From pleasant farm ponds to hidden mountain streams to massive saltwater, from largemouth bass to native brook trout to stripers, Virginia is for anglers. However like so many nice American pastimes, fishing has fallen on laborious occasions. For generations, youngsters spent their summers with a fishing pole in a single hand and a deal with field within the different; right now, too lots of them—and us—are glued to smartphones and social media.
Prepared to vary all that?
On January 10 and 11, 2025, the 24th Annual Virginia Fly Fishing & Wine Competition will draw attendees from all through the Commonwealth and Mid-Atlantic in addition to from Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina, New York, and even Vermont. Held on the Meadow Occasion Park, simply 15 miles north of Richmond on the positioning of the state fairgrounds, the Virginia Fly & Wine is the primary occasion of its form to mix fly fishing and wine tasting. Fly fishing producers, lodges, guides, artists, fly tyers, wineries, distilleries, and specialty meals corporations are among the many greater than 90 distributors who hail from everywhere in the nation.
All Ability Ranges Welcome
The Virginia Fly & Wine is for novices and skilled anglers alike. “In the present day, many individuals have by no means fished earlier than,” says competition director Beau Beasley, writer of Therapeutic Waters: Veterans’ Tales of Restoration in Their Personal Phrases. “They’ve definitely by no means thought-about selecting up a fly rod. We work laborious to demystify the quiet sport of fly fishing. Many novices are too intimidated by their conception of fly fishing and fly tying to even give them a strive. I can relate: I felt precisely the identical manner earlier than somebody took the time to introduce me to the game. On the Virginia Fly & Wine, we’ve got scoured the nation to deliver collectively the consultants—the welcoming, approachable consultants—who make fly fishing easy and rewarding for anglers of each degree.”
One such angling whiz is Julie Mattson, member of the USA Girls’s Fly Fishing Group and proprietor of Oklahoma-based On the Rivers Fly Fishing Firm. “Fly fishing is like all the things else,” insists Mattson, who’s obsessed with bringing others into the game. “When you study some primary abilities, it’s not laborious in any respect.”
Get Ideas from the Specialists
Mattson is one in every of a number of acclaimed instructors heading up the 2025 Past the Solid Girls’s Fly Fishing Symposium, the Virginia Fly & Wine’s in style show-within-a-show taught by and for ladies and sponsored by the Leisure Boating and Fishing Basis’s Take Me Fishing program. In 2025, for the primary time, Past the Solid will likely be held in its personal constructing (Meadow Pavilion) on competition grounds. Past the Solid will kick off with a girls’s wine-and-fly-tying combineer on Thursday night time, January 9, from 5:30 to eight p.m. Symposium programming continues on Friday, January 10, from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and covers quite a few matters of curiosity to outside girls of any angling talent degree.
Whether or not you’re a novice or an skilled angler hoping to degree up, the Virginia Fly & Wine has one thing for everybody. Fly fishing legend, Tom Rosenbauer, will educate lessons on studying the water and matching the hatch. Josh Miller, Jake Villwock, Captain Gary Dubiel, Beau Beasley, and plenty of extra will educate specialty lessons on all the things from fly tying to casting to fishing for purple drum in saltwater. New in 2025 are lessons that mix fly fishing matters with wine and bourbon tasting. In all, greater than two dozen instructors will educate greater than 50 lessons, most of that are included with competition admission.
Fish and Sip!
For many who merely love somebody else who fishes, ten of the Commonwealth’s greatest wineries will likely be on the 2025 Virginia Fly & Wine, together with Goochland-based Midnight Brewing and three Virginia distilleries. Better of all, wine tasting is included in competition admission (for patrons 21 years and older). Landlubbers may also get pleasure from testing specialty meals distributors, artists, and jewelers.
Competition attendees can even enter a drawing to win per week’s fishing with Nomadic Waters on the Amazon River for peacock bass. This journey of a lifetime consists of all meals, skilled guiding, and lodging. Different Virginia Fly & Wine sponsors embody the Leisure Boating and Fishing Basis, Shenk Capital Administration, Harman’s North Fork Cottages, Midnight Brewing, Norvise, TrailHead Inventive, and Trout Limitless.
To see this yr’s promo video click on right here.
To study extra in regards to the 2025 Virginia Fly Fishing & Wine Competition click on right here.
