The Awkward Angler Podcast

In this episode I am sitting down with all the native ladies of the fly fishing and guide academy. They just completed their client day the day before and last night we celebrated the completion of the academy. This is the next generation of Native Women fly anglers and guides. We hear from new voices and previous podcast guests, Kiara Nelson and her little sister Shay Nelson. This episode also includes Laura Aspelund, Tessa Coopchiak, and Tatyana Zackar.

Submit a comment to the EPA that you support strong Clean Water Act protections for the Bristol Bay region for its people, fish, and fish-based industries as soon as you can."

This episode is available now on all podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify. All show notes and resources can be found on AwkwardAngler.com and links in bio.

Stacey Simmons was an invited guest during the week of the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guide academy. She is the Sr. Director of Shareholder Services and the Director Of Operations at the Kodiak Brown Bear Center @kodiakbearcenterak We discuss what it means to be a shareholder in Alaska, as well as her amazing lodge that has gone straight up to my top places to visit list! Be sure to visit https://kodiakbearcenter.com/ to book your trip! And always hire and buy from native communities.

Submit a comment to the EPA that you support strong Clean Water Act protections for the Bristol Bay region for its people, fish, and fish-based industries as soon as you can."

This episode is available now on all podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify. All show notes and resources can be found on AwkwardAngler.com and links in bio.

Meet Laura Aspelund @laurauga she is now a graduate of the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guide Academy. We talk about her experience in living in Naknek, Alaska, her transition into fly fishing and guiding, her experience of being a white passing native woman, and the impacts of the proposed Pebble Mine.

Submit a comment to the EPA that you support strong Clean Water Act protections for the Bristol Bay region for its people, fish, and fish-based industries as soon as you can."

This episode is available now on all podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify. All show notes and resources can be found on AwkwardAngler.com and links in bio.

Meet Tessa Coopchiak @tessa.coopchiak from Togiak, Alaska. We get to learn about where she is from, her connection to subsistence and now sport fishing, as well as her experience this week as a Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guide Academy student. I am relieved to know our next generation of Native leaders are connected to their homelands, culture, education, and new experiences.

Submit a comment to the EPA that you support strong Clean Water Act protections for the Bristol Bay region for its people, fish, and fish-based industries as soon as you can."

This episode is available now on all podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify. All show notes and resources can be found on AwkwardAngler.com and links in bio.

#SaveBristolBay #NoPebbleMine #NotHereNotEver #HuntFishStopPebble #AwkwardAngler #AwkwardAnglerPodcast #BrownFolksFishing #SaveBristolBay #NoPebbleMine #TroutUnlimited #TroutUnlimitedAlaska #UnitedWomenOnTheFly #Orvis #OrvisFlyFishing #PatagoniaFlyFishing #PatagoniaFlyFish #FlyFishing #RepYourWater

Visit www.savebristolbay.org 

This episode features Tatyana Zackar from Igiagig, Alaska. Queen of the Kvichak River - fly fishing guide, instructor, previous student of the guide academy, and fisheries biology student.  We discuss her village, her connection to the fish, how reliant her community is to the Bristol Bay salmon, lessons on fish handling, and Uber eats a day late and by plane.

Resources

This episode was sponsored by Trout Unlimited - Alaska Program & edited by Devin Dabney, check out The American Climbing Project.

Meet Meghan Barker, Trout Unlimited Bristol Bay Organizer and the Academy's facilitator about the advocacy work she needs you to hear about when it comes to news and things you can do against Pebble Mine. Submit a comment to the EPA that you support strong Clean Water Act protections for the Bristol Bay region for its people, fish, and fish-based industries by July 5, 2022

Resources

This episode was sponsored by Trout Unlimited - Alaska Program & edited by Devin Dabney, check out The American Climbing Project.

Welcome to the final episode of season 2 of the Awkward Angler Podcast. This season has been great to connect with influential women doing work in realms of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion within the fly fishing industry. We’ve heard some great initiatives that are just short of intersectionality but striving to do better, identity and coming out, vulnerability and healing, learning from our mistakes in advocacy, and how we quietly lead the way towards inclusion and conservation.

What better way to end this season than with Kayla Lockhart. I know of no other way to introduce my boisterous guest. Kayla unapologetically advocates for human rights, mental health, and conservation. I appreciate how she authentically influences others by sharing her story and sharing how she lives with anxiety. I particularly admire the way she takes responsibility for the way she shows up; and the way she leads with compassion and empathy - both for her own mental health and for communities to have access to fly fishing as a gateway to conservation.

Show Notes/Resources

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=327269139043617

So this week, I am honored that my friend Corinne Doctor is my guest for today’s episode. She is the co-founder of Rep Your Water - an apparel brand dedicated to providing uniquely designed, top quality gear for anglers and hunters while increasing support of local conservation and inspiring exploration. Rep Your Water is also an Angling for All Pledgee that is doing some great work behind the scenes in making the industry more diverse and inclusive.

Corinne is also a board member for Colorado Trout Unlimited and Affta American Fly Fishing Trade Association.

We speak about her experience being a woman in the fly fishing space for 14 years, her perspective on conservation, as well as her personal journey of becoming anti racist.

She is a funny, hardworking, and all around badass woman I admire. She is upfront, and not afraid to lead hard conversations.

Would you rather strive to be an ally or an abolitionist? Abolition requires a commitment to risk. Risking your comfort, safety, and status to ensure that your Black and Brown counterparts experience equity and its afforded benefits.

Today I am sitting down with Andi Greene, host of Wine Down with Fly Gals on Instagram. She is also a scientist, a self proclaimed instigator, and an abolitionist.

We talk about her identity and how she is white passing and also Mexican; and her learnings from being complacent to becoming the abolitionist she now proclaims.

We also discuss cultural appropriation... and ironically Andi was recently calling out cultural appropriation on the company PostFly for profiting off sage in their Mother's Day box this year. Then she was called out on culturally appropriating an image she had on her screen while doing so. We talk about her learnings from this event and how to recover after appropriating other cultures.

How can the industry learn how to recover when appropriation happens and when we have such good intentions however those negatively impacted are long lasting?!

Resources:

Becoming “anti-racist” sounds easy, but it can actually be quite challenging to shift our way of thinking. Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion work also known as JEDI is hard work, however if we can push through the discomfort and uncomfortable conversations, there is joy to be found.

I met the founder of United Women on the Fly, Heather Hodson Neufeld, in 2019 at a fly fishing trade show. While it may have been a bit of a bumpy start, today, I now consider Heather an ally and activist within the JEDI space in fly fishing. I find Heather’s anti-racist journey as bold. She is, what I consider a “classic model” of what diversity and inclusion work looks like: emotional, hard, complex, depressing, joyful and bold.

I am so thrilled to sit down with Heather and have an honest conversation. We share moments of vulnerability and her raw experience of intent vs impact. And I gotta say, she’s leaving a hell of an impact that I need all white women and the fly fishing industry to hear!