US Forest Service (USDA FS), Sequoia National Forest

Kern on the Fly

Lots of local anglers are taking up this challenging, graceful sport, and women are one of the fastest-growing groups of fly fishers.

graphic of a woman flyfishing.

Story and photography by Ann Beman, courtesy of Bakersfield Magazine, Inc.



FLY FISHING EVENTS AND RESOURCES

BEST LOCAL FLY FISHING SPOTS

In the high country above Johnsondale Bridge:



North Fork of the Kern above Kernville:



Lower Kern below Isabella Dam:



Normally, if I'm near a river, I'm on the water in a kayak. But this time, I'm standing in the river. It is December. The water is frigid, but I'm toasty in a pair of Chota breathable waders and I'm focused on casting the Sage XP 5-weight rod in my hand. Wrist at 10 o'clock, then 2 o'clock, 10-2, 10-2, 10-2. Watch the tree branches behind me. They're reaching for my fly, whether the fish want it or not. I cast into an eddy, a calm section of water behind a boulder. If I were a trout or a small mouth bass, this is where I'd hang out. I think. I'm pretty new to the sport, but I know that I am streamer fishing, casting across and downstream, using a white bugger, which I replace with a grizzly hackle bugger, which I unceremoniously hang in an oak at Hobo Campground on the Lower Kern south of Lake Isabella.

I finish the day with an olive bugger. Nothing but the oak tree bites, but the day is a success anyway because I get to actively spend it outdoors. And I get to use my brain while I'm out there.

Fly fishing, and really any kind of fishing, is all about the thrill of the catch. But fly fishing requires more than rod, reel and bait to hook something.

"It's not just throwing a line in the water and sitting and waiting for a fish to bite. It's active," says Dana Janes, co-owner, with her husband Matt, of 2nd Amendment Sports in Bakersfield.

"Fly fishing is more challenging, therefore more fun," says Chuck Newmyer, owner of High Sierra Flyfisher in Ridgecrest. "You must think a little more. It's addictive. When a lot of people get into it, they really get into it."

"The difference between fly and conventional fishing," elaborates Kern fly fishing guide Guy Jeans, "is with bait, you're more relaxed, while fly fishers are always on the move. Lots of fly fishers come to fly fishing after they feel they've mastered bait fishing and want something more challenging."

It's active and it's challenging, but it's not as difficult as it seems.

"Everyone thinks of fly fishing as complicated and it's not," insists Jeans, who guided this writer that December day on the Lower Kern and provided waders, boots, fly rod, flies, and patient instruction. woman holding a recently caught fish.

Jeans is in his fourth season guiding on the Kern, while his Kern River Troutfitters Fly Shop in Kernville is just 1-year-old. Walk into the Kernville Road shop, just paces from the Kern itself, and the first thing that catches your eye is the rainbow of different flies – at least 360 – one fly for nearly every day of the year.

The reason for so many different flies is to imitate different life cycles, Jeans explains. You imitate stages, from nymphs to emergence to adult. For example, black and gold stone flies are the larval stages of the mature salmon fly and, according to Jeans, stone flies work best in free stone rivers like the Kern.

So, to catch a fish, you have to think like a fish, and to think like a fish, you have to know what a fish likes. Since fish like flies, the trick is to know when different flies are in what life stages.

To help would-be fly fishers tackle these questions, Kern River Troutfitters fly fishing lessons include getting to know entomology; that is, the study of bugs. Lessons also include how to cast; techniques; and a mini hydrology primer that teaches you where the fish might be.

The cost of equipping yourself for the sport has a wide range. You can start with a couple hundred dollars for rod, reel, line, waders and boots, or get just a rod for about $100. It goes up from there. For example, says Jeans, waders go from $60 to $400.

Then there are travel expenses, which range from the cost of driving to the Kern River to the cost of a luxury fly fishing holiday in an exotic location, such as New Zealand, Chile or Alaska.

But the accessibility of the Kern is why Southern California fly fishers favor this High Sierra-fed river.

"They've discovered that they don't have to go all the way to Mammoth to fish," says Jeans. "They can do it right here."

Jeans leads 250 guided trips a year. Not bad for a guy who was told four years ago that he wouldn't be able to survive at it. He figures he'll survive as a fly fishing guide as long as there are fish. Thus, he advocates catch and release fly fishing, in which anglers release the fish they catch.

"I consider the fish my business partners," says Jeans.

man holding a recently caught fish.

Still, he warns, there is a lot of poaching on the Kern. "It's a big problem."

Fly fishers need to buy a license to fish the Kern and when they get their license they should become aware of and adhere to fishing regulations. For example, on the Kern from Bakersfield north to the Johnsondale Bridge in Tulare County, there is a five trout per day limit per licensed angler, with a limit of 10 in possession at any one time for those fishing over multiple days. Call the toll-free California Department of Fish & Game telephone number, 888-334-2258, to report hunting, fishing or pollution violations.

While a rainbow trout might be one of his business partners, Jeans' clients are equally colorful, albeit less scaly, and they come from all over the world. And women are making up a larger share of his clientele. "Women seem to catch on faster than guys," he says, hypothesizing that this is because women tend to listen better.

"There are an awful lot of women fly fishers, and there are a lot of women-only fly fish clubs, none in Bakersfield however," says Teresa Adams, a member of the coed Bakersfield-based Kern River Fly Fishers (KRFF) and a fly fish instructor through the National Wild Turkey Association's Women in the Outdoors (WITO) program.

Adams started fly fishing in 1989. She was looking for something to do with her two sons. She saw a KRFF ad in the newspaper and went to a class.

"Women are attracted to the challenge," she says. "It's a challenge because you're not in one spot the whole time. There's a beauty and rhythm to it. It can be done with a spouse or friends but you're still running your own game, so to speak."

She adds that there is more to it than the actual fishing.

"There is fly tying, which duplicates nature in feather and fur, in order to fool the little, wily trout," she says. "And there is rod-building. Plus, there is always a lot to learn, and a lot of nice places to go."

Now, says Adams, she teaches the sport to women, and to men and children, too. Dana Janes from 2nd Amendment Sports was one of Adams' students. Janes got into fly fishing only last year through one of the Women in the Outdoors events. The Janes' have since brought fly fishing gear into their Mohawk Street at Rosedale Highway store.

"The first time I caught a bass was incredible," recalls Janes, who claims fly fishing as her sporting passion, while hunting is her husband's favored sport.

She's put up a brag board for fly fishers in the store, and on her office desk, there's a photo of Janes with her first bass. You can see the thrill on her face. She says she looks at it when other things are going haywire and it helps her focus on good times outdoors.

Don Hardcastle with Kern River Fly Fishers says the sport is indeed increasing in popularity with women. The club, which has about 130 families in it, started in 1969. They have monthly meetings the first Wednesday of the month at the Norris Road Veteran's Hall in Bakersfield. The club also coordinates monthly outings to places like the San Juan River in New Mexico or to the California coast for surf perch.

Hardcastle notes that, in between outings, "above Kernville is where most of us fish." On the other side of the Sierra, in Ridgecrest, the Aguabonita Flyfishers have been going strong since 1979, when High Sierra Flyfisher shop owner Chuck Newmyer started the club. Newmyer, a fly fisher who "favors whatever spot I'm in at the time," says there are about 20 women among the club's 150 members.

Aguabonitas member Rose Dover fishes to get outdoors, as well as for the esthetics, and because she has come to respect the fish. But more than anything, she admits, and just about every fly fisher will tell you the same, "The catch still gets the excitement."