Marc Petitjean

I learned to fish like the kids in the great movie "A River Runs Through It": Nearly 35 years ago - when I was a seven year old boy - my grandfather took me fishing for the first time. In France where we lived. I was allowed to catch little baitfish.

Some years later - and with stronger arms - I caught my first trout and I remember it like yesterday. - The rod was 4 meters long, made out of Bamboo and the bait was a natural may-fly (Ephemera danica, imago) which had to be handled as carefully as a snow-flake.

My first experiences of fly-fishing used an old split-cane rod of my grandfather and an even older line which had to be greased every five or ten casts! This was not a very efficient way to catch fish, but I learned a lot!

In Switzerland, where I moved in 1978, I had my first contact with a cdc-fly. It was at a dinner among fishermen when my friend Bruno - who had poor eyesight - asked me to tie him a visible fly which floated nicely. Because I was very proud of that request and did not want to lose face I began a study of local cdc-flies. Those patterns used cdc-hackles, no wings and classical bodies made of silk or other materials. Worried, not wanting to copy those local flies, I developed a new concept of also tying the body with a cdc-feather: This product a perfect conical body, which floated even in riffles and rapids. Bruno and later many more fishermen in Europe, were very pleased with the simple but efficient new way to tie a fly. I have been a professional fly-tier since 1990 and today more and more anglers are convinced that those tiny and inconspicuous feathers are the best a fly fisherman can have wrapped around a hook: They are good for dry-flies, for emergers, for nymphs, for streamers and even for salmon flies or saltwater-patterns. I love them and think you will too!

During the last 30 years I tied thousands of flies and had time think and developed various specific products, such a Fly fishing vest, the MP-vise, the Magic tool, the MP-Tying tools, the Magic Head and last the Swiss vise. They are appreciated world wide and won not less than 16 international awards.

My ideology of industrial design is to create technical, functional, practical and aesthetic products for the pleasure we get from the wonderful sport of flyfishing.

You can meet me at my stand in the Tenne.