Glancing Back: Fly Fishing 30 Years Ago
By Richard Anderson
California Fly Fisher starts its thirtieth year with the issue you are holding in your hands. Although this is a notable milestone, more interesting for you and me is what has happened in the sport of fly fishing over the years since California Fly Fisher began being published. Fly fishers like to tinker and experiment in the pursuit of greater success, and the past three decades have perhaps been the most notable of any in our sport for tinkering and experimenting. Part of this trend is a result of the fly-fishing industry seeking market share through innovation, and part of it, maybe the largest part, is a result of fly fishers communicating with each other through the extraordinary medium of the World Wide Web. There have been cultural changes as well during this period. Especially worth noting is that fly-fishing businesses remains active, even aggressive, in bringing a broader variety of people into the sport. Some of these new participants, however, are a little hazy as to what fly fishing is about, and many old-timers might have only a partial perspective as well, hence the theme of this article: a 30-year look back on how fly fishing has been evolving, and what those evolutions might mean for us.
To understand the ways in which fly fishing has changed over the past few decades, it helps to know where the sport was at the beginning of the 1990s. From my perspective as an enthusiast (and long before I began publishing this magazine), the fly-fishing economy in the 1980s was seemingly doing well, at least where I lived, which was San Francisco. In comparison with today’s paucity of bricks-and-mortar fly shops, San Francisco back then had three stores selling fly gear, and there were at least two each on the Peninsula, in the East Bay, down in the South Bay, and also in Marin County. Dick Galland had started Clearwater Trout Tours, offering guiding services, instruction, and, later, lodging, and The Fly Shop in Redding, a must-visit on I-5 for every fly fisher traveling to or through that area, was similarly expanding its guiding and travel services and access to private waters.
Thousands of us bought Ralph Cutter’s Sierra Trout Guide to help understand our primary quarry and figure out where to catch them. Closer to home, Ken Hanley was conducting surf-zone clinics along the San Mateo coastline, and Al Kyte offered a popular beginner’s fly-fishing course through UC Berkeley Extension. San Francisco, and later the city of Berkeley, was home to a nationally renowned rod manufacturer, Scott Fly Rods, under the helm of Larry Kenney. The annual International Sportsmen’s Exposition in San Mateo brought in fly-fishing exhibitors and experts from around the West, expanding our perspectives and growing the market. And reflecting an aspect of that market perhaps more in tune with California than elsewhere, the publication of John Gierach’s Trout Bum and Russell Chatham’s Dark Waters underlined the sport’s countercultural character, which had been in place at least since the early 1970s, when nonmotorized outdoor activities such as rock climbing and cross-country skiing engaged folk who were increasingly valuing the environment over the establishment. In Northern California, then, and likely nationwide (we had four national magazines devoted to the sport), fly fishing was chugging along as a viable business sector as we moved into the 1990s. Sure, it was a small niche in the much larger angling and outdoors sports markets, but for whatever reason, people were being drawn to fly fishing. Then along came Robert Redford, who decided to make a film of a little-known book about a Montana family who fly fished. With a heart-touching story, eye-catching scenery, and Brad Pitt casting pretty darn well, A River Runs Through It caused the ongoing stream of new entrants into fly fishing to flash into a torrent. Sales of gear rocketed, with additional retailers and manufacturers entering the marketplace to meet the demand. The same month that “The Movie” hit the screens, in an instance both coincidental and fortuitous, California Fly Fisher happened to launch. A lot has occurred in our sport since then, and thoughts on these changes are collected in the pages that follow from fly fishers who have long angled our state’s waters and been involved in some professional way with fly fishing. We can best know where we are and forecast what might be coming by understanding the path we’ve been traveling.
Scott Sadil
Thirty years ago, we knew nothing. Or so it seems now, gazing back from our lofty, all-seeing vantage, the vast scope of a viewpoint made all but omniscient by the wonders of the digital age. As anglers, we built our game on local waters. Ready for bigger sport, we took our cues from books, rumors, secondhand sources, often hearsay. Most of our fishing adventures were more or less a shot in the dark, a plunge into the unknown. The point of going fishing was that you didn’t know what you were going to find.
In our ignorance, then, we took delight in discovery, epiphanies, stumbling upon moments of unanticipated grace. We learned the meaning of luck, the weight of failure, the practice of optimism, the acceptance of responsibility and blame. The reward in all of this was figuring out things on your own, the notions big and small, imagining and creating solutions that, however flawed, were yours — the best you could come up with when faced with fish you want real bad.
