Out & About: Female anglers increasingly hooked by sport

FISHING: It’s a quiet morning on the lake at North Park Boathouse in Allison Park, Pa. Not a soul is awake except the fish and, well, the people who’d like to catch them. Leah Eggers and Ken Crawford dressed from head to toe in fly fishing gear, cast confidently into the lake.

“Think of it like answering a phone,” Crawford said. “Don’t let the rod go past your ear forward and back.”

Since the 1970s women’s participation in outdoor recreation has increased substantially, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. The statistics don’t lie, girls like to get out, too. A new report by Southwick Associates, an outdoor recreation polling group, found that women now make up 27 percent of all American anglers.

Eggers is one of those women. She took up fly fishing three years ago on a date with Crawford.

Both volunteer for Trout Unlimited, an organization focused on cold-water conservation, where aspiring anglers can be taught fly fishing by experienced anglers. Eggers heads the local chapter’s Women’s Outreach program.

“I’m new to this, but I wanna see other women get involved because it’s so much fun,” she said.

Fly fishing in particular is a relaxing and meditative experience for Eggers, she said, provided her flies don’t get caught in trees too many times.

Studies show a variety of reasons that more women are fly fishing. Local instructors say women often take up the sport to participate in an activity with a loved one because they’ve grown up with fishermen fathers and want to give it a shot, and out of pure curiosity. Bob Phillips, manager of the International Angler fly shop in Robinson, Pennsylvania, has invested much time into teaching female fly anglers.

“We do a program called Fly Fishing 101,” he said. “We had 25 women signed up and it went well. We had 7 inches of snow and all the women showed. It’s a regular beginner’s class. We tend to get more women signed up that way. The commendatory of having all-ladies class works well.”

As it turns out, there’s not a “type” of woman who takes up fly fishing.

“We’ll get women from all walks of life,” Philips said. “For some of them, it’s like coming to a foreign land.”

A roll cast is a roll cast, but research shows that women approach the fly fishing learning process differently than men, and all-female classes take on a different tone.

“They’ll say things like, ‘My boyfriend, my husband, they’ve fly fished for years but I don’t want to learn from him,’ ” Eggers said. “Giving them the safe zone is important and sometimes the way that women explain things is a little different then how guys do.”

“The other thing is, if your husband is teaching you it’s a different dynamic,” Crawford said. “A lot of guys (in my TU chapter jokingly) say, ‘This is my escape from my wife.’ ”

Likewise, fishing with other women can, for some female anglers, become a ladies’ day out “escape” from their boyfriends or husbands.

Fly fishing is a source of healing not only for veterans but for breast cancer survivors. Casting for Recovery offers retreats for breast cancer patients and survivors to help improve their quality of life.

Aside from requiring fishing gear suited to their bodies so that as Eggers noted they’re not “drowning” in their gear, fly fishing is a sport that women can enjoy. However, there is one final difference.

“The different phases of fly fishing can vary for men and women,” Crawford said. “Phase 1: You just want to catch a fish. Phase 2: You want to catch a bunch of fish. Phase 3: You want to catch big fish. The fourth and final phrase: You just want to fish.”

“Women come in with the fourth phase initially,” Eggers said.