Meagan Newberry

The Lesson

I preach the value of learning for a living, but I am not always comfortable as a novice. The first time I fished the Owyhee River with my friend Kaitlin about four years ago, I was skunked. I was a typical beginner—I’d fly fished a few times before, but never really learned the craft. I was practicing a basic cast with a hand-me-down rod and eight-year-old fly line, somehow drawn to this pointless activity of catch-and-release fly fishing. I couldn’t, like Kaitlin, shoot the line a straight 25