The difference today, of course, is the ready availability of information, the detailed formulas, the recipes for success — the precise instructions on how to find your way to the famous Mother Dog Hole. Plus, I’ve never seen so many anglers fishing with guides as I do today — an observation, not a complaint. The internet, obviously, provides the means for this spread of information, the erasure of the unknown. Yet by a strange twist of logic or fate, I don’t know which, I now enjoy more good fishing on uncrowded waters than I’ve experienced in the 30 years since the advent of California Fly Fisher.
How can that be? What’s changed, I think, is that reality is now defined, in many ways, by the content on our computers and phones. Any water not on the internet doesn’t exist. I know that sounds absurd, but I also know I find myself more often than ever camped near and casting into uncrowded water flush with good fish, places anybody can find with a little time and a willingness to venture into the unknown. Thirty years ago, it just seems as if I ran into a lot more anglers off the beaten track.
Again, I’m not complaining. But it’s a change, a big change, one I’m kind of happy about, all things considered. That and the availability and sophistication of modern two-handed rods.Along with penning his “At the Vise” column for California Fly Fisher, Scott Sadil writes as Angling Editor for Gray’s Sporting Journal. Author of a handful of fiction and nonfiction titles about fly fishing, he has a new book, Pacific Coast Flies & Flyfishing, scheduled for publication in 2022.
Chip O’Brien
In the last 30 years, fly-fishing education has blossomed. There are now fly-fishing courses for beginners through advanced anglers offered by fly shops, guides, resorts, outfitters, junior colleges, and numerous fishing organizations. There are terrific magazines and websites bursting with information. You can become a certified casting instructor or a master casting instructor with single-handed or double-handed fly rods.
Today, it isn’t a matter of if there are fly-fishing learning opportunities available, but how deep you want to go. Technology also continues to improve every aspect of the equipment we use, and somebody’s always on the cusp of introducing the next new thing.
But has fly fishing really changed much in 30 years? Better education and equipment suggest yes, but I’m also struck by the monumental importance of the things that haven’t evolved.
Fly fishing, in its purest form, hasn’t changed. The fact that it’s still one creature pitted against another in a game of skill and luck hasn’t changed. The fact that wild trout are found in beautiful places hasn’t changed. The fact that those places feed the soul hasn’t changed. The fact that skillful anglers can get skunked and beginners can get lucky hasn’t changed. The fact that I can have a spirited conversation with another angler, and no one else in the room will understand the special language we are speaking hasn’t changed.
And I hope they never will.
Chip O’Brien is a lifelong fly angler and teacher who has been contributing to California Fly Fisher since 1993.
Ralph Cutter
Nineteen ninety-two. Arguably the pinnacle of California’s Golden Age of Fly Fishing and the launch of a new gonzo tabloid, California Fly Fisher.
The decade leading up to 1992 saw the introduction of the Wild Trout Act and the implementation of “special regs” across the state to minimize the needless loss of fish and to maximize the potential for each and every trout water. “Artificials only,” “single barbless hooks,” and “catch and release” were fully recognized concepts and largely embraced among the angling public. “Catch and release” was so ubiquitous that it slopped over to the everyday lexicon to describe women who divorced well and, by law enforcement, a failed judicial system. As a result of the special regs and fisheries management, fishing opportunities soared, and trout became not only more numerous, but significantly larger than in the 30 years previous. Except in popular areas on Opening Day, we pretty much had the water to ourselves.

Coincidently, in 1992, “The Movie” came out, and in the following year, crowds flocked to the waters to try their hand at the world of fishing with a fly. It wasn’t such a great thing for longtime anglers who preferred their solitude, but it was a boon to the fly-fishing industries. Improvements in fly-fishing gear suddenly leapfrogged forward, with innovation after innovation that made fly fishing not only simpler, but more effective. Fly-fishing classes boomed, and guides were in demand (I stand guilty of both). The learning curve was flattened, and a boutique industry became commodified. Rising prices reflected demand; as an example, Sage was selling out of its flagship RPL rods with “outlandish” prices approaching $400.
