a few shops, a grocery store, plenty of package stores, and a lot of fishing boats. Two main arteries allow for safe passage. Main Street runs into town and Commercial Street goes to the wharf. If you hear church bells ringing in an odd pattern they’re coming from the First Congregational Church. My church’s bells still ring on ship’s time, and I can hear them on a quiet day when the wind blows from the Northwest. They carry all the way to my home in Dogtown.

Most every old town throughout the region had a section called Dogtown. That’s what the unsettled areas populated by horse thieves, pirates, and wild running curs were called. That was a long time ago, for everything these days is decidedly settled. Go for a walk and look at the puffy white clouds floating high in the blue, summer sky and see who you run into. Just last week while hauling my camo skiff I encountered a morning drive television celebrity, an ivy league professor, and a Nobel Prize winning writer. But back in time I’d likely have run into Black Sam Bellamy, Goody Hallet, or Hendrick Quintor.

Now and again I run into Mike Rice. He’s a commercial fly tier and owner of Mud Dog Flies. Most of the area shops carry his patterns for two reasons: they’re durable and they catch fish. When I see him in the summer it’s likely that he’s field testing some new patterns that he’ll produce during the months when it gets dark shortly after 4 PM.

Exactly how does one become a commercial fly tier?

To become a commercial fly tier Rice went around his elbow to kiss his thumb. He grew up on a farm of registered Hereford steers in Maine, so when he wasn’t mending fences, bucking hay, or harvesting silage corn, he was nonetheless outside. There he spin fished for wild brookies, landlocked salmon, and togue, the Indian name for lake trout. His was a quiet and rural life, perfect for a kid, but there was a hitch. Simplicity is best served to the young and the mature. During his adolescence and young adult life, Rice craved some action.

He found some juice in the outdoors, with whitewater kayaking and ice climbing as his two main outlets. Offshore sailing became a third rush, and those Maine to Bermuda runs taught Rice about the sea. He learned about lunar phases, tidal changes, and interaction of wind and water, all of which created a love affair that continues today. But the real step towards becoming a commercial tier occurred in Burlington, Vermont, and it was a game changer. Rice became a cop.

He worked the streets, studied, and soon was promoted to detective. He chose undercover narcotics work, notably identifying, infiltrating, and busting drug rings. Remote, northern New England towns don’t get the same media attention as hot spots like Miami or LA, but there’s a lot more going on than a midnight cow tipping party. The idle mind is the devil’s workshop, and there is plenty of down time up north. You don’t read about it much, but distributing heroin, running guns and growing weed is there.

The Seven Year Itch

After seven years of shutting down drug labs deep in the woods, Rice found himself wondering what the hell he was doing with his life. Surely he provided a service, his duty to the force was unwavering, but was there more? He found out on one winter weekend when he and his buddy Judd Thurston, a firefighter, went to spend four days climbing 60-degree ice faces on Mount Washington’s Huntington Ravine. They slept outside in below 0 weather, and though there was time to think, Rice arrived at no answers. Then he heard a feint cry for help.

It came from a distance, a woman’s cry high up by the tree line. Rice and Thurston stopped setting up their camp, grabbed lines, picks, and packs, and began an ascent. When he neared the top Rice heard a sobbing woman and a barking dog. There also was that smell, the one he encountered many times in the line of duty. It was the smell of death.

A woman performed CPR on her boyfriend who already passed, the result of a backcountry ski accident with their friend and their dog. The decedent was a successful businessman who scrapped his career to follow his passion for skiing. He gave first lessons to kids, perfected techniques with adults, and spent time downhilling with his family and friends. Rice acknowledged that dying doing what one loved with someone they loved was the answer. His transition out of narcotics began upon his return to the force. And it was quick.

Tide and Time Waits for No Man

Rice started fishing with his childhood friend, Scott Howard. They hammered cow stripers on live-lined mackerel, but one day they saw a giant pod of dinks blitzing on the surface. Howard pitched a fly to the feeding bass and immediately hooked up. Rice did, too, and he was hooked. He was 33 years old.

When he got back on shore, Rice did Rice. He bought some gear, practiced every day, and before long he mastered the cast. He already knew how to read beaches, tide, pressure patterns, and current from his sailing years, and any rag tag sailor excels at tying knots. Rice and Howard went out every chance they got, they put a beat down on bass, and when the season ended and the fish migrated, so did they. First down to Florida, and then down to the Bahamas. No bone or ‘poon was safe, but Rice still wasn’t happy.

