To promote accessibility in the sport, Magic City Fly Fishers will hold an all-women panel

Rockvale, Montana – Both Kris Spanjian and Emma Berry have been fly fishing for their whole lives. They volunteer with the Trout Unlimited chapter in The Magic City Fly Fishers in Billings, and on Tuesday at 6:45 p.m., the club will present a panel discussion featuring only female fly fishers in the Scheel conference room.

“We don’t think women fly fishing is any different than men fly fishing. It’s fly fishing … we don’t all wear pink, etcetera,” said Spanjian, while fly fishing alongside Berry in Rock Creek in Rockvale, Montana.

Men and women play the same sport overall, but there are significant distinctions that the club wants to address, according to Spanjian.

“There have been a lot of changes, over my lifetime, in fly fishing that have benefited women, but there’s a long way to go … They don’t make all the equipment at the right size at times and things like that,” said Spanjian.

All in all, though, the organization’s message is that fly fishing is accessible to everybody.

“You really don’t need a lot of things; just a rod, and a reel, and a line, and a couple bugs,” said Berry.

The two anglers said that accessibility is the foremost need for fly fishers.

“There’s an element … of people who have property and more money than the average person … (and) you will find people stretching barbed wire across the river to discourage (fishing) and a lot of that is illegal,” said Spanjian.

Anglers such as Spanjian and Berry have been struggling for generations over conflicts between private and public property rights.

“The great outdoors is free … You don’t have to have money, and if you don’t have money, sometimes those are the people that will benefit more from a sport like this,” said Spanjian.