On a recent drive across the country, I swung into Helena, Montana.

We stopped for a beer, some gear for the trip, and hung out at a local park.

And I'll be back this year to fish the mighty Missouri, one of the great rivers out west.

In this episode, you're going to hear about a person who sold her business to go all in on fly

fishing and where she is focusing her efforts this year if you're new to fly fishing then this

episode is going to give you some tools and resources to let you know where to start the right

way this is the wet fly swing podcast where i show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing

how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip and what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. Hey, I'm Dave, host the Webfly Swink podcast. I've been fly fishing since I was a little kid. I grew up around a little fly shop and have created one of the largest fly fishing podcasts in this country. I've also interviewed more of the greatest men and women fly anglers than

just about anyone out there. Shalon Hastings, fly fishing instructor, guide, and all-around,

badass fly angler is going to take us into the Big Mo. You're going to hear about some of the

first things she does with a new student and some things you can take away on this

if you're just getting started. And she's going to talk about why animalology is something

you should be learning about. It's going to help your learning curve and why Nottie Nights

is something you might want to check out if you're just getting started and out in the area.

Plus she's going to clear the air about women fly fishing and bikinis. All this stuff. We're going to talk about it. And she might have a little different take than you were thinking. We're heading back to the big Missouri, the big Moe this year. Let's find out how to do it the right way. Here we go. Shalon Hastings at Shalon Hastings on Instagram. How you doing, Shalon? I'm doing great. Thank you, Dave. How about yourself? Doing great. Doing great. It's going to be a great conversation today. We're going to have, I think, what we're going to probably call an intro to fly fishing episode a little bit here today. And I like to do these every once in because we always have new listeners coming in and we've been doing a lot of events. so we always get people so this is going to be awesome to tee this up and i think you focus on on top of that on women in fly fishing so we're going to touch base there and also helena uh you know visit helena we've been doing some work with them this year we're hopefully well not hopefully we're for sure doing a trip to the Missouri River this next year.

So that's going to be exciting to put all this together and get some people out there.

But yeah, before we jump into it, maybe take us back.

You know, I like to go back to the start on fly fishing.

How did you first get in all this?

Yeah.

So, of course, as with many, my dad, when I was in middle school, I was like, oh, that looks interesting. And so I asked him if he would teach me how to cast. And I distinctly remember us standing in the yard. And I don't remember much about the instruction itself. but after we had a brief, you know, who

knows how long it was, probably 30 minutes of that, I thought I knew everything.

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