From The California School of Fly Fishing:
After 36 years, we are retiring the California School of Flyfishing. It has been an unbelievable ride. The school has allowed us, with our client friends, to travel the world.
Back before most people had ever heard of a peacock bass, we were exploring the fly fishing frontiers of the Amazon and Orinoco Basins.
Ascension Bay was a big blue mystery spot on the map and on many days ours would be the only boats on the water.
Placencia, Belize was known mainly for it’s prison and bananas, until we showed up. The local fishermen looked at our flies suspiciously and immediately ripped off the feathers and hooked on some conch before allowing us to ply the permit and bonefish rich waters.
The school has carried us from Alaska to Asia but still our hearts are anchored here in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. We’ve led nearly 100 trips into the high country and if we did 100 more they would never grow old. The Sierra has been our lifeblood and to see its great glaciers melting into puddles and watching the cony retreating ever higher into the peaks to escape the warming climate breaks our hearts.
Most of all the school has introduced us to many hundreds of wonderful people – you! You made this what it is and hopefully we’ve unleashed a generation or two of fly fishers who will carry on the dream of fishing the wildest waters and the vision to protect them for future generations.
We will leave the website up for another month or so. Feel free to download all the information you want. No, thank you!
Wild waters,
Ralph and Lisa