Really good waders, hooks, hackle, floatants, and fly lines became readily available, as did the successful fishing made possible by these innovations. More anglers begat more anglers and more guides begat more guides. Crowding became an issue, not only on Opening Day at Hat Creek, but on the Little Truckee in the middle of August. And then came the internet, rife with fishing bulletin boards, fishing reports, and virtual fly clubs. This was followed by social media: FaceBook, Instagram, and Twitter, where the instant gratification of posting a picture of a fish hooked under a bobber pacing the guide’s drift boat ignited a whole new direction in the sport.
In some quarters, fly fishing literally became a competitive affair, with anglers painting imaginary grids over a run, then relentlessly casting to each square in the grid, checking them off as one would mark a bowling scorecard. Many of these techniques leaked into even casual angling. Identifying lies and understanding where trout might be and when and why were replaced with robotic motions of exacting precision, shotgunning those squares to suck every available (mostly small) trout from a run. Understanding the subtleties of rise forms and matching the hatch were largely replaced with bobbers and garish attracting patterns of foam, flash, plastic, beads, and fluorescent materials.
It would seem that fly fishing has come nearly full circle to the days of blindly hucking lures of all shapes, sizes and colors — the mindless lure fishing that fly fishers once sought to avoid and distance themselves from by casting far and fine with the most delicate presentations and covering the most subtle lies with well-crafted flies that imitated the foods that trout were eating.
I have long since abandoned the commercial aspects of fly fishing, its pop trends, and the popular waters to seek the secluded streams, brooks, and ponds where time slows to a halt and 1992 still reigns.
Ralph Cutter and his wife, Lisa, started the Northern Sierra Guide Service and the California School of Flyfishing in 1981. In the years since, they’ve taught hundreds of students to fly fish, tied a few flies, written a few books and more than a few magazine articles, and produced a video, all under the guise of working for a living.
Dennis P. Lee
A lot has changed in steelhead fly fishing on the West Coast in the last 30 years. In the 1980s, most steelhead anglers used 9-to-10-foot single-handed rods rated for a 7-weight to 9-weight line. Lighter rods were common for summer steelhead, while heavier rods were used for winter steelhead in coastal rivers. Two-handed, or double-handed rods as they were sometimes called, were just beginning to be introduced to the Pacific Northwest. During the following three decades, the acceptance and utility of two-handed rods and Spey casting would make them commonplace on California steelhead rivers. Although two-handed rods and Spey casts routinely had been used in Europe for a long time, it was not until the 1970s when Jim Green, a San Francisco native and member of the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, designed and manufactured the first two-handed fiberglass steelhead rod for use on West Coast waters. Green took the newly constructed rod to the Skagit River in Washington on a steelhead fishing trip, where a group of steelheaders saw it in action. From this early exposure, the use of two-handed rods for steelhead fishing in the Pacific Northwest added new dimensions to fly-rod manufacturing and casting techniques.
The first two-handed rods for steelhead fishing were constructed to cast 8-weight to 10-weight lines as rated on the two-handed-rod line scale. These long, heavy rods were best suited for winter steelhead fishing using large, heavy flies. Beginning in the 1990s, rod manufacturers began to build shorter, lighter two-handed rods. Trey Combs was one of their early advocates and devoted several pages to two-handed rods in Steelhead Fly Fishing (1991). Combs described these rods as ranging from 12 to 13 feet long and rated for 6-weight to 9-weight lines. Since then, two-handed rods have become more numerous, with many shorter in length. Dual-purpose rods called “switch rods” have made an appearance, and even “trout Spey” rods have entered the fly-fishing world.
As rod-manufacturing technology continued to improve and more anglers took up two-handed rods, new casting styles also evolved: the Scandinavian method, emphasizing the uppermost or top hand as a fulcrum and the use of the lower hand on the rod for power, which has become a standard for Northern California summer steelhead fishing, and the Skagit style, employing two-handed rods slightly shorter in length, compared with traditional Spey rods, and with power concentrated in the butt of the rod, often used for winter steelhead fishing, where larger, heavily weighted flies are the norm and the angler wants a deeper presentation. Skagit casting methods have become a standard for California winter steelhead fishing.
Dennis P. Lee is a retired California Department of Fish and Wildlife Fisheries Biologist and author of The Half-Pounder: A Steelhead Trout Life History and Fly Fishing, and California Winter Steelhead: Life History and Fly Fishing. He and his wife live in Folsom, California, where he continues to tie flies and chase steelhead.
