HOME OF THE 2004 "ANGLER OF THE YEAR" (Click here to read about this award.)

My name is Susan, a.k.a. FisherMOM.  I have an addiction shared by millions of people all over the globe.  That addiction is the need to fish.  Some people fish once or twice in their life and that is enough.  You know the kind, "social fishers".  Well, I am as hardcore as my life will allow me to be.  I am a wife and a stay at home Mom of two.  My passion for fishing was revealed on a camping trip in 2002 when I watched a man flyfishing in the Ischua Creek in the Southern tier of New York State.  More than a few trout were hooked that day.

I am basically a self taught fly fisherwoman. I have seen it done on TV, and have some coordination. When I first started flyfishing, I had done some online research as to where to find trout in the streams. The most logical place it seemed, was in a pool...a place where the water seemed to swirl back around from the current and be fairly calm.

So here I am, on one side of the creek, fly casting a dry fly to a pool on the other side of the creek. In between me and the pool is a raging rapid. So I teach myself the basics of drifting and trying not to drift fast. After a while, I am not paying as much attention and just looking around while I cast. At this point, I have just about decided to give it up for today and them slam.... a big trout hit my fly. BUT, where I was only half paying attention, it got away. My heart was pounding because I saw the fish and it was a pretty good sized trout. I had only seen one other fish in the creek.. and it was a 6 - 8 incher that someone had caught. This one was about twice that size. I cast a few more times and then went back to camp. Time to break out with a crawdad on my spinning rod.

I still couldn't catch it though, so I waded into the raging riffles, and tried to fish a bigger pool on the other side. This was when I learned something new. Trout are also in those raging riffles that look like nothing would survive in them. I had tossed the crawdad in the pool... and on the retrieve, right in the middle of the gushing waters, I caught a 14 inch trout. It was only about 5 feet from me. That was the coolest thing! Got a picture of it, but it is not great. We didn't understand the importance of a good fish shot yet!

I hope you enjoy my web site.