Charlie Craven - interviewed by JD Miller  

Tell me a little about your background and how you got into fishing.

Well, my family had always fished and hunted. As a kid, I just didn’t have the patience to sit and watch a bobber, so I started fishing with hardware, but quickly found out that lures were expensive, so my dad got me a fly tying kit for my eighth birthday and it’s all been downhill since then! I took to tying right off the bat and became consumed by it. Flyfishing came shortly thereafter, and here we are today. 

CFB has been open for about 2 years now, but you've been involved with the Fly Fishing Industry alot longer than that. What did you do before CFB?

Well, I have been a commercial fly tyer for most of my life, starting when I was about 12, and tied flies for most of the shops in the Denver area at one time or another. For several years there I tied between three and five thousand dozen flies per year. It gave me a great chance to become a very fast and efficient fly tyer. As odd as it sounds to the average tyer, I really enjoy a big order of flies...I like to sit down and just go on auto-pilot for a few hours to unwind. Weird, I know. I was also a guide on the South Platte and Colorado Rivers for about 12 years, I have taught fly tying classes for about twenty years or so now and I worked in a few different fly shops along the way, so opening CFB was just a natural progression for me. I have always dreamed of having my own shop and now I do. It’s great fun and I am very proud of how it has turned into such a success..

Gene Hall - interviewed by JD Miller

This month’s “Rocky Mountain Profiles” interview features Cody, WY resident Gene Hall. Many of you know Gene, or at least know of him, as he is a frequent visitor to the Rocky Mountain Fly forums, where he posts under the handle “wyldgene.” Gene has been fishing for over 40 years and has guided for 16. He is a FFF certified casting instructor and avid spey caster who especially enjoys fishing big dries to native cutthroats in backcountry streams, something he learned to do at a young age while growing up in Northern Idaho.

What do you do for a full-time job?

I’m a forester by profession and have spent the last 25 years or so cruising timber, doing forest stand inventories and land exchange cruises, usually past the end of the road and along some of the nicest streams in the northern Rocky Mountains.

How often do you still guide?

I don’t do much guiding professionally anymore, probably less than a dozen days a year, filling in when the shop gets overbooked or a larger group than expected shows up, or if I’m personally requested. Guiding cuts into my fishing time.

Jeremy Gilbertson - Interviewed by Paul Morrison

Born and raised in a small farm town in northeast Montana, guide Jeremy Gilbertson of Big Sky Fly Fishers is a soft-spoken individual who has guided on the Bighorn River in south-central Montana for over seven years. His energy is readily apparent when you start talking about anything related to fly fishing. Spending a few days on the water with him would no doubt improve your fishing skills. I still recall how Jeremy kept after me for using my Colorado taut-line “high-stick” nymph technique. “Drag, drag, drag," he said. I became much more proficient at mending my line that day.

As Jeremy prepares for the upcoming guide season, he graciously sat down with me and spent a few minutes discussing his experiences and answering some questions related to guiding and fly fishing for the readers of Rocky Mountain Fly .

Tell me a little about your fishing background. Did you start out as a bait and lure guy?

I suppose that every kid fishes with the whole family a few times in their childhood. Also, I used to throw the Zebco in the pickup when I was fixing fence by the Poplar River. I'd even catch the occasional pike, but it really never excited me. I was passionate about hunting, and traditional fishing didn't hold the same allure.