For the past couple of years, I've been receiving some emails from some visitors to this site asking me I knew what had happened or where Joe Branham was. Joe had contributed some articles to this site in the past, and also ran his own excellent website on saltwater fly tying. But after awhile, his site ceased to exist and emails to him bounced back.

I had tried to get in touch and did a couple of searches on his name but nothing came up. Recently, I had an email from another visitor again enquiring whether I knew of Joe's health or demise - the emailer advised me that he had heard a rumour somewhere that Joe had taken seriously ill. This news disturbed me - although I've not met Joe in person, I do know he is a fantastic and highly skilled fly tier and it would be a tremendous loss to the fly fishing community if the rumours were true - either of his sickness or passing.

So I decided to try to find out whatever happened to Joe. He had sent me some articles sometime ago which I had not yet published on this site, and wasn't sure if I should publish them if something tragic had happened. I spent some hours over a couple of days following clues and using the awesome power of Google, discovered a phone number for Joe. I called it.

"Is this Joe Branham, the saltwater fly tying expert?" A healthy sounding voice chuckled and confirmed I was talking to the great fly tyer himself. I told him that I was calling to confirm rumours of his death or illness, and again Joe chuckled. After I told him who was calling, we had a great chat on the telephone.

It turns out that Joe is alive and well in the Atlanta area. He's not sick, dead or in jail. And he still enjoys fly tying but due to circumstances, he had to give up his website and his article writing about saltwater fly tying for the time being. As I well know, operating and maintaining a website about fly fishing can be a tedious job that doesn't pay well. It can take up lots of time and effort and if you let it, can even cut into your time wetting flies on the water. And sometimes you just need to give it a bit of a break.

Joe is operating his own small business as a handyman. If you live in the Atlanta area and need someone to do some work, drop me a line and I'll put you in touch. If you have questions about some aspect of saltwater fly tying, again - drop me an email at ian at about-flyfishing222 dot com (take out the number 222 -spam harvesters are now apparently harvesting email out of pure text with spaces) and I'll forward it on to Joe.

So this week, I am publishing two articles by Joe:

Crab Trimming Tool
Working With Marabou

In the past, Joe has sent me the following:

Fly Tying With Eyes
Fly Diversity
Making Bobbin Threaders And Cleaners

Enjoy!