From his home in Chico, Ryan Johnston makes his living as a guide in Northern California, helping clients enjoy the multitude of flyfishing opportunities accessible in the region, including on the lower Sacramento, Feather, and Yuba Rivers, and Putah Creek, and not just for trout, but for steelhead and a range of warm water fish, from largemouths and smallmouths to stripers and carp. But he does more as a guide than just make a living at it. He also has founded Cast Hope, a “nonprofit organization positively impacting youth and their mentors in the Northern California community through free fly-fishing experiences,” as its mission statement puts it. As his wife says in a video on the Cast Hope Web site (http://www.casthope.org), “a free gift is a special thing,” especially when it comes to fly fishing. “We love taking care of people,” she says, and that’s what Cast Hope does. The mission statement continues: “Through our program, clients build mentoring relationships, fly-fishing skills, outdoor knowledge, sustainable practices, and personal values.” Johnston, his family, and the guides, fly-fishing businesses, and others who have joined him in this enterprise are helping make the sport and its spiritual, psychological, and social values available to the generations to come.
Bud: I know that you’ve been fly fishing since you were twelve years old. How did you get started, and who helped?
Ryan: I grew up in San Diego, California. My dad was a gear fisherman, so as a child, I learned the ins and outs of bobber fishing. When I was three, I was sitting on the dock catching bluegills and sunfish. It did not take too long before my dad had me saltwater fishing with bait outside of San Diego on the party boats. Every five to six weeks, we would go out and fish the local San Diego fisheries for calico bass, sand bass, rock cod, yellowtail, barracudas, bonitas, albacore — whatever.
When I was 12, my grandfather purchased a ranch in western Wyoming. My family went out there on a family vacation and through the inspiration of Brad Pitt in the famous movie, my dad thought we should give fly fishing a try. This was a new experience for both of us, and I was happy to tag along for another fishing adventure with my father.
Our first trip was on the South Fork of the Snake, fishing big dry flies for cutthroats, browns, and rainbows. Something about watching those cutties come off the bank was amazing, and I was hooked from that moment on.
It is pretty amazing to think that the place I cast my first fly is the river on which I ended up guiding for awhile 15 years later. Funny how life can come full circle sometimes.
Bud: You went to UC Davis, and you say, “I thought I had made a responsible decision, giving up the prestigious fly fishing of the Universities of Montana and Colorado for a serious college education at UCD.” It worked out much better than that, but what made you choose the one over the other?
Ryan: I chose not to go to those other schools because I thought that I was going to fish too much. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t put a fly-fishing roadblock in front of myself and not get a degree. Knowing me, I would be on the river every day, rather than going to class. The ironic part of attending UC Davis in Northern California is that I moved to a place where one can fly fish literally 365 days a year. Not knowing how much fishing and how many different species Northern California had to offer, I probably would have been better off going to Montana or Colorado. My freshman year at Davis, I ended up fishing over 90-plus days. Somehow I managed not to fail out of school, but at the same time, I was getting a different type of degree — I was studying trout — that would support me and my family for many years to come.
Bud: So you ended up becoming a fly-fishing guide. How did that happen? What would you tell anyone who might want to choose the same career?
Ryan: It all really started with my parents. Most people think that if you live in San Diego, you must be beach-oriented people. Well, the reality was that my parents loved the mountains. So every summer, we ended up doing a road trip for a couple of weeks to somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Rather than going to Hawaii, Mexico, or the Caribbean for vacation, I started finding myself at places like the Henrys Fork, Madison, and Green Rivers. Over time, I taught myself how to become quite the accomplished angler. Thus, my sophomore year in college, when I started looking for a job, the perfect fit was to go work part-time at the local fly shop about 20 minutes away.
Working in the shop, I really started to learn the intricacies of the local rivers and creeks. I spent the next year fishing and learning a lot about the different Sacramento Valley rivers. It wasn’t a year later before I was wanting to buy my first driftboat. So I went to my grandfather, asking for a financial gift to help fund my first guiding job. After peering over his large glasses and looking at me very intently, he agreed and wrote a check to purchase my first boat. Over the next six months, I would take out anyone in the boat who didn’t mind putting their life in jeopardy with a rookie rower. But it wasn’t long before I started getting the hang of the oars and catching a few fish.
Eventually, within the next year, I realized that you make more money as a guide than as a part-time employee at a fly shop. So I ended up changing jobs and slowly, but surely, became a fly-fishing guide.
