Kathy Kemp: Women float over to fly fishing

"Trout don't live in ugly places," says Bill Bennett, president of the Birmingham Fly Fishers.

The club, whose membership had been mostly men, has reeled in more and more women in recent years, he says. To keep the trend growing, the Fly Fishers are casting a wide net with its "Ladies-only Fly Casting Clinic," set for Saturday, Oct. 31, outside the Southern Progress building, 2100 Lakeshore Drive, in Homewood.

For $20 each, students will spend three hours with expert Wanda Taylor, who has been a pro fly casting instructor since the early 1980s. Taylor lays claim to several "firsts," among them the International Federation of Fly Fishers' first certified female master instructor, and the first Orvis-endorsed guide in the Southeast.

"By the way, we don't fish just for trout," says Taylor, who, with her husband, Gary, runs the Taylor & Taylor Fly Fishing school from their 100-year-old farm in north Georgia. She's fished in lakes and in coastal salt water and says many anglers are making the switch to fly casting.

Through her clinics, Taylor aims to dispel many notions about fly fishing, especially the idea that it's a difficult sport and for aristocrats only. "There's this mindset that you have to wear tweed and smoke a pipe, but those days are over," she says. "I teach people that it's fun and easy, a whole lot easier than golf."

A drop in equipment cost has made fly fishing as affordable as regular fishing, Taylor says. "And we teach that any place fish swim is a place you can fly fish."

In other words, picturesque streams of chilly water, as seen in the Brad Pitt movie "A River Runs through It," are no longer a requisite. "Another thing is, fly casting doesn't take a lot of strength," says Bennett, owner of a printing distributorship. "It's more a finesse thing."...