Casting Afar

Welcome to on the job. Today, we're talking with Erica Nelson, a fly fishing guide in Colorado committed to making the fishing community more diverse and more fun workdays for Erica, Nelson begins softly.

Sometimes I just like to just sit at the water, especially right when I arrive.

Sitting there and observing.

What's going on and then just kind of connecting with that place is really important to me. So looking around at you know, what birds are around, or what kind of bugs or if there's any hatches, and feeling the water. Yeah, just connecting with the area in the moment.

Being a fly fishing guide in Crested Butte, Colorado, Erica gets to make a connection with some of the most beautiful places in the whole world, especially if you're as excited about fishing as she is.

You know, within ten minutes there's the Slate River in the East River, and that's really fun for a bunch of little brook trout. And then there's the gunnisin which is gold metal water. So as the Taylor River further up on the tailor there are like some major mega.

Trout up there. It's all catching release.

And then above that there's like some creeks, so it's a great place to take people learning how to fly fish. There's like open meadows and so it really just depends.

But you might be surprised to learn that for someone whose job has become taking people out on the water. Erica didn't always enjoy fishing.

No. I actually hated it as a kid. My dad loved fly fishing, and he tried to take me and even spin fishing as a kid, just down a lake, and I just remember hating it so much. It was like painfully boring, and I would get frustrated and I just remember throwing the pole in the water and I'm like, f this, like I'm never touching a rot again, Like, don't ever me. So my dad and I never talked about fishing growing up.

So it's no wonder that Erica's path to becoming a fishing guide had more twists and turns than a meandering river. At the beginning of her work life or her occupational headwaters, if you will, Erica was working at a boutique hotel over in Portland, Oregon.

I really liked the job. It was really pivotal for my career and my experience. I started as like a housekeeping supervisor and worked my way up into rooms management, so I would then manage like housekeeping in front desk folks.

Among the best parts of that job for Erica were her co workers. One even blossomed into a mentor, who Erica credits with helping her thrive at work and develop as a person.

And she was amazing because we moved hotels three different times, and so it was a really great many years that we got to work together, and we were kind of this like dynamic duo.

And these were fancy hotels, the kind of place that smells nice and looks cool, but also where the guests can be a little needy. So when Erica got a few days off, she'd often have a desire to get away from all that pomp and hand holding and set off into the wild landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

It was funny because you know, this was the boutique hospitality world. And I would go rock claiming on the weekend, or I would go like camping with friends and I was like, I just slept on a rock and these people are complaining about thread count in the sheets, and I think that was a moment of like, wow, I really used to like this that I still like hospitality, but to a different degree, and it just couldn't really empathize as much. And I think that's when I noticed I lost this connection.

Around that same time, there were some staffing changes and that mentor that Erica loved working with was replaced by someone that she just wasn't really jiving with. So pretty quickly, Erica found herself one if maybe there was a new step in her life, a new adventure waiting for her.

And I ended up having this picture of Denali right in front of my computer, and I was like, yeah, you know, it would be really great to like climber ount on someday, and it would be really great to be outside right now. So yeah, I think I really was fantasizing about being outdoors.

People will often tell us that when things aren't going as we'd like them to, that we should envision what our new life might look like. Manifestation as it's called, in which we send out our desires into the world in the hopes that they come true, But often what we get in response isn't exactly what we envisioned. So while Erica sat there in her boutique hotel dreaming of

I think I said no, And then that afternoon and I had a really hard feeting with my boss, and then I called her that like evening and I was like, Okay, I take it back, I'm coming down.

So it kind of all happened really quickly.

So despite having no prior rafting experience and being admittedly afraid of water, soon Erica was all about rafting.

Oh my gosh, I loved it. It was.

I learned so many different skills, mostly about myself. For some reason, I just honed in more like direction, because when you're on the water, you need people to do something. You need to do it right away or else we're gonna flip, right, And I saw this beautiful marriage of like the skills that I had in the office and then in the outdoors of what I needed people to do,

Like, that's what it was.

It was like this connection with people in the outdoors, and so that was really cool, and that was kind of like the trajectory of wanting to continue guiding, wanting people to learn how to guide, wanting to do overnight trips, and so yeah, it just kind of stuck with me and it's just been such a great skill.

But Erica isn't one to sit back and get comfy. So after doing the whitewater rafting thing for a while, she moved up to Wyoming, and while she was there, she noticed that a lot of people were fishing, which, as we'll recall from her childhood, was totally not her thing. But whether it was the staggering beauty of Wyoming's rivers or just how into fishing all these Wyoming folks seem to be, Erica got intrigued. Then she got a fishing pole.

And so I was like, you know, I'm just going to try this out. So I just went on YouTube and tried whipping it around and really wasn't successful in the beginning.

But again, like I've had.

All these experiences of skiing and you know, rock claimbing and backpacking and.

Was a learning curve.

But with fly fishing, it was like this thing that I wanted to be good at I was like, what would it be like if I just caught one fish? I just highly com made a goal for myself to catch one fish, and then I'm going to move on to the next thing.

When we come back from the break, Erica catches that first fish.

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We're back with Erica Nelson, who, after moving to Wyoming, gave herself the very modest goal of catching just one fish. How long did it take you to catch that first fish?

