The inaugural issue of Fly Tyer launched in the Spring of 1978 with Dick Surrette as the editor. Over the ensuing years it assumed various name changes, eventually becoming the stand-alone title American Angler in January, 1991. In the summer of 1995, with the position of American Angler well established, Abenaki re-launched Fly Tyer as a quarterly in its original fly-tying-only format. Readers immediately recognized that Fly Tyer offered more accurate, easy-to-follow, step-by-step tying instructions than any other publication in the marketplace, establishing it as the universal go-to source for authoritative fly-tying information.