I have been fortunate enough to work in the fly-fishing industry since my late teens. For the better part of that time, I was the “new guy,” the “kid,” or a “young person.” Over a decade ago, though, I had what most people would call an epiphany — not the religious awakening some associate with the experience, but a sudden intuitive perception of sorts. I was standing at the Sacramento International Sportsmen’s Exposition, which at the time was the gathering of all fly-fishing industry people, and I realized that although I was a married man, with a newborn child, and with over a decade of guiding and experience and work in the fly-fishing industry under my belt, I was still the “new guy,” “the kid,” and most importantly, still the youngest person in the room. The epiphany was the realization that if this was truly the case, that if 10 years had gone by and I was still the youngest person in the room, the future of our sport and our wild places was in trouble.
That realization led me down a pretty deep rabbit hole. At stake was self-preservation — if no one was getting into the sport, how was I going to grow my clientele and make a living over the years? And also at stake was the preservation of our watersheds, mountains, valleys, and forests. If people don’t value these places and derive pleasure from them or find them important in their lives, they are not going to protect them.
I feel I have a unique perspective on this issue, because not only have I worked in the fly-fishing industry for over 20 years, since I was 17, but more recently, I have been teaching high school history in a rural community while guiding fly fishers during my off time. Many of my students hunt and fish, but many more have never even been camping or on the river that is 500 yards from the school. Richard Louv described what is happening to the current generation of children and young adults in his seminal work, Last Child in the Woods. He called it “nature-deficit disorder.” He believes there is a lack of connection to the natural world in the current generation coming of age and that the implications are multifaceted and far deeper than those facing an aging fly-fishing industry or the protection of native fish species.
As a new father, an educator, fly-fishing guide, and someone who has built my entire existence around rivers and the land that surrounds them, I feel a deep responsibility to connect my kids and future generations to the wild places in their life any way I can. I have realized that the tools I have at my disposal to do this, and that most readers of this article have at their disposal, as well, are present in the sport of fly fishing. It is the way in which we all have access to, experience, learn to love, and feel obligated to protect the wild places and species of our planet.
Everyone talks about “getting kids into fishing,” and I have sat in many fly club meetings, fly shops, bars, and corporate conferences while listening to the same line said many different ways: “we” need to grow our sport and get kids involved. But even though there is a strong youth movement in our sport that has started over the last two or three years, we need to rethink how we go about introducing kids to fly fishing if we are going to sustain the sport and protect the places we love.
The reality is that for this generation, the way in which many of us came to this sport, myself included, is broken and will not work. If we came to fly fishing early in life, it probably was because a local fly shop, fly club, or family member helped us along the way. We were taught to cast on a lawn or in a backyard, and we had to master the forward cast and maybe a single haul. We sat down at a kitchen table or in a fly shop and learned a few knots, the components of the fly-rod outfit, perhaps some basic entomology, and then, finally, maybe, we were taken on a trip to the local bluegill pond. When I look back on my own experience, I had a head full of random knots, rigging, and all sorts entomology, but it took me months to actually experience the pull of a fish or the feel of a river against my legs. However, to begin, all I really needed to know was how to tie on a Parachute Adams and lob it out on the water. Although I have used all the knowledge I learned over that time throughout my angling and guiding career, none of it was necessary just to go fishing.
The group of 13-to-25-year-olds coming of age in our world are different than we were. They are a great group, but they have never known a world without the Internet, broadband access to it, and phones that can make a world of entertainment and information available with a touch of a finger. They don’t remember a world where to “look something up” meant to consult a book . . . they Google things, and then don’t even read about them, but instead watch a video on YouTube. They live through screens and technology that create instant contact and connection. The world is instant to them — it as at their fingertips 24 hours a day. So how do we endear them to the natural world through the sport of fly fishing?
Well, it is tough. On the surface, fly fishing and the outdoors can’t compete with this world of video games, cell phones, social media, big action movies, streaming TV content, and instant stimulation. That said, fun is fun, and cool is cool. The tug of a fish on a line is fun no matter how old you are or what generation you come from. Fishing has been around since the dawn of time. It was fun before all the technology we have today was developed, and it is still fun. We have to have faith in this experience if we are going to proceed. If not, we just may well assume that we are the last generation of fly fishers.
