His interest in fly fishing began at the age of 10. His first fly rod was a nine-foot bark stripped willow branch with eyelets, pilfered from a Zebco rod and taped onto the blank. He spent many hours, every day, out in the backyard learning and mastering the art of fly casting with his rudimentary piece of equipment. A few years later, at the age of 13, his interest in fly tying started to develop. He began with primitive chenille and hackle woolly buggers and duck quill coachman flies resembling deformed wasps. He has certainly come a long way since those simple days of barnyard flies and the unrefined stick that he proudly called a fly rod.
