Art and the fly

By Charles Sowell  

FEBRUARY 11, 2011 9:10 a.m. (0)

It was the casting that hooked Simons Welter.

The effortless rhythm of fly casting is hypnotic in practice, yet eminently useful in function. It requires no strength and has carried Welter into a career as a fly fishing guide at 45; an age when many men are considering getting out of that otherwise physically demanding business.

“Men often have to overcome a lot of bad habits on the river,” she said. “They are used to using power to get distance on casts, but fly fishing doesn’t work like that. Women are the easiest to teach since they don’t come to it with preconceived notions.”

Welter is a youthful-looking waif, just over five feet tall and rail-thin with neatly quaffed honey-blonde hair and intense brown eyes. At first glance it would be hard to place her as a mother of two.

Welter’s daughter Jenny is 19 and a sophomore at Wofford. Her son John is 16.

“They just laugh when I describe myself as a stay-at-home mom,” she said. “And truth is I’m on the water every chance I get.”

When she’s talking about fly fishing (in all its forms) Welter is a picture of animation, but almost blends in to the background sitting at Starbucks in a neat gray plaid skirt and understated sweater. Nothing to indicate she is one of the preeminent women fly fishing guides in the region.

She got that way in a hurry.

“I went to a DNR Becoming an Outdoors Woman seminar at Clemson (about seven years ago) and fell in love with casting,” Welter said.

The program was designed to help women understand and hopefully become involved with outdoor sports.

“They offered a lot of things at that session, crossbow, pistol shooting but it was the fly casting session that drew my attention.”

Since that day at Clemson she’s learned a great deal about the art of fly fishing. A recent trip to Oahu put her in contact with her first bonefish on the flats off shore at Hickham Air Field.

“You have to get them (bonefish) on the reel really fast, or you lose them” she said. Bonefish leave the angler breathless and the reel hot to the touch from friction on their signature blistering runs.

She loves fly fishing in all its forms: warm water, salt water and cold mountain streams. Brutish brown trout lurking at the edges of a high mountain stream and feisty brookies in tiny headwaters top her fishing hit parade.

Welter has fished in 11 states as well as Argentina, Spain, and Germany. Her planned trip to Alaska this year for salmon and rainbow trout lights a fire in her eyes.

She is a board member of Mountain Bridge Chapter of Trout Unlimited and guides for the Brookings’ Cashiers Village Outfitters in Cashiers, N.C.

“They called me,” Welter said about her start as a professional fly fishing guide. “They wanted someone to guide women since they thought women would be more comfortable with a female guide. Nowadays I guide for as many men as women.”

She also taught at the Becoming an Outdoor Woman series and Casting for Recovery, an ongoing program for survivors of breast cancer.

She met her husband Hank while a student at Clemson University. She graduated in 1988.

“He’s really good about my fishing,” she said. “All he asks is that I not go into the really remote places alone.”

Her list of spots fished includes some of the most remote and rugged country in the Chattooga basin and in the high country of western North Carolina.

“You just put your head down and keep going at a steady pace,” she said of the brutal hike out of Simms Pool on Chattooga.

Her husband is a director of operations for Exopack in Spartanburg.

“I’ve gotten to travel with him a lot and fish in places that most people haven’t seen,” she said.

Her recent trip to Spain lead to a fishing expedition to the Pyrenees Mountains on the border with France.

“It was gorgeous country, but we had a hard time finding a gu

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