Practice and mastery of skills are not lost on this generation. They are incredibly hard working and can devote time and energy to anything if they see the value or payoff right away. That is the key. They don’t waste time on things that they don’t like or don’t see as having as an end result either success or enjoyment. They are not incapable of delayed gratification, but they have to see the value in it, beginning with the first step. “I swear this is going to be fun Now sit down and listen while I show you how to cast on the grass and knots you can memorize for that fishing trip in six months” doesn’t cut it.
I believe that there are two things that we can do to grow our sport with the next generation. One involves a long-term investment: gradually introducing young children to the joys of the outdoors and the thrills of fishing. The other involves more instant gratification: introducing older kids to the immediate pleasures of the sport.
My wife and I feel we have done a good job limiting what most parents in my generation call “screen time.” My kids don’t own iPads, cell phones, or video-game systems, but we are not perfect, by any means. The TV has been and is a great babysitter when we need a break. We struggle with balance and with slowly exposing our children to technology. But we also began early to expose them to the natural world. The first thing I did with my kids when trying to get them into fishing didn’t involve fishing at all. It was just getting them into being outdoors.
It takes a while for a child to develop the physical ability to fly fish, but a child at any age can enjoy being outdoors. One of the first things I did with my kids at the ages of two and three was take them to the creeks around our house, turn over rocks, hold and look at bugs, get our feet wet and dirt under our nails. I brought candy and treats, and we threw rocks, swam, laughed, and always left before they were ready to leave, making sure they never got enough. Eventually, I introduced fishing — fishing they could do with success — but even then we might fish for only 5 to 10 minutes in a three-hour outing.
Such a long-term investment of time and energy is traditionally undertaken by new parents or grandparents. The goal is to show kids from an early age that being outdoors is fun. Take the time to do what we did or what the local environment allows, but whatever it is, get them outdoors early.
I am going to be honest, though. It’s not all fun and games for either the parent or the child. They fall down, they cry, they whine, you have to pack a small fortress of gear . . . and you can’t do what you want to do outdoors with them — it has to be what they want to do or what they can handle and enjoy. To invest in your kids or grandkids, you have to put your outdoor plans aside in favor of building their interest. I always found it ironic that while for most of my life, I went outdoors to reduce stress, mellow out, and come back refreshed, my early trips with my kids did the exact opposite: I came back stressed, fried, and burned out.
It sucked for a long time, and I am not going to dress it up. I came home frustrated. We didn’t fish — we swam, threw rocks . . . it was a constant battle to keep reminding myself that I was giving up in my own fishing time to invest in taking a two-year-old and four-year-old out on the water or creek. It has paid off, though, and now I have an 8-year-old and 10-year-old who are learning to fish all styles and who love going out, although I still have to bring “boat treats,” and if at all possible, we have to go swimming.
Many of my friends, during the early years of their children’s lives (from birth to sevenish) continued to fish with their buddies, go on fishing trips and generally do what they did before they had kids, leaving their sons and daughters at home with mom to do kids’ stuff. Then, once they were “old enough,” say 7 to 10 years old, they threw them in the car, took them fishing, and expected them to love it and be into it as much as they were.
Most of the time, it was a disaster. Think how much fun it is to do something you have never done in a totally weird and scary environment where you had never been. Even if it is doing something totally tame, such as bobber fishing with salmon eggs at a local pond, there are bugs, there is dirt, heat, cold, muck, and you better be catching fish every single second, or things are going to go south. How does that compete with an Xbox or an iPad for a 7-to-10-year-old who that has never known the outdoors?
I am no expert and in no way speak from a pedestal. I’m just a guy with an opinion and lots of experience. I think many parents and grandparents fall short when they throw a kid into fishing and just expect the kid to fall in love with it. The reasons why most of us love fishing have only a small part to do with the act of catching fish. We love the outdoors, and fishing is something we do to experience the outdoors. If a child already enjoys being outdoors — walking along the creek, catching tadpoles, swimming in the creek, eating Skittles and a packed lunch on top of bluff overlooking the valley below, playing army and hide-and-seek around the lake — selling them on fishing is much easier, because it is just another thing they do outdoors.
