This winter I’ve been thinking about just how much the New England fly fishing community has changed since I started this website in 2013 — changes that I am so happy to see.
For one, I started this site because there weren’t a lot of the kind of online resources about fly fishing in New England that I wanted: I started this site to provide the kind of content I was looking for. Since then, there’s been so much growth — truly grassroots blogs like BlogFlyFish have popped up, and we’re seeing awesome content from people like Soul Fly, All Points Fly Shop in Maine, The Compleat Angler in CT (hat tip to my good friend Jonas for all the work he’s put in there), and many others. We’ve also seen groups like Why Knot kick start new events (their Maine striped bass tournament is so awesome), the Cheeky Schoolie Tournament grow into the largest fly fishing tournament in the world while keeping its soul, and we’ve seen some new guiding talent hit the scene, including Abby Schuster of Kismet — a young, talented woman. The scene is younger, more diverse, more gender balanced (with a lot more room to grow), and more energetic. These are all great things.
The younger energy in particular gives me so much hope. I’ll be candid that, while I belong to some private fly fishing clubs, I chafe at the fact that they remain all-male — for so many reasons. In discussing this, I often ask: what is the future of our sport? What do we want our community to look like? How do we want it to continue to evolve? This is the question that motivated this site in the first place.
And so let me ask you: What do you want our New England fly fishing community to look like in 10 years? 20? And what do you think we should do to get there? What should I do with this site to make it better? More tournaments? More women involved? More ways to get kids involved? More fun conservation events, not stuffy dress-up events?
I’d sincerely love to hear your thoughts. Please leave them in the comments below.
I am very interested in vintage/antique fly fishing gear. Could you post more about bamboo fly rods, Bogdon and such. Also I wish there was a guide out there to help me navigate the world of antique fly fishing books…
You got it! I’ll see what I can do bud!
Nice to see a New England focus……thanks.
So many of the mags are trout, trout, trout and go west, go west, go west!
Been there, done that.
Glad to see New England and northeast get prime billing here.
Best wishes,
Paul Richards
Cape Cod
Thanks, Paul! And I agree — I’ve written before about how we have great fishing right here in our backyard. The west and Patagonia are great, but New England can be too. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Hey Mr. Ben –
Well you probably know my thoughts already as we’ve conspired about salmon fishing and how to introduce more people to the sport. That’s one of the things that I care most about. As far as the NE region goes, building a larger, more diverse community would be great, especially one that introduces more young folks.
Another thing I’d put on my list is also getting that community behind more conservation projects in the region to improve the quality of our fisheries. Let’s help the ones that are good stay good, and the ones that aren’t, become more viable.
Lastly, while the West gets the glamour in the sporting mags, New England has a ton of great angling tradition and is arguably home to more great craftsman than anywhere else (biased here of course). Not something that we should forget!
Jonas
Jonas! Thanks for writing. Agreed re. Atlantic salmon, coupled with a younger, more diverse and conservation minded-base. Let’s keep up our brainstorming sessions on the banks of Gaspe and New England rivers!