Fly Fishing with Doug and Brian

I found fishing with passion, love and purpose is amazing and great to see how you can enjoy fishing no matter your age.

I had great pleasure and honor to fish with longtime friend, Mr. Doug Mercer and Mr. Brian Mayer who are both amazing and avid Fly fishermen.

Every trip is unique but what made this one so special is that Doug is 85 years old with the energy and enthusiasm of a young man.

The first day started with a little bit of a wind, but we found a good spot with some sails. Some of them teased halfway and weren’t cooperating much but by the end of the day, we had shot at 3 sails with no luck.

Second day we raised more fish but faded quickly. We had a nice blue that teased halfway before it went away. It’s exciting to see this beauty on the spread though, wind up with four bites and Brian landed a sail.

Third day was even more exciting, getting a few bites pretty quickly and Doug landing his first sail. Oh that was amazing! It was even more exciting when a stripey came hot on the spread, Doug made a perfect cast and set the hook nicely and the game was on, but after a few jumps this stripey said he wasn’t going to play and threw out the fly. Not the best luck perhaps, but this was all exciting for a great fisherman that had smiles on all our faces. An hour later another stripey came to the spread but wasn’t very hungry and fade it away. Doug completed a great day landing his second sail of the day with a beautiful cast and quickly released.  Big ‘woos’ and ‘hurrahs’ for Doug!

Last day was quite slow in the morning but turned out great after lunch with Brian landing a nice dorado on fly. Doug and Brian landed a Sailfish pretty quick then Doug had another fish hooked but fly came lose. All this action was in the last 30 min so it was quite the rush and exciting finish!!

Life is amazing! I remember I first fished with Doug back in 1999, I was running the cockpit, fishing with Capt Ron and my brother Sammy. After 20 plus years seeing Doug still catching sails on the fly makes me love this amazing sport even more!