Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Amber Leach stopped fishing for fifteen years after her father died, then took an Orvis fly fishing class in Kentucky and caught the only two fish of the day. Within about five years she had started Kentucky's first Mayfly Project chapter, moved to Colorado, attended rowing school, and began guiding.
Amber Leach is a Colorado fly fishing guide, a lead mentor for The Mayfly Project, a Backcountry Hunters and Anglers participant, and a freelance writer whose work has run in Backcountry Journal.
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Why did she stop fishing for 15 years after her father died?
Fishing was the thing Amber Leach and her father did together in the mountains of West Virginia, always with spin gear and worms. He was diagnosed with cancer and she wrote in a get-well card that he could not die yet because he had never taught her to tie a hook onto her own line. After he died - she was 27 - picking the sport back up felt like a betrayal of the promise she had made herself, and she stayed away from it for fifteen years.
How did she go from her first fly casting lesson to guiding?
Leach was pointed toward an Orvis shop in Louisville, Kentucky and worked through their 101, 201 and 301 classes, the last of which is a guided day on the water. She showed up on a Kentucky riverbank as the only woman among six men and finished the day as the only person who caught fish - two of them. Later, after a layoff, she spent a summer fishing Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico and Colorado, and about five years after her first cast she was guiding wade trips in Colorado.
What is The Mayfly Project and how did a Kentucky chapter start?
The Mayfly Project is an Arkansas-based nonprofit that mentors foster children through fly fishing. Leach called the founders wanting to plug in and learn, and the conversation turned into an invitation to start a chapter - Kentucky had none. A Louisville club backed the effort, with members signing on as mentors who taught the kids to tie flies, tie knots and cast to a target, and who mentored Leach at the same time she was organizing the program.
How is fly fishing in Colorado different from Kentucky and West Virginia?
The water Leach learned on in West Virginia and Kentucky is narrow, shallow and hemmed in by canopy - a seven-foot three-weight is enough rod, there is no room for a back cast, and the fishing is nymphs and dry flies. In Colorado she moved to a nine-foot rod, learned to back cast, and cast a dry fly properly for the first time. She also learned to fish streamers and to fish through winter, which she rates as some of the best fishing of the year for anyone willing to put up with the conditions.
What advice does she give women who feel unwelcome on the water?
Leach was warned before she started that fly fishing was not a welcoming sport for women, and says the opposite is what she actually experienced - people on rivers and in fly shops consistently helped her. Her answer to anyone who does run into it is to keep showing up and build the skills that earn a place on the river. She points out that trout do not know whether an angler is a man or a woman, and that the water does not discriminate.
What should young girls look for instead of social media influencers?
Asked what she would tell a father of an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old, Leach said not to let them apprentice themselves to influencers, whose real product is themselves. Her recommendation is to find someone local with quiet humility who loves the sport more than the recognition - the kind of person whose enthusiasm is contagious in person. She sees the grip-and-grin culture as having corroded something in the sport, and would rather see young anglers learn ethical practice from a local mentor.
What does she think clients misunderstand about hiring a guide?
Leach says people arrive expecting a guarantee, and a guide controls none of the variables that matter - weather, flows, heat. One summer day her trip was over by noon because low water warmed too fast. She also pushes back on guides who treat the job as elevated status, and says she usually learns something from clients. Her example: an elderly Texas couple, the husband in remission from prostate cancer and too frail to wade past his knees, holding her arm in the current while his wife out-fished him all day.
Key takeaways
- A structured beginner class series - casting, then a guided day - is a practical on-ramp for an adult starting fly fishing from zero.
- Small eastern streams reward a short rod around seven feet; western water generally calls for a nine-foot rod and real back casting room.
- Winter fishing is some of the least crowded and most productive of the year if you can tolerate the conditions.
- The Mayfly Project runs local chapters mentoring foster children through fly fishing, and chapters get built by volunteers who ask.
- Guides cannot control weather, flows or water temperature, so judge a trip on what you learned rather than on fish counted.
- For a young angler, a local mentor who fishes for its own sake is a better model than a social media account.