Ken Hanley
Saltwater experiences exploded in the past few decades. This is especially true along the West Coast of the United States, from backwater bays to bluewater adventures. Coldwater saltwater species are now celebrated targets of fly fishers: sea-run cutts, salmon, surfperch, rockfish, kelp bass, bay bass, striped bass, halibut, corbinas, bonitos, yellowfin tuna, yellowtails, barracudas,
blue sharks, mako sharks, and more. Our Western saltwater scene has a strong base of fly fishers whose commitment to developing a better understanding of the nuances of habitat and game fish has transformed the cold-water fly-fishing game from a curiosity to a valued experience.
Ken Hanley, author of Fly Fishing the Pacific Inshore: Strategies for Estuaries, Bays, and Beaches, grew up with San Francisco Bay as his home water. On foot, in a canoe, or from a skiff, exploring saltwater fishing opportunities has always been a favorite adventure.
Al Quattrocchi
Over the past 30 years, one of the most obvious changes in our industry is the number of saltwater fly anglers I see walking the beaches of Southern California. This is a positive change, and I hope that some of my past fly-fishing events, such as the One Surf Fly, which ran for nine seasons, had some part in creating this newly found interest in surf fly fishing, which I have always considered the least friendly, but most rewarding way to fish the fly.
Technology and fly equipment have changed over the past thirty years and revolutionized the sport. Integrated, color-coded shooting lines, lighter, larger-arbor fly reels, and incredible rod technology have all contributed to a more enjoyable, efficient way of casting the fly. And as with your old vinyl records, fiberglass, tenkara, and softer, medium-action fly rods are making a comeback in the sport. It’s an exciting time for new and seasoned anglers alike to have so many fun options.
Al Quattrocchi, a resident of Los Angeles, is the author of the recently published Corbina Diaries, the founder of Southern California’s One Surf Fly contest, an instructor, guide, and holder of two IGFA world records.
Robert Ketley
The front cover of one of the very earliest copies of California Fly Fisher was what got me hooked on the magazine. It showed a fly fisher with a surfperch. I’d been fly fishing for perch for a few years, but it wasn’t a sport that seemed to attract much attention. The popular saltwater fly-fishing magazines focused on East Coast species such as bonefish, bluefish, and tarpon. Finally someone was talking about the kind of fishing I enjoyed. I mailed my subscription to Richard right away, and nearly 30 years later, I still look forward to each new issue. Thinking back over those 30 years, one thing stands out.
Ask any Brit about their “local,” and they’ll tell you about a special pub located close to home. The local is the hub of social activity in the UK. It’s where friends and neighbors meet to discuss matters both important and trivial over a pint or two. If you want historical or current information or someone to bounce ideas off, the local is your place.

I moved from London to Santa Cruz in the mid1980s and discovered the local pub wasn’t a feature of life in the United States. I checked out a couple of bars, but the vibe was different. Then I found Ernie’s Casting Pond, a small fly-fishing store packed full of interesting gear and interesting people. Ernie’s didn’t sell beer, but almost immediately, it became my local. Every week or so, I’d stop by to chat with Ernie or one of the many regulars and buy various bits of gear. I sure didn’t make
Ernie rich, but he always greeted me by name with a genuinely warm smile. His wife, Dianne (RIP), and their son Jeff were often behind the counter and were every bit as generous with their warmth and knowledge. In 2008, Ernie decided it was time to retire and do more fishing. My last few trips to the store were filled with mixed emotions — happiness for Ernie and a feeling of pending loss.
I never got a new local.
It’s hard to find fly-fishing stores these days. The internet is a wonderful resource, but there’s no doubt it put a lot of fly shops out of business. A few have managed to adapt, but for the most part, this aspect of fly fishing is part of a bygone era. I’m sure folks who became fly fishers in the internet age have plenty of ways to fuel their passion, but I wonder if they’ll ever know the joy of having a local. I sure hope so.
And yes, that first copy of California Fly Fisher was bought at Ernie’s.
Robert Ketley learned how to fish in a Nazi bomb crater and Charles Darwin’s neighborhood pond. These days, you’ll usually find him fishing in the surf or on one of California’s beautiful lakes.
Geoff Malloway
Time does fly when you’re having fun and I truly mean that it’s been fun. I never intended to own a fly shop, but despite my better judgment, that’s what I did, beginning in April 1996. Change is the only constant in any industry, just as it is in life. I can’t say that it’s been an easy row to hoe, though. Technology, particularly the internet, changed the buying habits of consumers and vastly increased my competition from just a few shops on the central coast to virtually every shop in the country with internet capability.
