If she’d ever had a casting lesson, she didn’t admit to it.
When a fly-fishing guide wants to teach, it’s best to soak it in. Kristy Titus was smart enough to listen, and she learned the easy pick-up-and-lay-down basic fly cast. When the guide was finished, I completed the lesson with a session on the hook-set.
Elke Littleleaf Kirk is a Warm Springs guide, a self-taught fly-fisherman and fly tier. He and his wife, Alysia, own Littleleaf Guide Service, and this year, for the first time, after a couple of years in business, they are booked solid through the salmonfly hatch on the Deschutes.
Kristy is from Central Oregon. She is a bowhunter. She packs into the backcountry on her mule and she hunts bear, deer and elk. Walk into a Cabela’s store anywhere, and you are likely to walk past her cardboard life-sized likeness.
She knew enough about fly-fishing to know a dry fly from a wet fly, but she had never caught a fish on a fly rod. She had no idea what we were talking about when we talked about the salmonfly hatch.
