Right angling: Quincy man says fly fishing more than just catching fish

QUINCY — Joshua Shew said for him, fly fishing is not so much about catching fish as getting to know nature.

He’s trying to pass on to others lessons he learned on the water through his business, Shewfly Lessons.

Raised in a family spending a lot of time outdoors, Shew said he got interested in fly fishing when he was about 12 years old, and wanted to learn more about it. But he couldn’t find anybody to teach him – it was too expensive for his family’s finances.

“That crushed me,” he said.

One of the motivations behind starting Shewfly Lessons was to make the sport more available to kids and adults, he said.

In Shew’s case, it’s not really about catching fish to take home to eat. He releases most of the fish he catches, he said.

It’s about learning to read the water and letting the surroundings provide the clues to help the angler give the fish what they want.

“In my opinion, it’s probably one of the most intimate methods of fishing,” he said. “To the point you’re actually targeting those fish to feed them. It gives you an insight into how fish think.”

The traditional picture of fly fishing is an angler on the shore of a small, remote stream on a summer day. But Shew said fly fishing is possible anywhere, whether it’s the ocean, a lake, a river or a stream, as long as there are fish. And it’s not just a spring and summer activity.

“We have year-round opportunity (to fish),” he said. “I absolutely love winter fishing.”

He teaches a lot of lessons at Rocky Ford Creek, south of Ephrata, he said, and takes students to the Columbia Basin Wildlife Area’s Quincy Lakes Unit.

“Absolutely perfect, especially for beginners,” he said.

Success at fly fishing means understanding the conditions on that day, because they’re liable to be different the next day.

“The water, the surface activity, the fish activity,” he said. “It’s like a live puzzle. A real-life, hands-on puzzle that just never seems to get boring.”

“It’s a sport, but it’s a form of therapy in a lot of ways,” he added.

He finds out a lot about himself and what’s going on around him during an afternoon on the water, he said. Fly fishing is a way to get back in touch with nature, a connection that most people have lost, he said. One of his goals is to show people what nature can do for them, and what they can do for nature. North central Washington residents not only live in a state full of natural splendor, but in a beautiful area of that state, he said, and he wants people to know that.

“The fact is, we still have nature right in front of us,” he said.

An angler can spend a lot of money on fly fishing equipment, but it’s not necessary, Shew said. “It’s not the tool, it’s the knowledge of how to use the tool,” he said.

He bought his first fly-fishing equipment with the proceeds of after-school jobs, back when he was 12. It was difficult to find people to teach him how to use it. But eventually anglers in his neighborhood saw what he was doing, what he was trying to learn, and volunteered to help him.

Shew said he started Shewfly Lessons to give people an economical option to learn about fly fishing, which wasn’t available to him.

People urged him to get into guiding fishing trips, but he didn’t want to go that direction.

“I immediately said no,” he said.

But friends kept on encouraging him, saying he had skills to pass on to people. He isn’t really interested in being a guide, he said, but he wants to teach people about fishing. Since Washington law requires people who want to teach fishing to have a guide’s license, he acquired one anyway.

And teaching is the focus of his business.

“I just wanted to get people out on the water,” he said.

People who want to know more about Shewfly Lessons can contact Shew at his website, www.shewflylessons.com.