Fly Fishing People: Falcons Coach Mike Smith

May 31, 2009 By: Marshall Cutchin

NFL Coach of the Year Mike Smith catches an 8-pound rainbow on Georgia’s Soque River, but can’t keep his mind completely off of the season ahead. “Whenever he can, the Falcons 49-year-old, second-year coach seeks these places far away from the noise and violence of the NFL. While making his place in this world on a raging sideline, he chooses to spend his free time on a quiet river, in a pursuit that, Washington Irving wrote, ‘tends to produce a gentleness of spirit, a pure serenity of mind.'” Steve Hummer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.