That said, the most significant change in the past 30 years is without doubt the impacts on our water and fisheries resources caused by human activities. Witness the long-term elevation of air and water temperatures, severe drought, and the damaging wildfires never before seen in the western United States. I’ve never seen a season when I had so few local places to send anglers, especially those seeking trout. To survive these challenging times requires shop owners and their customers to consider less-traditional fisheries, such as carp, and to advocate aggressively for coldwater fisheries like never before. How committed are we to resource conservation and protection? The next thirty years will tell us.
Geoff Malloway is proprietor of the Central Coast Fly Fishing shop in Carmel, California.
Lance Gray
The last thirty years in the fly-fishing industry has seen many changes, including new faces and a newer avenue of doing business. Some changes are good, and others aren’t. All in all, the fly-fishing industry has improved on many fronts over the past three decades.
Fly fishers as a whole are more educated about the different aspects of fly fishing. Before the internet, most folks just fished in their local waters, and that is really what they knew. Now, folks are traveling the globe to fly fish at a greater rate than ever before. Big trips may have been a week at a lake or a favorite local river, but now, big trips are going to Texas for redfish or Iceland for giant brown trout. Or folks are trying new techniques, such as Spey casting, Euro nymphing, and tenkara.
Fly fishers have also become a loud voice advocating for the fish and for the environment. We have won over big business and changed unfriendly environmental practices. Before, we were slow to come together in response to threats to the fish and the environment. Today, I can inform large numbers of folks about an issue in a matter of minutes.
What hasn’t changed are the smiles on folks’ faces when a fish grabs a fly — the joy and the pure pleasure of our sport.
Lance Gray began tying flies commercially when he was 13 years old and became a guide at 18. He has worked in a fly shop, owned a saltwater fly-fishing manufacturing business, and for the last 20 years has owned a guiding business, Lance Gray and Company.
Larry Kenney
In a day when most of the glossy national fly-fishing magazines have gone the way of wicker creels and silkgut leaders, California Fly Fisher soldiers proudly on, actively searching out and advocating what’s new and even untraditional while honoring California’s remarkable history of angling and equipment innovation. Like me, it’s got one foot in the past, where there were no breathable waders or microfiber hoodies, where fly lines cost less than a meal at a high-end restaurant, where fluorocarbon tippet material had yet to appear (or, arguably, disappear), where beadhead flies, Czech nymphing, and Spey rods were the province of suspect furriners, and where you could successfully chase big steelhead and salmon without needing an airline ticket and a platinum credit card.
Fly fishing back in the day was a pretty conservative, East Coast-dominated, trout/salmon/bonefish/ tarpon-focused, largely male activity. Today, the West is the sport’s epicenter, and it’s not only skewing younger, with a growing number of women in its ranks, but fly fishers now actively chase carp and cyclids, as well as just about every fish that swims in saltwater. It’s not quite like all the Presbyterians converting to Unitarianism, it’s but getting there. And if our traditional fisheries are more crowded and we’re losing some of them to climate change, agricultural pollution, and human encroachment, we can take some solace that in joining together in groups such as California Trout, we’re becoming a stronger and more effective constituency for fish and the environments that sustain them. I admit to pining a bit for the old days, but the best time to fish is still tomorrow. Larry Kenney lives in Marin, builds traditional fiberglass trout rods, and fishes as much as his wallet will allow.
Peter Pumphrey
What hasn’t changed in 30 years, in terms of fly fishing or anything else in our lives? Like most things, it seems fly fishing was better back then, but that is a subjective and anecdotal judgment. After 30 years of casting flies in the eastern Sierra, I have seen a definite increase in the numbers of people who can be found at the most publicized angling locations. There also has been a large increase in the number of people in the backcountry, particularly on the Pacific Crest Trail or the trail up Mount Whitney. Thankfully, most of these folks are not there for the fishing. But more and more people have discovered shoulder-season fishing, in the spring and fall, and I feel that I am party to far fewer “secrets.” The increase in numbers has fueled a growth in the guide industry. The good news in this is that there are more people who want to learn how to fish correctly and, one hopes, respectfully. The downside is that some guides have come to regard certain waters as their private offices.
