Wes Ashcrafts Gnarly Hats

 ~By: Lance Dean | April 28, 2017

Tiger Musky design from a Wes Ashcraft hat.

 

Wes Ashcraft and his hats - Courtesy Wes Ashcraft

Wes Ashcraft of Pocatello, Idaho is a great artist, an awesome fly tyer and is responsible for some really gnarly hats.  These hats are basic trucker’s hats but have something unique about them. Wes colors patches and glues them on his hats then sells them.  What’s so cool about that you might ask? Well, let me tell you.  The patches are patches that are shaped like a state of the U.S. Still not impressed. How about this...these patches are colored by Wes Ashcraft to look like the skin of a specific fish species. I have seen a Brown Trout design, a Rainbow Trout design and even a Brook Trout design.

I have seen these hats floating around on Facebook for a few months and while visiting the Wasatch Fly Tying Expo this year came across Wes tying flies and talked to him for a few minutes about his hats. I had been debating on getting a hold of him and asking him how much he charges for his fishy hats and now I had my chance.  He told me that he could order in pretty much any type of hat I wanted and that he could get any of the state patches to color on, even a Nevada one.  I was stoked after deciding that I wanted a blue hat with the state of Nevada for a patch I asked him if he could do a Tiger Musky design which he declared that he could.  Over the course of the next couple weeks he drew up a Tiger Musky design on a rectangle patch that was amazing and sent a picture of it to me via Facebook Messenger.  I loved it and asked him about payment arrangements when he explained that he doesn’t expect payment until he is finished with the hat and the customer is happy with how it turned out.  I than had to wait until the Nevada patch was ordered in and for Wes to color it up. Well a few days ago I received another message from Wes with a picture of my completed hat.  I was impressed, excited and in awe of my new hat.  After completing payment through PayPal, Wes shipped me my hat and I found it in my Post Office box waiting for me just a couple days ago.  I am impressed, this is a gnarly hat.

When asked if he only did states and rectangles for patches he says that he can pretty much do any patch design as long as he has a clean .pdf file for it. At the time of this post he charges $25.00 – shipping included for these pieces of art. 

The Blue Nevada Tiger Musky Hat

Wes Ashcraft can be found on Facebook here his website is here.

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