Flies

Before you tag Rice as Mister Grouchy Pants, know this; the man appreciates quality and isn’t afraid of spending time or resources to get it. “I got tired of flies that I bought from shops,” he said. “A lot didn’t swim right, others were generic and didn’t resemble the baitfish in my water, and then there were those that fell apart. So I guess my first focus was to learn to tie flies that didn’t fall apart. Then, I could test them out to see if their coloration, proportions and materials all contributed to their fish catchability. To get there I had to study the natural environment, so I pulled out a mask and snorkel and dived in.” As he did with fly fishing, so too did Rice go with tying. “I bought a vise, some tools and materials, read a few books, and taught myself to tie,” he said. “My first efforts were junk, but soon enough I had some decent patterns. I gave them to my buddy Scott to fish and they worked. I kept tying and tying, and before long other guides wanted some.”

Things gelled on a trip to Andros. “I bought some standard flies and then studied pictures of shrimp and crabs indigenous to Andros,” he said. “I twisted up some of my own patterns and found I caught more bones, ‘cuda and snapper on the flies I had tied than on the ones I bought. I decided then and there that when I got home I’d give commercial tying a shot. The table full of empty Kalik bottles and conch fritters might have had something to do with that too, I don’t know.”

Opportunity knocks, blessed are those who wait

Rice was ready to enter Dogtown, so he twisted up a few dozen samples and headed to local shops to see if he could sell them. “The first shop I got my flies into was Capt. David Bitters’ Baymen Outfitters in Duxbury. I then went into Bob Benson’s Fishing the Cape on Cape Cod, and then Alec Stansell’s The Fly Shop in Portland, Maine. It went from there. It took me three years to get Scott Wessels at the Bears Den to carry my flies. I’d go in with a box of stuff, he’d go through them and say ‘this needs a little more work, less of this, more of that, wtf is this?’ Honestly, that was the best thing that could have happened because on the day he said, ‘yeah dude, I’ll take those,’ I knew I was finally getting it not only from the water side, but also on the retail side.” Rice still sells thousands of flies to regional shops as well as to anglers on his website.

Welcome to Dogtown

Now, Rice needed a name for his company, and inspiration came while he was fishing his home waters with his black Lab. “I was on a mud flat with Jack,” he said. “I was trying to come up with a cool name for the business but nothing made sense. Late in the day, Jack was covered in river mud and he ran up and shook the mud all over me. Mud Dog kinda stuck. These days, most people just call me Dog, not Mike.”

Repetition makes the master

These days, Rice ties over 10,000 flies per year. “Production tying requires a set up,” he said. “It’s obviously easier to tie 10 dozen of the same fly because I can take a day, prep the materials for each fly, and then grind. I tie some patterns in a few minutes while others take a quarter of an hour. Getting properly set up is the key, because then I can focus on the application at hand. That prep helps me focus on tying durable flies that cast well, swim right, and appeal to fish. In the winter I might tie for hours, but during fishing season I’ll spend a few hours tying and then hit the water. The idea that a “living” can be made by tying flies is just not realistic. Over the past 22 years I regularly donate to charities, conservation groups, and to tournaments. In some years I’ve given away as much as I’ve sold. Mine isn’t the best business plan, but it makes me happy.”

To make ends meet, Rice will work other jobs as necessary. He writes, but these days he’s working with his partner Jill Mason to develop her art business, Jill Mason Art. “Jill and I had been taking photos for years all along the coast,” he said. “We print our photos on canvas and then apply them to a solid wood back. The image is then glazed, and we frame it in distressed wood. We work together in our barn which allows me to be able to jump on the vise for an extra hour when necessary. We’ll also take an hour or two in the middle of the day to walk down to the beach or check out what’s happening on the North or the South River. She’ll take some images and I’ll test some flies. It’s a wonderful life, and we both love being connected to the tide.”

Rice is a Regal Vise Endorsed Fly Tier, an American Museum of Fly Fishing Ambassador and a member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. “One type of inspiration comes from people who have been buying flies from me for 20 plus years,” he said. “Some fish all the time, others hit it on the weekends. A bunch fish all over the world. Now that so much time has passed their kids are buying my flies. Whenever I need a rush I think of them making a cast to a fish and I perk right up. They’re the ones who inspire me, just like the fish and the sea.”