Advisory Council
The American Museum of Fly Fishing has established an Advisory Council, with founding members Andy Mill, Flip Pallot, Tom Rosenbauer, Frankie Wolfson, and Joan Wulff. The role of the council will be to provide consultative expertise for current and future museum initiatives. The AMFF Board of Trustees realizes the importance and value of community, specifically those individuals who contribute to the sport of fly fishing in such a way that they are integral to its very fabric. The ability to tap in to the living history of fly fishing is an important aspect of the museum’s role as stewards of the sport.
Andy Mill is the most successful tarpon tournament angler of all time, winning twelve tournaments (including five Gold cups), and one of only three anglers to have won a tarpon, bonefish and permit tournament. Author of the award-winning book A Passion for Tarpon, he and his son have the fishing podcast “Millhouse Podcast”, which is now seen in 97 countries. He also hosted and produced the award-winning show Sportsman’s Journal, and is an IGFA trustee.
Flip Pallot is often referred to as a total outdoorsman. AMFF’s 2020 Izaak Walton Award honoree, he is also an innovator, entrepreneur, teacher, mentor, author, broadcaster, conservation champion, and is held in the highest regard by many as an extraordinary friend. Flip’s expertise can be felt throughout the fly fishing world and beyond in his partnerships with Hell’s Bay Boat Works, Temple Fork Outfitters, Cortland Lines, Yeti, Costa, Raymarine Electronics, and, most recently, Frigate Reserve Rum.
Tom Rosenbauer’s contributions to the sport are nearly unparalleled among today’s fly-fishing leaders. Recipient of AMFF’s 2019 Izaak Walton award, he currently serves as marketing director for Orvis rod and tackle and host of the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide podcast, and has authored several books on the sport. From the start of his career he has put his training in fisheries biology to work for the sport and its resources, and has been a key force in many of Orvis’s most forward-looking resource-conservation issues.
Frankie Wolfson, a former AMFF trustee, is president of both the Frances Louise Wolfson Family Foundation and the Marine R. Corporation, as well as a University of Miami Trustee Emeritus and member of the School of Communication Dean’s Advisory Committee. After teaching herself to cast by watching Mel Krieger videos, she quickly became an avid and passionate fly angler for life. Frankie once noted, “Fishing has taught me important lessons in conservation, and it has introduced me to many wonderful people.”
Joan Wulff needs no introduction. One of fly fishing’s greatest twentieth-century pioneers, she has been participating in the sport for more than eighty years. In 1951, she won the national fly-casting distance title by beating the all-male competition, was a National Casting Champion from 1943-1960, and is widely regarded as the architect of modern-day fly-casting mechanics. She started the Wulff School of Fly Fishing along with her husband, Lee Wulff, in 1978 along the Beaverkill in New York. The author of numerous books, Wulff was honored with the Fly Fishers International Award of Distinction for Leadership and Service in 1997, inducted into the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame in 2007, and received the American Museum of Fly Fishing Heritage Award in 2008.
AMFF President Fred Polhemus said, “The Museum is honored and excited to assemble a group of individuals whose talents, achievements, contributions to and knowledge of the sport will be a valuable resource in guiding AMFF into the future. These individuals have been chosen for the diversity each brings to the pastime and, in some cases, whose shared experiences have helped shape the history of fly fishing. We look forward to building the Honorary Council of Advisors with new additions annually.”