Brokenhearted and missing the man she’d loved since she was 12, Dylan Demery dug out her husband’s fishing gear, things she bought him for his birthday, as a way to connect with him.
This story first appeared in The Outsider, the premium outdoor newsletter by Jason Blevins.
In it, he covers the industry from the inside out, plus the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.
Tony loved to fish, so much so that he would sometimes go straight from the office after work, and Dylan loved to be with him when he did. She loved the joy it brought him, and she loved the way he’d greet a fish as he reeled it in. “Hey, little guy,” he’d say before thanking it and tossing it back.
She’d hoped for a little of the peace fishing gave him, but she was surprised at how much it gave back. She actually enjoyed it, so much so that she tried fly-fishing. She fell in love with it, soaked in the serenity it gave her and felt empowered enough to start a fly-fishing company in 2020 that introduces women to the sport and sells them gear designed to fit them.
Tony and Demery were both 31 when he died in 2009 from a head injury after a seizure. It was quick and awful, she said, and fly-fishing took the horror of it away, even more than meditating, another valuable piece of her healing journey.
“I could get in the water and feel it,” Demery said. “It’s been so incredible for me.”
Fly-fishing brought her peace, and, later, it brought her She’s Fly, a business that brings her purpose, even if it doesn’t bring much, if any, of a profit. She pays the bills by working in customer support for a software company.
“Most of my life since Tony died has been trying to get happy and whole,” she said. “She’s Fly makes me excited to get up in the morning.”
It’s a nice story, maybe even Hallmark worthy, and you could stop there if you’d like to believe Tony’s memory inspired her to start the company. But Tony’s memory only inspired her to take up fishing. Demery started the company when she decided she’d had enough of using his gear, which fit her about as well as a tarp, and tried to buy her own.
“Are you here for your husband?” the store clerk asked her, catching her with a barbed hook that embedded behind her heart.
It got worse from there.
A weird and uncomfortable welcoming committee
The same man who asked her about her husband tried to fit Demery with waders that were made for men, and she didn’t want him to measure her. Emily Anderson, Demery’s business partner, fishing buddy and marketing director, was with her that day.
“The gentleman helping us was kind,” Anderson said, “but his eyes went straight to her chest. At that point we both wanted to do things differently.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, sizes for waders stopped at size 14. More than 70% of all women are size 14 and above, Demery said. Waders fit her like a sausage casing.
“It was an awful experience,” Demery said.
Just imagine, she thought, if this was a woman’s introduction to the sport. The thought made her sad.
“It’s why we lose anglers,” said Kim Ranalla, the owner of Miss Mayfly, a business based in southwestern Pennsylvania that sells fishing gear cut and proportioned for women.
Fishing wasn’t going to lose her. Ranalla became hooked — heh — after fishing helped her as much physically as mentally: fly casting helped her rehabilitate from an injury when nothing else worked. She was willing to wear waders that fit her poorly because she loved the sport. There aren’t many like her. Not even her daughter, in fact, was willing, and that’s what drove Ranalla to change the industry. Her daughter is tall, 5’11, and shaped like a woman.
“I wanted my daughter to go into the water with me,” Ranalla said. “I bought the best thing I could find. It was lame. I knew she would never get in the water with it.”
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So, starting in 2016, she spent a year learning how to design clothes, leaned hard on her ability to sew and built waders that fit all body types. She lost friends over it, people who thought she was crazy, but she opened in 2018 selling only waders for women. Retailers, including She’s Fly, now carry her stuff and she has her own website as well. She knew she was onto something when an especially large woman flew out just to see Ranalla.
“I told her, ‘I don’t have a wader that will fit you, but I will make one,’” Ranalla said. “That’s now the Supreme, and it’s one of our top sellers.”
Demery now works with Ranalla to sell her gear on She’s Fly. Other women have followed Ranalla’s lead, including Colorado women who make fishing rods (for all genders), such as SaraBella Fishing and Karin Miller with Zen Tenkara.
Ranalla cries when she talks about some of the women who have contacted her to tell her the gear changed their lives.
“These women are my heroes,” she said. “It’s truly my love for them that keeps me propelling forward. Women tell me all the time that if they hadn’t found Mayfly they wouldn’t have continued to fish.”
