Fly Fishing People: Joe Kimsey

Redding.com writer Tim Holt profiles 79-year-old Joe Kimsey, who began fishing on California’s McLoud River at age 3 and went on to hold sway at the Ted Fay Fly Shop on the Upper Sacramento for a quarter century. “‘When I started fishing here in the ’80s, they were using flies that were popular in the ’20s,’ said Bob Grace, who in those days was trading stocks and bonds in San Francisco. ‘It seemed like Kimsey and the others were content to do their own thing, what had always worked for them. They were totally unaffected by what was going on in the rest of the country. I don’t think any other part of the state was that isolated.'”