from Deanna Travis October 12, 2009

CONVERSATIONS

One of the side benefits of taking a road trip is the opportunity for conversation. My husband Trav, his nephew Tom and I were headed for Yellowstone National Park and a day’s fishing, and I had an opportunity to spend some time talking with him as we drove down to Yellowstone. Tom had guided some fly fishers in particular region just a few days prior to our trip, and since the fishing had been excellent he made the decision to take us to the same place.

Despite the road repairs being done in Yellowstone the number of cars on the road was still high even though the major tourism push for the year was over. Traffic slowed between the number of cars and the normal ‘everybody stop - there’s a wolf out there, or buffalo.’

We would have lots of time to chat, in fact, while I had ‘known’ Tom for many years, except for some conversations many years ago about the FFF Casting Certification program, and me having been a customer of Toms when he had the Master Angler fly shop in Livingston, I had not spent any extensive time talking with him. I know Tom is a well-known tier as well as a contract tier for Orvis (check the Orvis catalog for flies named “Tom’s…..”) and that he has taught tying classes for years both here and in Europe. I really didn’t know how well informed he was about the fly fishing industry.

Turns out he hasn’t been sleeping at the switch even though he doesn’t have a shop. By the way, he still ties commercially.

So we are talking about the rod makers and the newest rods on the market. (We didn’t attend the Denver Show this fall, so the only new rod information we have is either press releases or a Product Review we’ve seen.) Tom asked, “Do you really need a new fly rod?”

I had to admit I didn’t ‘need’ a new rod, nor reel for that matter. I have rods which have never been fished, a couple still with plastic on their handle. That ought to be illegal; not the plastic on the handle, but having rods which haven’t been fished. So why would a person do that?  Something about just wanting, not needing – and we are probably all guilty of that in some way or the other.

Okay, bear with me a moment.

If we (the corporate we) don’t need another fly rod (leave reels and other gear out of it) but we still buy some out of want, who is buying new rods? Understand here there are several fly rod manufacturers attempting to sell rods in a price range of $300 to $700 each. How many people have to purchase a new rod before each of the manufacturers show a profit?

Enter Bass Pro, and Cabellas, with a complete outfit selling for $29.95. (I didn’t say it is the best in world.) Scientific Anglers has complete outfits for $80 and they are just fine. The point being you can get into fly fishing for not much money. I have to say I don’t know if Bass Pro and Cabellas have fly fishing schools, but I do know they are doing schools on spin fishing, and let’s admit it isn’t that hard to cast a spinning rod.
So how do the ‘big boys’ like Sage, Orvis, G. Loomis, St. Croix, Redington, and Albright compete when you can buy an outfit for $29.95?  How do you convince folks to spend the extra bucks? One obvious way is to advertise, but what?  More neat photos of happy people catching fish?

Love that one, but it seems that AND neat photos of fish in neat places has been done to death.

What else?

Here is where the conversation with Tom comes in.

If fly fishing as a sport/avocation is to continue, the manufacturers must be willing to educate; especially kids, college students and the military. Not at spring sporting shows, but programs especially designed to be used by middle schools where they may have had their PE programs cut back; college classes as part of the normal school curriculum for recreational activities and the military via base recreational programs. The late Jim Chapralis had a complete program laid out for after school casting games, no water needed, competitions held in a school gym or outdoors which would get fly rods in the hands of inner city school kids.

And while I’m thinking about the classes, I wonder what happened to the Sage schools?  Randy Swisher traveled the country putting on classes for fly shops under the Sage name of course. The schools were very successful. Randy married a lovely teacher from Denver and moved there. Has Sage discontinued the schools? Is there enough demand for them to get them going again?

I called Sage to ask about the schools, and Chris Anderson told me they had been gone for several years now. However, the good news is there is a daughter and dad out in Nebraska who have put together a program to teach kids, 6th through 12th grades. Their program, Fly Fishing in Schools (www.flyfishinginschools.org) is a take-off of the National Archery in Schools program which has been extremely successful (5,000 schools since 2002). Katie and Dana Cole‘s Cast a Fly – Catch a Student currently has eleven Nebraska schools using the program which will goes national in 2010. If you are interested in seeing such a program in your local schools, check out their website, lots of good information there.

You just never know where a conversation might lead.

~ The LadyFisher