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This month we have Gil Hassen from The Merced Fly Fishing Club sharing his knowledge of fishing for bass with a fly rod. He grew up bass fishing in rural potholes and small ponds—“little lakes,” as he calls them—and that early love of warm-water fishing never faded. Here in the Valley we have many ponds and lakes full of bass that often times get overlooked as we singlemindedly pursue trout in streams. Gil is here to open the possibilities that still waters present.
Gil has spent the better part of sixty years with a rod in his hand, and nearly forty-five of those years have been devoted to the art of fly fishing. After more than three decades in education, he retired with one goal in mind: to make the most of those long summer breaks by exploring waters across California, with occasional escapes to Idaho and Montana.
He cast his first fly in Idaho behind a beaver dam, armed with an automatic reel and a sense of adventure that never really left. Over the past decade, he’s found a new passion in chasing steelhead on the Trinity River and dreams of taking that pursuit farther north—maybe all the way to British Columbia and Alaska.