An introduction with wine
Despite a rise in women and girls who fish, men still outnumber them in the more traditional outdoor sports. This doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue with other outdoor sports. More than half of all half-marathon runners, for instance, are women. Yet even with the rise, only a third of all anglers are women.
There are two main reasons for this, Demery and others say. Women still view traditional outdoor sports such as fishing as an activity for males. And many others are afraid to be outside alone.
This is why simple things like gear are so important, Ranalla said. They usually have so many reservations that even a little pushback will inspire them to give up.
“That’s their first experience,” Ranalla said, “and right away they get the message that they don’t belong.”
Demery’s mission, however, extends beyond finding gear that works for women. She wants to baptize as many as she can. She hosts beginner-level classes for women, and only women, so they feel comfortable around each other and dodge the inevitable mansplaining.
“We haven’t seen ourselves in this sport, but that’s changing,” Demery said. “We are trying to get to as many as we can.”
Melissa Gallegos of Loveland saw the fly-fishing trips her husband took with his family and their sons as the boys’ thing, but on the few trips where she did tag along, she began tying flies for them, and the art of it reeled her in, to the point where she wanted to use them. But not on the boys’ trips. She found Demery through a mutual friend and took her class. She even brought her sister-in-law to the next one.
“It was such a welcoming atmosphere,” Demery said. “It’s just fun and low-key.”
Demery admits that women might need some creature comforts that men may not enjoy, including the glass of wine they get with the class Demery holds at Sweet Heart Winery in Loveland and the care packages she puts together for her students. Gallegos doesn’t apologize for enjoying the extra touches, such as yoga in the morning and soaking in a hot springs after the class.
“I mean, after fly-fishing all day, it’s kinda nice,” she said.
The bro culture isn’t for everyone, including other guys
There’s another reason why women prefer to be taught by women, said Erin Crider, who owns Uncharted Outdoorswomen, an all-women guiding and outfitting service that helps teach Demery’s classes.
They tend to be turned off by rampant machismo, Crider said. Crider was a financial adviser but started her own outfitting company after she sought out a guide who didn’t fit that negative stereotype and came up empty. What’s interesting is this doesn’t have to do exclusively with gender. Now men attend her classes as well.
“The bro culture isn’t for all men either,” Crider said. “The women don’t seem to mind. The men promise they won’t ask for phone numbers. Most are thankful to have found us.”
Beyond the mansplaining, there are much darker reasons why women won’t go to classes taught by men.
“I have more than one example of seeing a man carrying a gun triggered them,” Crider said. “They told me the last time they saw a shotgun, it was pointed at them.”
This is a problem, Ranalla said, because a large portion of the women who enjoy the outdoors turned to it as a way to heal from the trauma men caused them. But their inexperience can, ironically, raise their anxiety instead of lower it.
“Sometimes they can’t even ID poison ivy,” Ranalla said. “They think there’s bears and snakes everywhere. They do feel strength, healing and peace, but sometimes they’re walking down a path and worried about the man walking behind them.”
Even women outfitters, Crider said, have spoken to her about the harassment they’ve faced from clients or even other guides who should know better. Some outfitters who had babies suddenly found themselves without clients who tip well.
But what can be even worse than all that is the fact that men sometimes act as if women don’t belong in the outdoors, even if that isn’t their intention. It’s a discrimination, and like all discriminations, it’s painful, humiliating and frustrating.
Anderson, for instance, had a father who was an outfitter and, as a result, had been in the outdoors since she was a kid, giving her more experience than most men. And yet before She’s Fly, she went to a fly-fishing shop and wasn’t helped after 10 minutes of wandering through the store. She even picked up the most expensive item and threatened to buy it and was still ignored.
“There are so many times there’s a lack of interaction like that,” Anderson said, “and a lot of times that’s the end of their experience.”
This is why Crider’s goal isn’t just to introduce women to the outdoors. It’s to empower them to come back on their own, regardless if a man comes along or not.
“We want to show them enough so they have the confidence to go,” Crider said, “and they don’t even have to use us instead.”
Demery learned how to love fishing on her own, and now she says things like “it’s fishing, but it’s really healing.” Fishing gave her a purpose, and it’s also something she now loves as much as Tony did. She organizes trips to welcome other women into the sport, but she still goes out on her own to fish when she can. When she reels one in, she thinks of her husband
“Hey, little guy,” she says to the fish before thanking it and letting it go.