The Bad Streak
A female fly fishing guide’s journey through the hardships of fly fishing
by Kaitlin Boyer
There are many things in fly fishing that are left unsaid. The simplest of details, such as, what flies are working, where you went fishing, and how many fish you caught can often slip into a vague abyss between pride and honesty. Whether you are a guide, angler, novice, or pro, we all strive to be the best we can be, yet when we fail, why is it so difficult to confront?
In the late spring of 2017, I decided to fulfill a dream I had since I started fly fishing. I loaded up my parents camp trailer with all of my immediate belongings, (clothes, fly rods, and wine), and ventured west in the Rocky Mountains to spend part of my summer at 10,000 feet in Leadville, Colorado to complete a fly fishing guide program. Like most things in my life, I wanted to experience guide school in an all-or-nothing fashion. After seven years of fly fishing, I perceived myself to be approaching my “prime”, and guide school was the next step to success for me. I envisioned the first day of class, meeting another woman like myself there, and most likely being outnumbered by men, we’d have this grand bond and be connected at the hip through the program. Well, that didn’t happen. On the first day, I watched the student guides file in, and after introductions were finished, I realized I would be the only full-time female in this program. Life at 10,000 feet in May wasn’t exactly ideal either. I froze most nights in the camper, and a few times woke up to snow almost knee deep. Meals were infrequent and downtime was scarce. The Arkansas River roared from spring runoff, making the fishing all the more challenging. Fast forward to the end, I was ten pounds lighter, knew every casting technique possible, and I carried an esteemed pride knowing I had held my own with the boys on the water. I came home, was hired at a fly shop right away, and started my first season as a guide. From there on out, my fishing life was turned upside down.
Initially, I blamed it on the river. The monsoon season was particularly long that summer, so inevitably the river was running high. But I knew how to fish big water, in fact, I enjoyed it. Though I was so happy to be home with my family, back to my home waters, and working as a guide like I had always wanted, I felt this undefinable emptiness. On my days scouting, more often than not, I was bringing fewer and fewer fish to the net, and sometimes none at all. As a rookie female guide, I realized I had to work my way up the chain in a shop with over 30 guides, and authenticate a whole new reputation for myself. Paralyzing anxiety kept me awake the night before any guided trips, and I spent hours obsessing and second guessing my fly selection. Some trips were a total bust, and some were good. I tried to take it all with a grain of salt as people reassured me that it takes a few seasons to get established. Guiding aside, fishing just felt unexplainably different to me. Like dancing with two left feet, my reel felt like it was on backwards, but wasn’t. No matter which rod I used, I felt like my fly line wasn’t strung through all the guides, even though from reel to nymph, everything was rigged perfectly. Granted all those weeks of intense casting and mending critiques from my instructors at guide school, I suddenly felt like I had no idea what I was doing. My sets were late, my knots were breaking, and I was constantly getting hung up in the bushes. Months of this foolishness went by, and often times I would just quit and go sit in the car, or even skip out on the scouting days that I once anticipated. Whatever this was, it was making me question myself as an angler, and I didn’t have much more to give.
This bad streak was too embarrassing to talk about. I certainly couldn’t mention it to my co-workers, because not only was I trying to prove myself, but everyone has this preconceived notion that guides are stoic, fearless, and untouchable anglers. With my partner Andy, it was this elephant in the room, where he clearly could see my frustration on the water and would try to help me, which often turned into me snarling at him because I didn’t want to lose any dignity by accepting his advice. One night, during a casual conversation with a friend of mine who is also a female fly fishing guide, she opened the door by mentioning her own recent failures and frustrations on the water. I view her like I do most guides, tenacious and iron-willed, so how could she be so forthright with me in this moment? Could it be, that as women, we have an advantage because by nature we encompass more empathy, honesty, and the capacity to be vulnerable to one another? In male dominated industry, perhaps we lose some of ourselves because we are constantly trying to compete and succeed on a masculine level in this sport. This realization brought me back to one of the many intuitive John Gierach passages that helped anchor me out of my slump, “And never fall into that statistical macho trap that’s so prevalent in fly-fishing these days. If you keep score, you can be beaten, but if you refuse to compete you can leave the impression that you have long since risen above that kind of crap. When someone says to you, “I caught forty-eight trout and ten of them were twenty inches or better. How’d you do?” say, “Yeah, we got some. Couple nice ones, too.””
Things slowly started to fall back into place for me. It wasn’t an immediate change, but on a cold winter’s day in five degree weather, I fought a hefty lake-run rainbow. My fingers were numb and I could hardly manage the line or reel, and despite all the doubt racing through my head, I put the bow in the net and said to her, “I needed you more than you know.” She swam away as my fingers burned in the icy water, and I knew this was the finale of a hard-earned, crucial lesson that goes well beyond fly fishing. It’s beyond over-thinking my mending and casting, and it’s beyond feeling inferior at a new job. If I can strive to be more humble, honest, and empathetic in real life, and believe in myself as a person and as a woman, then the world of fly fishing is going to be a better place because that’s one less jerk on the bank keeping score. The day warmed up, and though many more fish were caught, I couldn’t let the thought of that lake-run rainbow subside, because she was all that mattered.
