Figure Eats Story

A NOTE FROM GABE

Every musky angler knows the figure eight. That last, usually monotonous 8 you carve with your rod tip at the boat before your next cast... In my opinion, the difference between a good musky angler and a great musky angler is often their figure eight technique - and just like producing good bucktail, that technique is worth doing properly.  So when it came time to name this thing, Figure Eats felt right. It's a nod to the importance of technique, the optimistic mindset behind it, and the bucktail meals that make fish eat.

I cut my teeth in the industry out west, spending about half of my decade long career in the fly fishing industry in the Rocky Mountains. Great trout water, sure. BUT I needed muskies and cheese back in my life, and I missed the sheer variety the upper midwest fisheries offer. So, you betcha' I moved back home.

That's when Musky Fool brought me on staff — running the brick-and-mortar shop, coordinating the guide trips, and, most relevant to you, sourcing and producing the best bucktail on the market. Every grade and color of bucktail you see on this site traces straight back to the systems we built during that stretch.

When word got around that Musky Fool was calling it quits, I couldn't stomach the thought of all of you losing the one bucktail source you'd come to trust. Selfishly, I wasn't even sure where I'd get my own bucktail. So I picked up the torch. Figure Eats carries that program forward. Sourced, dyed, and graded exactly the way we built it, just under its own roof now and without the burdens of managing a fly shop and the other hurdles that come with a specialty retail brick-and-mortar store.

Muskies on a fly rod is still my thing. Always will be. But the order history doesn't lie — plenty of what leaves here ends up on striper flies, pike patterns, and anything else built to make a big, mean fish do something stupid. Folks have used these tails to catch Arapaima in the jungle, Taimen in the mountains of Mongolia, Murray Cod down under, and so much more. If it swims, eats big meals, and makes the average angler a little nervous, there's a decent chance this bucktail has ended up in its mouth.

So welcome. Ask me anything, send me your worst fish stories, and let's build something that swims right.

Cheers to good bucktail and cheers to you, friends. I've got some good eats coming your way.

Meet Gabe Park

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Gabe has spent the last decade in the fly fishing industry chronically obsessed with fish big enough and dumb enough to eat something the size of the family cat. Before Figure Eats, he ran the entire bucktail program at Musky Fool Fly Fishing Company, which mostly meant getting paid to smell like deer hide and argue with dye pots for a living. Bucktail is his love language. Ask him about fiber density and hollow hair and watch an hour disappear. Just don't ask him about how to dye a bucktail jet black or he'll have to throw you in the Flambeau.

Muskies are his one true love, but sitting down at the vise with a high quality tail is where that dream begins. He's a Wisconsinite through and through, still casting long after everyone else has reached for a beer, and still convinced the next cast or the next bucktail is the one.