From pleasant farm ponds to hidden mountain streams to huge 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 instances. For generations, kids spent their summers with a fishing pole in a single hand and a deal with field within the different; at the moment, 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 Pageant 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 firms are among the many greater than 90 distributors who hail from all around the nation.
All Ability Ranges Welcome
The Virginia Fly & Wine is for novices and skilled anglers alike. “Immediately, many individuals have by no means fished earlier than,” says pageant director Beau Beasley, creator 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 attempt. I can relate: I felt precisely the identical means earlier than somebody took the time to introduce me to the game. On the Virginia Fly & Wine, we have now scoured the nation to deliver collectively the specialists—the welcoming, approachable specialists—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 Crew and proprietor of Oklahoma-based On the Rivers Fly Fishing Firm. “Fly fishing is like all the things else,” insists Mattson, who’s keen about bringing others into the game. “When you be taught some primary abilities, it’s not laborious in any respect.”
Get Ideas from the Specialists
Mattson is certainly one of a number of acclaimed instructors heading up the 2025 Past the Solid Girls’s Fly Fishing Symposium, the Virginia Fly & Wine’s widespread 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 can be held in its personal constructing (Meadow Pavilion) on pageant grounds. Past the Solid will kick off with a girls’s wine-and-fly-tying combineer on Thursday evening, 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 out of doors girls of any angling ability 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 train courses on studying the water and matching the hatch. Josh Miller, Jake Villwock, Captain Gary Dubiel, Beau Beasley, and lots of extra will train specialty courses on all the things from fly tying to casting to fishing for purple drum in saltwater. New in 2025 are courses that mix fly fishing matters with wine and bourbon tasting. In all, greater than two dozen instructors will train greater than 50 courses, most of that are included with pageant admission.
Fish and Sip!
For individuals who merely love somebody else who fishes, ten of the Commonwealth’s finest wineries can 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 pageant admission (for patrons 21 years and older). Landlubbers can even take pleasure in trying out specialty meals distributors, artists, and jewelers.
Pageant attendees also can enter a drawing to win every week’s fishing with Nomadic Waters on the Amazon River for peacock bass. This journey of a lifetime contains all meals, skilled guiding, and lodging. Different Virginia Fly & Wine sponsors embrace the Leisure Boating and Fishing Basis, Shenk Capital Administration, Harman’s North Fork Cottages, Midnight Brewing, Norvise, TrailHead Artistic, and Trout Limitless.
To see this yr’s promo video click on right here.
To be taught extra in regards to the 2025 Virginia Fly Fishing & Wine Pageant click on right here.
