“My phone doesn’t work, there’s no signal out here,” Melissa Smith realized. “I’ve never felt so disconnected. Come on, it’s 2018!” The water was cold, she was cold, the current was strong enough to knock her down. With her teeth chattering, she said to herself, “What am I doing here, and why?”

The what is simple enough - she was fly fishing, for the first time. As a kid in Clearville, Utah, Melissa’s grandpa would take her fishing, in a boat, with a fish-finder. “I used to love seeing all the fish underneath, but I never caught one.”

As to the why, there’s a little more to that.

When Melissa graduated college, she worked in higher education. Then she transitioned to sales, taking a job selling online classrooms. Her territory was North Carolina; she moved there in 2014. “That’s when I met Chris.”

Chris Smith was raised in the West Virginia mountains. He spent much of his youth camping, hunting, and fishing. “I’d come home from school, grab my shotgun, and head to the woods. It was an idyllic childhood.”

In college, Chris took a job selling computers when they were first being introduced into schools. After graduation he taught in Wake County, North Carolina’s public schools - Raleigh is the big city there. “I set up their first internetconnected classroom. It had a server, six computers, a projector, a laptop, and a printer.” This was cutting-edge in 1995.

Melissa and Chris met at an ed-tech conference. His school had purchased her software, so she introduced herself as his sales contact. At the time, Melissa’s company needed to hire someone to help her. She told her boss, “We could hire this guy.”

He was hired and they worked as a team. “We were the most successful duo in the company, we were on the battle lines together,” says Chris. In time, though, Melissa moved on, to a different company.

In December 2016 they happened to run into each other. Both were newly single. Chris thought, “this makes sense, this was supposed to happen.” They dated, and quickly became a couple.

Chris went fly fishing every weekend. It was a two or three-hour drive. Melissa eventually asked him to take her with him.

“Honestly, I thought I would hate it. The lack of cell service didn’t help. But I didn’t. Maybe I got a little grumpy. It was pretty uncomfortable, and I couldn’t figure out how to cast.”

Chris had been teaching kids to fly fish. The youth team he coached competed in three world championships – Poland in 2014, Vail in 2015, Spain in 2016. He also taught veterans, through a group called Project Healing Waters (https:// projecthealingwaters.org.) He could teach.

“I had never caught a fish before, and on my third cast with Chris, I caught one! I got eight that first day!” It’s all catch and release.

“There’s a pretty significant learning curve in fly fishing,” says Chris. “You can go ten times and not catch a fish. Melissa had something intuitive, she was a natural.”

Packing up their gear that day, Melissa thought “this was good, this was a good day. Yet I didn’t know if I’d do it again.”

She did, though, becoming more comfortable, focusing on her feet in the water and the bubbling stream. Chris was attentive and supportive, helping her, tying her flies. They’re not real flies, by the way.

Not long after, in October 2018, Chris found himself short a partner for a competition. He recruited Melissa, who was hesitant. Chris had her practice tying her own fly, 50 times. When she was done, she was committed.

There were 22 teams of two in the competition. Melissa was the only woman. “I was nervous, shaking the whole time. I had never fished with other people. The man assigned to judge me in the first session was so kind, he helped me, he walked me through it.”

Her judge in the second session was one of the top anglers in the country. “He was looking at his phone the whole time. I wasn’t catching anything. I finally said, “Can you just pretend I’m going to catch something and put the phone away?”

His response: “Fish the bubble line.”

“There are bubbles in the ripply part of the water, that’s where food goes, so that’s where fish go. The judge switched my fly, I cast into the bubble line, and I caught a fish!” Melissa and Chris finished tenth out of 22 teams, and she was hooked. “It was the coolest group of people, getting together, competition yet camaraderie, laughing about things we did right and things we didn’t.”

They’ve been together for eight years, married for four. Early on, Melissa’s grandpa told Chris this: “You guys are going to get married, here’s why you’re so good. You’re equally yoked. One of you isn’t greater than the other. She’s strong in everything she does, and you’re as strong in everything you do.”

Once the kids were grown, Melissa and Chris were ready to leave the Charlotte area. They moved to Black Hawk, close to good fishing, in 2021.

Melissa has gone from never catching a fish, to being a champion, one of the highest ranked members of the US Women’s Fly Fishing Team. She and Chris are both competing in the World Fly Fishing Championships, in the Czech Republic, later this year.

“With fishing there are so many challenges,” Melissa explains. “The type of water, how you’re presenting the fly, the right fly. I liken it to sales – selling the fly to the fish, presenting the product to the customer. I might have the right food, Chris may have the right water, we work together.”

“For us,” she says, “fishing is the tie that binds us together.”

For more information, see https:// www.usangling.org/.