As I said, introducing young children to the joys of the outdoors and the thrills of fishing is a long-term process and pretty much the job of parents or grandparents. But anyone can help get older kids into fly fishing, if you do it in a way that appeals to them. There is no way any 14-to-25-year-old is going to get excited about learning to cast at the local casting pond or park. They may try it once out of curiosity, but that is it. I realize there maybe is the rare kid who jumps all in, practices casting for months, then finally goes fishing, but as anglers, we are not looking for the rare kid. We need a whole new generation that wants to join conservation groups, start fly-fishing companies, run fly shops, launch message boards, and buy fly-fishing gear to keep our sport and its small industry humming.
Whenever I take an older kid or teenager out fishing, my goal is that in 20 minutes, they should be hooked up with a fish. I put them in a boat, teach them how to lob an indicator rig, popper, or dry fly, and we are off fishing — no casting instruction, no knots, no basic entomology, just “Here are the basics and now lets go hook a fish.” I emphasize that hooking and fighting fish is fun and has been for generations. I have faith in it and make the sale via that. In my experience, all it takes is hooking one or two fish, and the kids are hooked, as well. At minimum, they are going to have fun, and I can hope that they want to do so again. Keep it short, though. Hook a few fish and go home. Leave them wanting more.
I have found that if these kids enjoy the initial experience, they see the value in learning the other stuff. It is a philosophy based on the idea that we need to go straight to the action and cool stuff and back-load all the knowledge, not the traditional building of skill and knowledge for a delayed payoff.
I think of it the same way I do teaching history to teenagers. I don’t start with the vocabulary surrounding World War II. I show some awesome action movie scenes from Hollywood blockbusters at top volume and in HD to get the students interested — a five-to-eight-minute, full sensory assault from the best Hollywood has to offer. Then I tell them a story, and then I back-load the dryer information, because now that information has context, and the students at least have a bit of interest.
If a teenager has hooked a trout and has seen a bigger trout farther out or a rise to which they just can’t quite cast, they are going to work on their casting. They imagine that the hula hoop on the lawn or in the casting pond is a big trout. But fishing story after fishing story is not going to make the sale.
I believe that the sport of fly fishing is at a turning point. Many anglers may say that the rivers are too crowded already and they have no desire to create more anglers, but I ask them to think about their role in this a bit less selfishly and to realize that we must not only take pleasure in the sport, but give back to it and to the wild places that have given so much to us. Our sport and the natural world cannot subsist on what Daniel Quinn in his book Ishmael calls “Takers.” We need more Givers than Takers, and people give time and energy and financial support only to what they value, and if they don’t value something or see it as a valuable part of their lives, they don’t protect it.
Today, there seemingly is a conservation organization for every river, creek, fish species, beach, lake, or trail to protect them from the constant threat of the encroaching modern world. However, if people don’t value these things, they don’t join conservation organizations. Take something as simple as recycling or purchasing environmentally friendly products. Recycling takes time, and environmentally friendly products cost more money. It is much easier to throw a plastic bottle away and buy a cheap cotton shirt than to recycle that bottle or buy a sustainably harvested cotton shirt for twice as much. Most people will take the easy and cheap route unless by doing otherwise they are protecting something that they value. Conservation groups that fight for and protect the natural world are more important now than ever, but they need new money and new members to thrive past the current generation, and for that to happen, we need to introduce the coming generations to the outdoors.
Invest in your kids or grandkids, or find a kid on your block and hook them into a fish. Take a kid out that you met at the local fly shop or fly club, make the sale with the funnest part of our sport, and get kids outdoors when they are young. It is easy to blame cell phones, technology, and social media and to lament that the current generation just can’t appreciate what we are showing them or teaching them. I get it. It is an easy trap to fall into, but if we fall into that trap, we also have to accept that at some point, fly fishers will go the way that many of our wild places and species already have gone . . . extinct.
