Scientific Anglers

Bruce Richards | Working with Legends

On my very first day of work at Scientific Anglers in January 1976 my phone rang, my first business phone call!  The voice on the phone said “Hi Bruce, I’m Lefty Kreh and I just wanted to call and welcome you to the SA team!”  Lefty was on SAs Pro Staff at the time.  Eventually I ran our Pro Program and had the honor of traveling and fishing with Lefty and other Pro Staffers. Being hired by SA gave me instant credibility even though I knew very little about the fly-fishing business or even much about fly lines in the beginning. 

During those early years I got to know almost all the fly fishing “big names” and was warmly accepted by all of them.  Many were field testers for our products and I learned a lot from all of them, I was very lucky!  It was an exciting time for this young, very lucky fly angler! 

One very memorable interaction in those early years was with Lee Wulff.  Lee had an idea for a unique fly line design that had a long continuous taper.  Most other fly lines at the time had a level belly section with tapers at each end.  He had applied for (and was granted) a patent for his taper idea, the only patented fly line design that I know of, the Triangle Taper.

Lee mailed a simple hand drawing of his idea, a line with a straight, continuous taper from the tip of the line to its maximum diameter where it tapered down to the running line, basically a long, skinny triangle.  I wish I’d had the foresight to save that drawing.  Another SA employee, Gerald Church, and I made samples to send to Lee.  I cast the lines and found that they cast reasonably well but only at a certain mid-range distance.  They were much too light in the front to cast well at shorter distances and were extremely delicate, most anglers would have a hard time getting them to effectively deliver their flies.  Samples were sent to Lee and he agreed. We suggested that we make more samples but with a modified taper that would be a bit different than his original drawing, but would still meet the claims in his patent application.  The new design had a relatively fast taper in the front third of the line then the taper rate slowed for the rest of the line.  This put more weight in the front of the line and relatively less in the back. We all agreed the revised design worked better and after some further tweaking and more samples the original Triangle Taper lines were born!  The Wulff Triangle Tapers lines have been very popular around the world ever since.  There are now versions for almost every kind of fly fishing, all following Lee’s initial design idea. 

Unfortunately, Lee died in 1991.  Sometime after that I was on an east coast sales swing to visit major customers and stopped in to visit Lee’s wife Joan at their home.  Joan and I are both fly casting instructors and had been friends for years but I had not been to their home before.  We chatted about the usual fly-fishing stuff for a while. Lee’s fly-tying desk was still set up and ready to use, just as he had left it.  I asked Joan if it would be OK for me to sit in his chair at the desk, she said “of course”.  I did and felt a connection to Lee I hadn’t expected, a moment I remember to this day.

Special Note:  That young guy, Bruce Richards, went on to become a top authority on fly-line design and manufacturing.  Bruce retired in 2009, but still consults with Scientific Anglers on special projects