Podcast: Yvon Chouinard on Simplicity and Fly Fishing

Zach Matthews interviews Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonai and co-author of the book Simple Fly Fishing. Listen as he outlines a lifetime of experience in trimming the fat and getting to the core of things. His philosophy, at odds with many aspects of our society, is as enlightening as it is unusual.

“Well you know the first edition was written when fishing with a tenkara rod first kinda surfaced. And I felt like, first of all, the use of tenkara was the best way to get somebody into fly fishing. It’s very very simple, very effective.  And nobody understood it.  There were a lot of people saying that it’s not fly fishing.  And then there were other people looking at it strictly as a Japanese method of fishing.  And they were using rods meant for catching 4-inch Japanese trout and stuff.

I learned it in Italy, actually, from a guy in a valley where they had been doing it since the 16th century.”

Originally published on The Itinerant Angler