“You think that you’ve cracked the code one day, and then for the next few days, or even weeks, you can’t catch another in that way. So it’s always different.”
Marina Gibson
In this episode we WadeOutThere with Marina Gibson from the United Kingdom. Marina has been fly fishing in the U.K. for salmon and trout since she was a young girl with her mother.
Podcast episode appears at the end of this short article.
After university Marina went to live and work in London, spending nearly all her weekends in the country fly fishing. Soon Marina realized that she needed to pursue her passion full time to be truly happy. She moved out of the city and began teaching others to fly fish as a guide and certified ‘Fly Fishers International’ (CI) Instructor.
Marina’s desire to teach people to fly fish from the ground up, eventually led to her founding The Northern Fishing School at Swinton Estate in North Yorkshire.
We discuss fly fishing in the U.K., tactics and techniques for salmon fishing, and some of the non-profits that Marina participates in to serve others through fly fishing and help protect her local waters.
“It’s bloody not a doddle.”
Marina Gibson
Reflections
Marina tells the story of getting a false sense of what salmon fishing was as a young girl when her mother took her fishing and she caught two salmon in a very short period of time. This salmon fishing is a doddle, she thought. Of course salmon fishing is anything but a doddle (an easy task), and she goes on to explain how she has been chasing that experience and searching for salmon into adulthood. In fact, she’s made an entire life out of fishing.
Those early successes in fly fishing can be good and bad. I remember catching fish on the fly while working on the ranch in Montana as a teenager. The memories are sunny days, dry flies, and beautiful trout, without much thought to how or how many. Certainly “tactics” weren’t discussed. But then, that was thirty years ago…
My father will tell you that Montana spoiled me, but I’m not sure. I think those days on the river and catching those fish gave me just what I needed. Just like Marina’s salmon, it gave me an experience to come back to. In my mind the fishing will never be quite as good, but that’s the beauty of those kinds of memories. They are like dreams we keep hoping to revisit when we sleep. In that way, I suppose they haunt us.
It’s unique when these wonderful fishing experiences happen when we are young. That’s a special time. Maybe that’s why I keep taking my children to the river. But those great days of fishing can happen later in life as well of course. I think that’s what keeps us all coming back.
WadeOutThere friends.
VR-Jason
What’s a memory you have from childhood that keeps you coming back? Share in the comments below.
Learn More
You can find out more about Marina, her fishing school, and the organizations she is a part of by visiting her website:
Marina Gibson Fishing.com
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