At first, guiding was also just a part-time gig that I did as I was going through college. Then, with undergraduate degree finished, I started working full-time on the river. For people who want to guide, I encourage them to chase their dreams. Let’s be honest — that is what I did. I love being on the river. I enjoy going to work most days, and I think that alone is a success, because, really how many people can honestly say that to themselves? However, what most people don’t realize is that no one becomes an accomplished, booked guide overnight. Guiding, like anything else, is a process. You have to spend time building a client list, working hard, and giving people an enjoyable experience. The reality is that guiding is just as much about giving people a nice time on the river as it is about catching fish. If you can master both the social aspect and the fishing techniques, it won’t take long before you have become an accomplished and busy guide.
Bud: You actually did get a “serious college education”— an undergraduate degree in business and management from Davis and then an MBA from the California State University at Chico. What does an education in business management contribute to your guiding?
Ryan: This is the biggest question that I get from my new clients every year: How does a guy with an MBA end up being a fishing guide? I know that common sense says that I should be in the executive world doing something with my degree. What most people don’t realize is that I also founded the 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization called Cast Hope. Through Cast Hope, we take underserved kids and their mentors into the outdoors, camping and hiking with fly rod in hand. We try to love on kids from Northern California by providing them with the gift of the outdoors. Starting and running a nonprofit organization makes me use my MBA on a daily basis: writing grants, working with the board of directors, managing budgets and cashflow statements, giving presentations to donors are all things that I learned how to do from my MBA and college education.
Bud: Some guides specialize in particular waters, and some are nomadic, guiding in North America, then following the season below the Equator to someplace such as Patagonia. You guide mostly in Northern California, but on a number of different rivers and for warm water species, as well as for trout and steelhead, and you also have guided on the South Fork of the Snake River in Idaho. How did you decide on that approach to your business, and what took you to Idaho?
Ryan: I live in an area in Northern California where I can guide so many different river and species within an hour from my home in Chico. Literally within an hour of Chico, you can fish for salmon, steelhead, trout, largemouths, smallmouths, stripers, carp, sturgeon, and more. The Sacramento River system, with its tributaries, is an amazing resource that has so many angling opportunities almost every day of the year. The main reason that I don’t travel to Alaska or Patagonia to continue to guide is that I believe in family. I have a beautiful wife and two amazing daughters. Guiding can be a rough lifestyle in terms of hours and time away from the house, so by choosing to guide close to home, I put my family first, rather than being a fish bum chasing fins all over the world. There is nothing wrong with going all over the world to work and guide, but that isn’t conducive to staying married and not having a second or third wife.
When my wife and I first got married, we spent five years, from 2007 to 2011, going out to Idaho to guide on the South Fork of the Snake. I would guide, and she worked for the lodge. It was a great time in our life and a wonderful adventure that we will never forget. When we had our first child, we took her out there for our last summer, but that complicated things quite a bit. So as a family, we decided that it would be best to stay in Northern California year-round and establish our roots there full-time.
Bud: I’ve been stressing the practical side of your work as a guide, but you have a strong sense that fly fishing is about more than catching fish. What values sustain you in your work, and what do you hope others begin to find in it?
Ryan: In my opinion, fishing is much more than trying to catch fish. Fly fishing is such an amazing sport that it does not leave any space for other thoughts in our busy heads. When you are on the river, creek, ocean, lake, or wherever you are fishing, you become completely immersed in nature and your surroundings. Then the complexity of fly fishing naturally gives your mind a rest. How often in life does your mind completely relax as a result of the enjoyable activity in which you’re engaged? There is no space for thoughts of work, family, money, or fantasy football. Your mind is focusing on reading the water, watching your cast, analyzing your drift, looking for fish, setting the hook, fighting the fish without losing or breaking it off, and then finally looking at a beautiful fish resting in your hands before you send it back to its home in the water.
This is why I fish. My mind naturally gets to rest.
Bud: As you’ve said, you and your wife also have founded Cast Hope: The Gift of Fly Fishing and have recruited other Northern California guides to help out with it. You provide kids 10 years and older and accompanying adults with everything necessary for a day of guided fly fishing at no cost to them. That’s pretty amazing. How — and why — did you come up with that idea, and how did you get other guides and sponsors to join in?
Ryan: Cast Hope is an amazing venture. Yes, I founded the organization out of graduate school, but there have been many other people who have made this crazy idea of mine a success. The board of directors, guides, volunteers, donors, fly-fishing industry, and outdoor companies have all successfully helped us turn Cast Hope into a sustained small nonprofit organization since 2009.
