From The Road: Mudwrestling (Fly Fishing)

Due West Anglers
4 min readMar 25, 2022

We’re continuing our new series that looks back on some of our most exciting, odd and standout memories. All anglers love a good fish story right?

I think you can tell from this picture, the whole scene was a mess. Me, my rod, the camera work, well there’s a story there…

I got my first taste of the 9–5 working as a fish biologist by commuting halfway around the world each day to prove my salt. I was still pretty green and was truly happy to get the experience wherever I could take it. Still, it drove me crazy. It drove me crazy to lose so much of my time to the rat race (still does), and I needed an outlet… a fishing outlet. All this talk about fish and yet no fishing? I might as well have moved in at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, and hired Kubrick to film the ensuing mental breakdown.

Since I was so burnt out on driving, I decided to explore the urban jungle around me. For several summers I convinced my girlfriend to follow me around, hunting through the urban maze for fish. We even found a feral goldfish in a forgotten marsh and named him El Diablo… but we never could get El Diablo to eat a fly. Eventually we settled on a go-to spot, with mounds of sunfish, bass, catfish, plus common and grass carp.

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