Fly-fishing workshops for the growing ranks of female anglers
By John Hayes / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
/ February, 2014
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here’s nothing particularly masculine about fly fishing, says instructor Amidea Daniel, pictured on Fishing Creek with her son Logan, 3, daughter Evangeline, 5, and a nice brown trout.
Briget Shields was having a pretty good day on the Youghiogheny River. With the summer water low and clear, using a black ant on light tippet, she was the only one around picking off trout.
There’s nothing particularly masculine about fly fishing, says instructor Amidea Daniel, pictured on Fishing Creek with her son Logan, 3, daughter Evangeline, 5, and a nice brown trout.
A guy walked up and asked what she was using. She told him she’d taken the tippet down to 6x.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You shouldn’t go that low.”
Shields took that as an insult, but kept her cool.
“I said that’s how I catch fish this time of year when the water’s so clear,” she said. “Sometimes — I don’t know — they don’t take me seriously.”
They’re making a serious mistake. Shields, of Squirrel Hill, is an accomplished angler, a fly-fishing instructor and first woman named to the board of directors of Penn’s Woods West Trout Unlimited.
She’ll teach women the art and science of fly fishing at one of two upcoming ladies-only workshops.
Nationwide, the percentage of female anglers is growing. Statistics suggest that women who fish tend to prefer fly fishing at a higher proportion than men.
All things being equal, people generally are not and product manufactures, outdoor travel agencies and fishing retailers are beginning to understand the physical and attitudinal differences between their traditional male customers and the growing number of female anglers.
With a lot of money at stake, quite a lot is known about the interests and preferences of female anglers. Among those doing the research is Southwick Associates, a Florida-based polling company paid to gather data for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state wildlife agencies, nonprofit environmental or conservation groups, the sportfishing industry and other groups.
Southwick found that from 2001 to 2011, the number of female freshwater anglers had grown nearly 1 percent, and that the ways in which women and men fish was markedly different. While about 70 percent of men target a specific fish species, 43 percent of women fish for “whatever bites.” More so than men, women perceive fishing as a chance to commune with nature and socialize — 86 percent said they fish to spend time on or near the water, and 84 percent view fishing as an opportunity to spend time with family and friends. And while 20 percent of male anglers favor fly fishing, 23 percent of women said they’d rather catch fish with flies.
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