Equipment is different, but no less alluring. Thirty years ago, I thought that I owned every possible sort of tackle, accessory, and most of the patterns known to man. Many fly boxes, gear bags, and rod cases later, there are still new and “improved” products that I apparently cannot do without. All these changes are exacerbated by the proliferation of information, good, harmful, and just outright silly, about fly fishing and angling destinations that has flooded our lives. (Yes, I understand that I have played some part in this.) Fly fishing seems less convivial and more competitive, less of an art and more of an industrial product.

The landscape itself has changed greatly, too. Fire was a relatively rare occurrence. The size and duration of the few blazes were seemingly minimal. Now, fire and smoky skies feel like a part of everyday conditions, their size is incomprehensible, taking away entire communities, and the scars upon the land are more and more a commonplace feature of the landscape. We have had to become accustomed to drought, significant changes in the runoff calendar, and warmer water conditions.
To be sure, mine are the eyes of an old fart for whom everything was better “back when.” But, importantly, there are things that have not changed: the feeling of a crisp fall breeze on an October morning on the Owens River, the beauty and solitude of the places where I hunt for golden trout, the excitement of a rise in a high-mountain meadow stream, or the challenge of a steadily rising, frustratingly choosy Hot Creek brown. Remember, there are people who will come to regard this moment as the time when fishing was in its prime, too.
Peter Pumphrey discovered fly fishing and the eastern Sierra at roughly the same time 40 years ago. Living in Bishop for the past 18 years, he continues to explore and learn, and he also helps protect his region’s waters by serving on the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Michael Wier
When I first started fly fishing, everyone wore vests. Now you hardly ever see anyone wearing a vest on the river, unless they hardly ever fly fish and that vest has been part of their kit for decades.
Also, 30 years ago, strike indicators weren’t as popular. People still used those tiny stick-on strike indicators that were like a little foam sticker you would put on your leader. They were trash and a horrible idea, even at the time. Next to that, a piece of yarn was the most popular strike indicator. Now fly fishers have cork, foam, trapped air, and balsawood bobbers.
I must say, though, I enjoyed it when the sport was more obscure, and far fewer people were doing it. Thirty years ago, if you went fishing on the Truckee on a weekday and ran into another angler, there’s a good chance you knew who they were. And if you didn’t, you would make friends with them, because it was still novel to run into other people fly fishing. I fly fished on my home river, the Mokelumne, for over a decade before I ever even saw another person with a fly rod.
It’s true there have been many advancements in gear and the culture of fly fishing over the last 30 years, but the biggest changes I have seen have been in the resources. Thirty years ago, there were a lot more fish around. Increased fishing pressure has obviously played a role in the decline of fish populations, but the largest stressors have been environmental. As California’s population has grown, so has the demand for water. Many of our rivers have been reduced to plumbing for the needs of cities and Big Ag. Water is often overallocated, with not enough left in some rivers to support healthy, vital ecosystems. We have also overpumped groundwater aquifers to the point that the water table in a number of areas has lowered, leaving fewer riparian areas and less surface water in creeks, streams, and rivers. The flow regimes of most of our tailwaters do not mimic those of a natural system, and the fish and ecosystems are struggling to adapt. Air and water temperatures have risen, and that is also putting increased stress on fish populations. To top it off, our waterways are becoming increasingly burdened with invasive species and toxic runoff, and things such as didymo and toxic algae infest our rivers and lakes. Couple that with catastrophic wildfires and the long abuse of national forests, and it’s not a pretty picture.
In my over 35 years of fishing California and 16 years of guiding fly fishing around the Lake Tahoe area, very few of the major changes I have seen in our fisheries have been for the better. For that reason, I switched my focus to conservation 11 years ago and took a job with California Trout, helping protect and restore our fisheries for future generations. If we all pull together, we can create the changes that will help sustain our fisheries, our culture, and the future of fly fishing.
Growing up in the Sierra foothills, Mikey Wier was always close to nature, and he learned to fish and tie flies at a young age. Besides being an advocate for California’s cold-water fisheries, he has guided on the Truckee, Carson, and Walker Rivers and surrounding waters, and in 2001, he started BURL Productions, which specializes in adventure and outdoor films.
Lynn Knowles
Thirty years ago, fly fishers mostly wore waders and fishing vests. If you saw someone in a river wearing both, you could assume they were likely fly fishing, at least until you spotted the reel. Now, fly fishers often wear a pack to carry their tackle, neck gaiters for sun protection, and, usually stuffed behind a belt, a modern net designed to lessen the removal of a fish’s slime coating. It all makes for something of a ninjalike appearance.
