Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Reed
Hi Aaron, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I have been writing for publication since my college days. Over the years (lots of years!), I’ve been a regular contributor to a number of regional and national publications, mostly on topics relating to fishing, kayaking, conservation, and travel.
I spent a bit of time as a daily newspaper reporter, but mostly my writing has been an avocation – a side hustle.
Back in 2017, Mark Sedenquist got in touch to ask me to review the inaugural title in Imbrifex Books’ “Base Camp” series of hiking guides. Mark had published a number of my short travel pieces for his RoadTripAmerica.com site years before, and knew I would be intrigued by the notion of getting into nature on the outskirts of a big city (in this case, Las Vegas).
He mentioned, offhandedly, that his new press was looking for book ideas.
At the same time, I was spending several days a week exploring some of the lesser-known streams around Central Texas and posting detailed trip reports to a fly fishing forum. Well, I put two and two together and came up with a book proposal. Over the course of about a month that summer we hammered out the scope of the project and an outline and a couple of sample chapters.
I have a day job as a tugboat captain and that work affords me about six months a year at home For the next two years, most of those months were spent researching and writing.
In the course of researching the book (i.e., “fishing”), I put more than 2,100 miles on my Jeep, waded roughly 162 river miles and paddled another 50-something. I lost or destroyed two cameras, one phone, and two fly rods. A treasured fly reel, no longer available anywhere, now resides on the bottom of the San Marcos River courtesy of a capsized kayak. I contracted a tick-borne infection on one creek, tore my left meniscus on another, and failed to avoid poison ivy and bull nettles on the regular.
In the process, I met the most interesting people who share my passion for moving water and pursuing fish with a weighted line. Many of them are still friends.
The book launch was scheduled for the same week Texas went into lockdown for Covid. That was a real gut-punch, having to cancel half a dozen events around the state. In retrospect, the timing was pretty great. All of a sudden people couldn’t go to movie theaters or play softball or take vacations or book a fishing guide in Montana. They could, though, go outside right here in Central Texas. And the mechanics of fly fishing require a certain amount of social distancing. So it was a good option for families who all of a sudden had a lot of time on their hands.
The fly fishing industry as a whole experienced huge growth from 2020 through about 2022. In 2020 alone, participation grew by more than 10 percent. A lot of that growth came from demographics that historically have been under-represented in the sport: Black, Hispanic and Asian anglers, and a huge influx of female anglers.
The pandemic wasn’t painless, of course; in addition to the very real pain suffered by families who lost loved ones, some brick and mortar shops closed and many fly fishing guides and outfitters suffered huge financial setbacks.
But DIY angling became a thing, and that was the segment of fly fishers my book was created for.
So, the book did surprisingly well and continues to sell strongly nearly five years after the first copy hit the shelves. It also won a handful of national awards – the National Outdoor Book Award, the Federation of Fly Fishers Roderick Haig-Brown Award, and an Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal among them.
The second-highest praise I heard was from a figure in the book world who said: “He wrote that better than he had to.” The most meaningful remarks I get come from the people who DM me on socials or shoot me an email telling me the book helped them get started in a sport they now love, or that the information in the book somehow made a difference in their lives. That has been, really, completely unexpected and surprising to me. And humbling. I mean, it’s just a fishing guidebook, you know?
But you never know if you’ll have two chances to publish a book, and I did put everything I had into that one. I tried to paint a picture of the entire milieu and culture, as I experience it anyway. So that’s why there are all the sidebars highlighting local history and wildlife, drinking establishments and restaurants.
I think Fly Fishing Austin & Central Texas has held up pretty well over the past five years. There are just a couple of access points that have changed, and water levels have been historically low lately, and of course the continued growth of Central Texas communities has put even more pressure on local streams … but the book is still a useful where-to/how-to guide.
We’ve talked about doing a second edition. I’m a little ambivalent about that, to be honest, and if my publisher does ever decide it’s a good idea, I have a collaborator in mind to maybe add some more remote Hill Country rivers. We’ll see.
In the meantime, Imbrifex has extended the series with Fly Fishing Houston & Southeastern Texas by Rob McConnell – a fine angler and really talented writer and photographer, and Urban Fly Fishing Dallas-Fort Worth just out from my good friend Greg DeMars. I think a lot of people knew we had some pretty water around Austin, but the big surprise (to me, anyway) was just how many gorgeous, productive creeks and rivers surround the state’s two largest cities.
I guess the bottom line – what I’d like people to know, and what all three books try to convey one way or another – is that 1.) fly fishing isn’t just for old white guys dressed in tweed (though they are welcome too, of course!), 2.) it’s not terribly difficult to learn, and 3.) it doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive.
Oh, and you don’t have to go to Colorado or Montana or the Catskills and execute perfect drag-free drifts of dry flies to have a good time. There’s probably a bit of water and some pretty and feisty fish within a few minutes of wherever you live. Just go fishing.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The process of researching and writing the book was a huge time commitment. It’s the nature of a guidebook that the writer has to actually go and do all the things described in the book. I mean, it was exploring and fishing, and it was fun. But it took a lot time away from family commitments. I was fortunate that my wife was supportive, but it still took a toll on all of us.
The other thing that stands out as both a challenge, and an incredibly rewarding feature was that we were creating the first volume of a proposed series from scratch. By design, the book is hyper-local and pretty detailed. We created an entire iconography to convey information we thought would be important to readers. What is important in the maps we create? How many and how detailed should they be? We — and by that I mean me, the publisher, and his team of editors and cartographers — were constantly asking ourselves: “What does the reader/angler need to get the most out of this experience?”
The other authors in the series, and Imbrifex, have moved that ball even closer to the goal line by continuing to add helpful information, like QR codes that link to maps for access points. It’s an idea Rob McConnell borrowed from climbing guide books he used.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a writer and an author. My one book to date is Fly Fishing Austin & Central Texas. It was a labor of love to showcase Central Texas waters that have brought me great joy, and hopefully encourage other people to access and appreciate them.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
One of my cousins, who I grew up fishing with, once said this about me: “He’s like a raccoon. I guess he’s smart enough, but more importantly he’s persistent.”
So many people dream of writing a book, or start on a manuscript and never complete it. There were more than a few times I felt like throwing in the towel. I had a lot of encouragement from people close to me, and a lot of patience from my publisher, and that made all the difference.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://flyfishingaustin.thelocalangler.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/texasaaron/
