The Best Fly Fishing is Everywhere - 04.05.2024
Ramblings & Readings, Creativity & Conservation, Happenings & Hope
Not A Rowing Machine
There’s no substitute for the real thing. 5700 CFS is not a rowing machine.
Priority Waters: Olympic Peninsula
For Trout Unlimited’s TROUT Weekly newsletter, a short story about decision-making and wild steelhead.
An Artist
If you’re in the PNW and into fish and the ocean and mountains and art and tattoos and such, you eventually come across Kyler Martz and his artwork. I commissioned Kyler for a piece years ago and then later got some ink from him. That process was a little crazy for a relative tattoo neophyte: we sat down in his studio together, he sketched my idea on an iPad before my eyes, and then simply asked, “So, do you want the tattoo or not?” He’s done pieces for Simms, Patagonia, Filson, the Seattle Kraken, and tons more. Check out his website for some super cool pieces and follow him on Insta too.
A Film
One of the many fly fishing mentors I’ve been lucky enough to cross paths with and learn from is Mark Engler, who guides out of Durango, CO. Some years ago, the Talweg crew put together this short film on Mark and I got to tag along. It’s a great glimpse into his fishing life. I wrote a story about Mark for The Drake around the same time and it includes one of my favorite Engler memories:
Spend a day with Mark Engler and you never know what you’ll learn. Once, while waiting on our clients to arrive, I was watching him test cast a rod when a cat walked onto the lawn. He lengthened his cast and landed a piece of chartreuse yarn a foot in front of the unsuspecting feline. The cat stopped in its tracks and eyed the yarn. Engler was hunched over and eagle-eyed, as if about to feed a permit. He moved the yarn a few inches and the cat crouched. He twitched the yarn again but the cat relaxed and moved on. Engler turned to me. “Wrong color.”
An Old Book
Fly fishing itself is a niche interest but the more you learn about it, the more niches
within are found. There’s fly tying, as example, and within that there is classic Atlantic salmon fly tying, and within that is the whole rare-feather game which I, admittedly, do not know much at all about. Author Kirk Wallace Johnson does though. The Feather Thief is as close to a thriller as you can get, when it comes to fly tying. There’s even a short podcast episode about it. Definitely worth a listen or a read.
A Thought
Perhaps all you can say is that there are great lapses or discrepancies in time; that and the simple if inexplicable fact that some people have fishing in their hearts.
~ Russell Chatham
© Jesse Lance Robbins, 2024