Also thirty years ago, off the water, it was difficult to identify whether someone fly fished by what they wore. It’s easier these days to show off this lifestyle preference, given the availability of fly-fishing-branded clothing of all sorts. Check out how young guides usually dress: flip-flops, shorts, a comfortably fitting untucked shirt, sometimes vented, often collared, often styled with a Western flair, and often labeled by a fly-fishing manufacturer. The ensemble is typically topped off with a trucker hat displaying a fly-fishing-related brand or message. It’s a look that is commonly seen at the brew-pubs near our blue-ribbon waters.
Lynn Knowles, an observer of the culture of fly fishing, wrote the “Highway 89: California’s Trout Route” articles that appeared in California Fly Fisher’s first and second issues.
Jim Zech
Although I recently “retired,” I earned my living in the fly-fishing industry in one way or another for the entire span of time that California Fly Fisher has been found in the mailboxes of fly anglers. I suppose that’s why I was asked to write a little something about the changes I’ve seen concerning the sport during those 30 years. The answer to that question is easy: it’s autotune.
Autotune helps those who may not have the time, or don’t want to put the effort into, or just don’t have the capability to learn how to sing on key, actually sing on key. It makes it so much easier to say, “I’m a singer!”
Indicators are autotune for fly fishing.
Indicators hit the fly-fishing market at about the same time that California Fly Fisher hit the counters in fly shops across the state. By “indicator,” I’m referring to the big, floaty things meant to keep your fly suspended in “the zone,” things that often look remarkably like bobbers. They soon became all the rage, because they removed the barrier to entering the world of fly fishing — the barrier of learning how to cast well. Fly fishing had become bobberized.
Just as autotune democratized the art of singing on key, indicators democratized the ability to actually catch fish on a fly rod. In my opinion, this has had both positive and negative effects on fly fishing and its concomitant equipment industry. Lots more people want to participate in a sport where they can quickly and easily perceive themselves as being successful, and that’s good for business. But has it really improved the music?
Jim Zech spent over thirty years as a professional fly fisher, mostly to serve as a warning to the youth of today who think it might be a good vocation to enter. He now spends most of his time wandering around his backyard in a cardigan saying things like, “I think this might need an adjustment,” regardless of what he is looking at — a sprinkler, the barbeque, the cat.
Seth Norman
Thirty years later, hook eyes are half the size they used to be and blurry in the center. Trails are twice as steep, there’s less oxygen in the air, rocks are more slippery, and tree limbs quicker to snag a fly. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln?
“Fly-fishing book” isn’t a quaint notion yet, and most fly-fishing magazines not “collectibles,” but if you’re looking for commercial comparisons to the rise and fall of fly-fishing publishing over the last 30 years, start with eight-track tapes — or tulips.
Early 1990s: “The Movie” arrives and instantly a “contemplative” blood sport appeals to more Americans than ever, from soon-to-be-retirees to “enough golf already” executives. Add earnest parents who’d fished with their own folks, now hoping to wean children gone pixeleyed from digital screens, also young Turks wanting wilding in actual wilderness.

Roughly all these had something in common. They read. All their lives, they’d learned from magazines, manuals, books, and guides. They wanted how-tos and where-tos, advice on casting, tactics, tying. And then, as they settled in and gained experience, many looked for books by authors who might echo and amplify their epiphanies.
It took two centuries, give or take, for the United States to merit its first dedicated fly-fishing journal, Fly Fisherman, circa 1969. By the mid-1990s, it felt as if a new slick arrived every month: national, regional, aimed at traditional species and waters or at fisheries less known, in saltwater, warmwater, at exotic international destinations. In two years, I received six different guidebooks on fishing Colorado.
Meanwhile, in what was awkwardly called the “lyrical” market, writers such as Nick Lyons, Roderick Haig-Brown, Thomas McGuane, Ted Leeson, John Gierach, and a dozen more were joined, however briefly, by scores of new voices. Publishing made hay while the sun shone, and for those on the hay wagon, what a ride.
Just how large was this practical and lyrical pool combined? There might be figures, but my own best guess comes from volumes sent to me as a reviewer for Fly Rod & Reel starting in 1996 or 1997. Between then and let’s say 2008, we’re talking over twenty-five hundred books. And then, from 2008 to Fly Rod & Reel ’s collapse in 2016? Call it three hundred, about.
And now. . . .