You know, honestly, probably like a year. And it was like a year of like catching lots of trees, you know, falling in the river, and I would pretend like I knew what I was doing when other people would ask to come along.

But despite it taking an entire year for Erica to catch her first fish, she started to see how people could get so into it. There was something both thrilling and almost spiritual about fishing. So she kept at it, still slipping on rocks and getting her line wrapped around

He's like, oh, you can row a boat, you can row, I'll teach you how to fly fish.

And I was like great.

So it was this really beautiful exchange that we had, and he was an elder man, so it was really to learn new experiences from him and be able to kind of then start my skills and then can build on that.

So just like that, while talking between SIPs at the bar, Erica finds a fishing mentor to show where the ropes, a wise old timer who could show her how to tie knots and read the water and avoid all those pesky tree limbs.

So yeah, him and I became really great friends for the next few years after we met, so he was a really He actually took me in my first overnight float trip down on the Snake River softwork sneak and that was a really cool experience. But to be able to have like a solid mentor every weekend, I don't think I would be able to have the skills where I'm not today.

In addition to the wisdom of this older mentor, Erica also picked up fishing tips from people on social media platforms like Instagram and if we're being honest, also, you know, I was.

Pretty straightforward and honest of like just wiped right because you were holding a fish to you my answering a few questions like what kind of species is that? Like how do I tie this? Now? Like do you have any recommendations? And then that's when I actually started to build a lot of friendships. So they were like, hey, co meet me and finddale, like I'll take you on the Green River. And you know, I ended up making a lot of great friends and I'm still really good friends with today.

But the more time that Erica spent fishing, the more she noticed that the people on the water didn't look like her, and sometimes that brought unwanted attention.

Like I was the only woman at the boat ramp and people would just stop and stare, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so it's already like intimidating enough, like backing up the trailer let alone, having like a full audience staring at everything.

And the online fishing community wasn't very diverse either.

I noticed that there wasn't like a lot of women of color, especially you know, fishing having indigenous roots.

And I got a lot of requests from people of.

Like take me fishing, you know, And I'm like, oh, man, like there's this need in this calling that I'm seeing in this industry that need more female guides in the industry.

Along with becoming only the second indigenous female fly fishing guide in Colorado, Erica also worked hard to have an impact beyond her region on Instagram and producing a podcast she called The Awkward Angler, in which she tackles some of the difficult subjects or awkward conversations as she prefers to see them that the fishing community needed to have.

I've heard so many different fishy podcasts, but it's all about big fish and destinations and things that I can't afford, and it's fine at all, but I've kind of had a different perspective when I'm out on the water, and

To have or awkward.

That's kind of the name of the name, because you know, it is awkward to learn how to fly fish, and the things that I like to bring up about the industry and point out is awkward to talk about.

And along the way, she picked up some fans, some of whom traveled great distances to spend a day on the water with her.

I've had a transcuple request me and it was like a surprise for the partner's birthday and it was really cool to see her like wide up. She's like, oh my god, you booked new Erica.

This is awesome.

So I typically have a lot of clients that are on my age. Most of them are women, women of color. I have a lot of non binary trans folks, and so I typically get those clients that are have been historically excluded in the industry.

But as Erica sees it, she's not just introducing people to fishing, she's reconnecting them with the natural world.

Because I've always found fly fishing as a gateway towards conservation. The more that you spend time in the outdoors and these beautiful areas, the more that you want to protect it. And so it's kind of become this like I guess like passion, I guess mission for me, and so that's kind of how I fell into that.

Yeah, you had said that you see the fishing industry in a lot of ways as a lot of people taking, and you're trying to make it a more reciprocal, harmonious relationship.

Yeah.

Absolutely, I find it really important to have a relationship with everything.

You know, we really need to protect.

Our water and our air and the areas that we recreate and live in. There's a term called hojo in my culture, and that's bringing balance and harmony in your life, and so that's on a personal level, but with all things and so I find that really important to bring into guiding.

And of course Erica and her clients have a lot of fun out there.

It's funny because they always recognize they're like, why is every other boat so serious? And we have like music going, We're having a good time, and you know, we can actually shape the way that we want this to go. It doesn't have to be this one strict way to do things. And so I think that's really fun to be able to play around with and get other people that wouldn't normally experience it, and we get to experience it how they want to and how they're comfortable with doing it.

So, after taking some leaps of faith and catching her fair share of trees, Erica Nelson has established herself as a sought after fishing guide. But while it seems like a dream to get to share the thing you love so much with others day in and day out, you have to be careful.

Yeah.

See, that's the thing of like why I didn't want to guide because I was like, I like fishing too much. But I definitely continue to hold my boundaries of having that balance, and so there are times where I've learned how to say no and be able to take time out.

For myself because Erica knows that, just like a river's fish supply, our passions are precious resources that need to be protected. So while she'll continue guiding, Erica will be doing a little less of it as she starts on yet another new adventure in her life, building a fly fishing guide school of her own, one aimed at making the more inclusive and welcoming to a wider array of people.

He was in Las Vegas about it, and so he came out for a weekend and that's all we did. He was we'd wake up a breakfast and go fishing all day and then come back up out of.

The canyon, have dinner, and then repeat.

And it was so much fun because it was a really one and the fishing was really awesome, but it's just a great way to connect with my dad.

For on the job. I'm Avery Thompson.