Fly Fishing Way of Life
Being active in Montana. This is why a lot of us live here. I came here to fly fish, like many of the folks that are in fly fishing industry. It turns out now that I not only fish for a living, but have built my entire lifestyle around fly fishing. When I can vacation, what times of the year I can leave the state, I go to places where I can fish! My family fishes, we take the boat out in the summer evenings. It's what we choose to do.
This sport has changed most or our lives, it has changed the way we see Montana and the way we live in Montana, the way we see and protect the rivers. The call of the River leads us to drop what we do, change where we live, remind us what we are passionate about, and take a closer look at our lives. We know that we can do this the rest of our lives, and we have a large community of fellow friends and fisherman to join us. We know that we hold a secret, and can introduce our passions to our friends and family , and that they too will enjoy it for a lifetime.
It has given us all great memories, mostly good. Memories of those perfect days on the river, that too good to be true rainbow. A few memories may be bad, like the memory of pulling a hook out a lip, ear, or a finger. But those are the things we still smile about.
For some of us we first learned about it from "the Movie" or Robert Redford's "A River Runs Through It". Some learned about the magical sport before then. They are the lucky ones. I saw it before the big rush of wanna be fly fisherman, and now I make a living off of the people that are still chasing Brad Pitt's rivers. "A River Runs Through it" changed this sport more than graphite.
Up until that last several years we thought Montana was still a cattle and timber state. This is very untrue, although there are a lot of people that would prefer to see it stay that way. Today it's a mixture of sportsmen, artists, ranchers, farmers, waitresses, miners and even railway workers.
Chasing a fish has changed this state.
It has changed all of us along with it. |
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