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Pete

Pete

I became hooked on fishing at age 6 when my brother took me to one of the ponds in Davis County, cut me a willow, attached a string, sinker and hook and told me to flip it into the water.  When I got a bite, I jerked it, turned around and ran, pulling the carp or catfish several feet onto the bank.  As I grew older, I fished all of the ponds of Davis and Weber counties, riding my bike for many miles or hitching a ride via my thumb.  My fishing gear didn't start to get much better until many years later.  I didn't start fishing streams and rivers until I was in my 40s - I spin fished and used a bastardized form of fly fishing using a closed faced spinning reel with bright orange mono, a rebuilt 9 foot fly rod and a rig that had a slinky sinker on the bottom and two droppers with flies.  It worked pretty well.  I caught a lot of fish. I heard about Mikes fly fishing class from my daughter who taught classes with him at Davis High.  That was back in the mid 90s.  It took me until the fall of 2002 to actually take his class.  I've been to about all of his Advanced and Extreme classes since then and went to Alaska with him in 2004.  I started helping him with his classes in the fall of 2005 - a few here and there. I've always wanted to do the traditional type of fly fishing - Mike's technique is a form of the traditional, only better.  I've become a much better fisherman through his technique.  In the past few years, I've fished places I only dreamed about.  It used to take me several trips to learn how to fish a particular fishing spot.  Now I'm catching fish the very first trip.  However, it's not just the catching that makes Mikes trips wonderful experiences, it's the humanity - the friends, the breakfasts and diners, being left behind, being swept off the pontoon, falling into the rivers and getting hooked by my own flies. Pete