Start Your Adventure with a New Skill

Course: Themes in Fisheries and Aquaculture: Beginning and Intermediate Fly Fishing

From May 16 to 30, 2019, students in this course learned all the basics of freshwater fly fishing, including rigging, knots, casting, fish behavior, aquatic conservation, insect identification, basic fly-tying, the history and tradition of the sport, streamside etiquette, and safety. Additionally, they explored the literature of the sport and the community surrounding it, reflecting on their time in nature and practicing the craft.

The first week of this 2-week course was spent at Unity College’s Sky Lodge, where students received intensive classroom instruction as well as field instruction in fly-casting and on-stream fly fishing. The class then moved to Trout Lake Lodge in Quebec (just 12 miles over the U.S. border from Coburn Gore) for six days of further work, which included morning and evening fishing on a private lake full of naturally reproducing, native brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis).

The instructor was the former Editor & Associate Publisher of Fly Rod & Reel Magazine, as well as a graduate of Joan Wulff’s Fly Casting Instructor’s School.