Last time I looked, all but a very few of the shiny new magazines had shut their doors. So had the vast majority of fly-fishing book publishers. It’s so bad that for several years, I got calls from some of finest fly-fishing writers of our generation — of any generation, I’d argue who had no place to go with their work.
That’s tragic. But it’s fair to argue, on another day, that what’s come along is better. For example, speaking of the lyrical end of things, why wait for a writer to amplify or echo an epiphany, when with a little work and a good internet connection, you can do it yourself?
Seth Norman’s career as a fly-fishing writer closely matched a roughly 30-year arc of fly-fishing print publishing. He much enjoyed the ride and has few regrets, “Possibly because my memory is shot.”
Richard Anderson
To the insights above, I’ll add an overarching observation regarding what one might call the rise of specialization. Until recently, fly fishers were generalists. We would buy a rod that would work for most types of trout water, typically a 9-foot 5-weight or 6-weight, and with it fish dry f lies, wet f lies, nymphs, and streamers. If we got other rods, they were usually to fish for species other than trout. Nowadays, fly fishing, especially fly fishing for trout, is splitting into disciplines that focus on particular types of rods or gear setups or fishing techniques — two-handed rods and their specialized casts, for example, as well as reelless tenkara methods, which emphasize simplicity, and Euro-nymphing gear and tactics that rely on lightweight, longer than usual rods, fast-sinking flies, and extremely thin lines. The implications of the last trend are especially fascinating. The ability to cast and manipulate a fly line — a line whose mass and taper is designed to deliver an almost weightless fly some distance to a target and then influence its subsequent drift becomes irrelevant when tight-lining in the Euro style. The form of fly fishing that most of us have dedicated time and effort to learn and that was highlighted in A River Runs Through It is no longer the preferred approach for a number of fly fishers.
So where is our sport now? Participation is expanding, and we’ve recently seen new fly shops open, reversing the trend of closures that occurred over the past couple of decades. Interesting innovations are occurring, as well. One California entrepreneur, for example, has developed a rod-and-reel combo that expands like a tenkara rod and has the line running inside it, while another California entrepreneur has developed an onrod line-storage device that lets fly fishers do away with their reels, thus lightening the weight of their outfit. The internet continues to evolve, in particular social media, yet fly fishers still read books and magazines, perhaps because books and magazines remain user-friendly gatekeepers of information, given what seems an increasingly chaotic, confusing media environment on the web.
The huge issue of concern, however, as echoed in a number of the contributions above, is the state of our fisheries. Their long-term health requires that we not only pay attention as to how they are changing, but take action to protect them. Will our society continue to repeat the mistakes of the past? The answer to that question is the responsibility of all of us.
30 Years of Advances in Fishery Science
Management is the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. Fisheries management is the process of controlling fish populations and people that increases or decreases fish populations. Early fishery managers used tools such as regulations, habitat improvement, or fish stocking. Even today, these remain basic management tools. However, during the past 30 years, advances in fisheries science have added new tools to the tool box. One significant advance is the use of genetic analysis using mitochondrial DNA. This technique helps to more accurately identify and differentiate populations of anadromous and resident fish. One of the benefits in California has been to identify historical populations of rainbow trout and steelhead, allowing the development of better management strategies for those populations. Genetic analysis has also demonstrated that Central Valley fish populations below dams possess a greater percentage of a “clock” gene. This gene is triggered by environmental conditions to encourage smoltification and downstream migration. Research like this helps managers determine if a resident trout population has the potential to contribute anadromous individuals to the environment. This also helps hatchery managers make better decisions regarding brood-stock management.
In another example of new advances in fisheries science, in the past, it was impossible to tell if a juvenile rainbow trout in an anadromous river or creek was from a resident or anadromous parent. Only after the juvenile fish migrated to the ocean and returned to freshwater could differentiation be made, based on scale analysis. However, researchers are now able to compare the ratio of strontium (87Sr:86Sr) in the freshwater growth portion of a fish’s ear bone (otolith). Concentrations of strontium in seawater are higher than in freshwater, and strontium is commonly substituted for calcium as the fish’s otolith forms in the egg. This concentration is passed on to the juvenile, allowing researchers to determine if a juvenile fish came from an anadromous female parent.
Again, this allows better management of fisheries and fish hatchery operations. These advances will help to enhance California’s native and introduced fisheries and fishing opportunities.
— Dennis P. Lee