Cast Hope was started because there is a lack of youth in our sport. Fly fishing has many attributes that keep it from being accessible to everyone. The reality of fly fishing is that it is a really expensive sport. If you come from a low-income family, the odds of you learning fly fishing are slim to none. So just from a financial point of view, lower-income kids don’t have access to the sport. However, if you can provide them with all of the necessary gear — a rod, reel, flies, tippet, and so on — you can break down the financial barrier to fly fishing.
The other barrier that kids face is the knowledge side of fly fishing. Learning how to cast, tie knots, and read water is daunting, even to educated adults. However, if you can have professional guides and knowledgeable volunteers come alongside the kids and teach them properly how to do these things, the learning curve is decreased. Finally, the last thing that we have to overcome is limited access to the water. On every Cast Hope trip, the kids come with a mentor. The mentor is a person who is already involved in their life, such as a parent, teacher, or aunt or uncle. By teaching the mentors how to fish and giving them free equipment, as well, you encourage a desire for the mentors to take the kids fishing. All of our outings and clinics happen on rivers, creeks, and lakes near the kids’ homes. Our hope is we that will increase their desire to learn, fish, and take care of their local fisheries. All of these things break down the access barrier and increase participation in fly fishing.
Getting other people involved in Cast Hope was easy. When you tell people that you are going to be taking out underserved kids from lower-income homes and you are going to love on them through the sport of fly fishing, it is pretty easy to get people involved. Most fly fishers love this sport deeply, and they want to share it with the generations to come. If we don’t take a stand and start putting our young people on the water, who will be the next stewards of the fish that we so love to catch? Cast Hope is doing just this. We are trying to show kids that the outdoors has much more to offer than their latest gadget and screen. We hope over time to continue to grow youth participation in the sport so that we break down fly-fishing barriers and create stewards for our local watersheds.
Bud: You fish the Sacramento, Feather, and Yuba Rivers, Putah Creek. That’s a lot of territory. How do you find time and energy to keep up with such diverse fisheries?
Ryan: Once you master fly fishing for a specific species of fish, such as trout and steelhead, you can pretty much go anywhere in the world and be successful. That doesn’t mean that there might not be a learning curve to understand the local nuances of the particular watershed, but for the most part, you should be fairly dialed in to fish behavior. When you add the knowledge of fish behavior to knowing the lay of the land and understanding what parts of the watershed fish better than others, fishing can become very simple.
Only time spent on the water can teach you these lessons. Once you have been on that particular watershed for hundreds of hours, you have a memory bank full of knowledge and fishing techniques that apply throughout the year. The best guides that I have ever met all have incredible memories. They can tell you exactly on what fly and at what location they caught that particular large fish 10 years ago. I constantly tell my clients things like, “This is the run where you got that big rainbow last year.” They just see a normal-looking riffle, but to your guide, each spot is its own history book full of fish, flies, and changing water flows, bottom contours, and water clarity. Once you start looking at each spot like this, it becomes easy to keep up with so many different fisheries.
Also, it is always good to have friends whom you trust who fish a lot. Each person should try to find a handful of select friends with whom you can share real information. If you can work together as a group, you will learn how to stay dialed into current conditions and what techniques and waters are fishing best. Good friends are valuable not only in life, but also in fly fishing.
In this respect, fly fishing has been an absolute blessing in my life. I have meet some of my best friends with a fly rod in hand. People who were once clients and then friends have become as close as family to me in my heart. Fly fishing has provided a nice life for my family. It has given me a job that I love. Then it led me six years ago to share the outdoors through Cast Hope. And in the last couple of years, I have also started writing a book about all the funny adventures that I have experienced chasing fins with my clients.
I look back on my life since it all started with that first cast when I was 12 and I am amazed how much fly fishing has changed my life. It has given me a different perspective on life — to love those around you, enjoy your life, give back to
your community, and get outdoors to enjoy the world God gave us.
Bud: So can you share one or two of those stories as a teaser?
Ryan: To be honest, I don’t want to unveil some of my best stories so that I don’t ruin the book launch. But folks can look for it, I hope in the coming year. I’m calling it A Reel Job: Stories from the River.
Bud: Here we are at the dreaded Silly Tree Question: If you were a tree, what kind of a tree would you be?
Ryan: This is a funny question that actually has some relevance to my life. For the longest time, my wife has called me a sturdy oak. The oak is grounded with deep roots when the storms of life try to blow it over. She says that I am an oak that has built a strong family that loves and serves each other. So for me, if I could be one tree, it would be an oak, something that I strive to be for my kids and wife on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. One thing I know for sure is that I don’t always pull this off, and I frequently fall short, but somehow that deep tap root stays in place, and the oak continues to grow emotionally, mentally, and physically through time.
