I definitely hadn’t come to Copenhagen for fishing. But the same angling gods you blame when a perfectly good knot fails or you get blown off the water must throw you a bone occasionally. This one came through in a glorious search result, standing out in perfect English on a map full of Æs and Øs: “Fly Shop.”
I hadn’t really come to Copenhagen for anything in particular, although I suspected a reason lay somewhere between the inspiration that strikes when I have a long period of free time and the same lost feeling experienced by twenty-somethings that makes them resolve to “find themselves.” I effectively addressed neither of these impulses with my recent move: A complete lack of itinerary granted me the same cleared schedule, just in a foreign country. I also gave up on finding myself some time ago, and in the spirit of being shamelessly crotchety refuse to believe anyone can do such a thing.
So off I went, on a cheap budget redeye I’d found a week earlier, to wander around Scandinavia in early winter. Two overnight flights and a quick airport train ride delivered me to the heart of Denmark’s capital, in all its pastel building and cobblestoned street splendor. Cathedral peaks towered over sprawling squares and royal gardens. Every park had an open-air Christmas market that seemed like it could be in place all year. The city also felt immensely old. Vikings had once walked here, followed by Renaissance Kings, all the way down to bored fly fishermen.
The fly shop in question wasn’t actually in Copenhagen. It was in a Swedish town just across a narrow strait of the Baltic from Denmark, and I was on a day trip to the country’s southwestern tip. I navigated away from the quaint seaside town where I’d left the train and followed a pin to a neighborhood of gray brutalist apartments off the main drag. And there, windows glowing in winter’s mid-afternoon twilight, was a storefront full of goods I recognized well.
I’ve spent some time in fly shops. In my early years of angling they were just far enough from my house that going to one was a privilege. One of my parents would occasionally get worn-down and drive me over so I could pick up a couple of patterns, stare at the expensive equipment, and maybe even overhear a line of wisdom from the omnipotent secret-keepers behind the front counter. The fish pictured throughout the store all seemed out of reach in those days. Backdrops of deep woods and canyon walls behind grinning anglers seemed unbelievably foreign, as if I had to hit a certain level before I was even allowed to set foot there. I’d feel wiser every time I left one of these hubs, like I’d just traveled miles. The shops were museums, churches, and portals for a young mind that ached to be on water.
The shop owner hailed me in Swedish. As a tall, blond, pasty-skinned person entering businesses alone in Scandinavia, this was not my first time being pegged as a local. There was a brief second in each occurrence where I took it as a compliment, an assurance that I wasn’t dressed too American (or at least that I was just a badly dressed Swede), but the feeling never lasted long. The next part of these interactions always involved me responding with a cultured “uh… how’s it goin?” and watching the local’s eyes glaze over as they realized they were about to deal with another tourist looking for directions or a burger.
Luckily, the owner took it in stride, switching to perfect English and sizing me up in the way only another angler could. I spun my story of a solo traveling fisherman, far from his tools and helpless to avoid stopping in a fly shop when he saw one. I was welcomed in, invited to ask any questions as I walked around, and then he was back to the old computer doing inventory. Unfazed, a true professional. I liked this guy.
I worked at a fly shop at one point. I’d stopped treating the stores like places of worship years before, but could never shake the romantic idea of having a job at them. I knew my stuff. I wanted to be a teacher, make friends with the locals, dive in headfirst.
I did all of that in Oregon. Bend is the kind of place where you can be a fly shop employee 24/7. Wearing stained hiking pants and sun hoodies is generally accepted in every setting. Regulars will high-five you if you run into them out on the town. The remote business executives that make ten times your hourly wage still regard you with a certain god-like status because you catch fish. There are impressionable kids who are eager to learn, crusty old guys that fished here before the town was big and gentrified, and second home owners that only come in to tell you about their resort lodge experiences (“Oh, I know a guy who works for ____ and gets me all my gear for free, I just wanted to say hi…”). Reps will bring you unreleased rods to test out. You’ll have conversations about Christmas Island, Kamchatka, and arapaima all in the same day. Famous anglers you saw in magazines or on Instagram stop by. You can live seamlessly between your everyday life and the water; they are one and the same.
But a place like Bend also hides a dark side of the fly shop world. When I was there, the town supported no less than five different retailers, including mine. It’s fishing— competition is steep, and egos are on the line. Nobody knows everything but everybody wants to be the authority. And that culture trickles right down to the customers.
It hurts new anglers the most. They get overwhelmed with unnecessary expenses and are only ever pointed to the same overcrowded spots that dull a first experience. The uppity attitudes of those supposed to be educating them leave people too intimidated to learn anything for themselves. I saw it time and time again with misled customers we’d have to reteach and hotshots whose only priority was to let us know they thought they knew more than us. I loved my job, but it’s a major reason why I got burnt out. You can only have something warp your perception of what you love for so long.
The Swedish store was proving to be an enlightening experience. The aisles had all sorts of gear I’d never seen before— European brands of rods, outerwear, and materials. The owner had a sweet tying studio, with a nice camera and great lighting. I’d have to look up his videos back at the hostel. Somewhere along the way, I realized that this was the first time I’d been at a fly shop in months.
Conversation was inevitable; Sweden is on my bucket list to fish and I couldn’t pass up the chance to speak to a native angler. I set down my backpack, leaned against a pillar by the register, and tried to soak in the world of Nordic fly fishing being passed on to me: Pike, grayling, char, native sea-run brown trout, and the last strongholds of massive Atlantic salmon on Earth. Reindeer, black flies, tundra. Darkless summer days, northern lights. I could already see myself returning wadered up, gear strapped to my back, and trekking into the subarctic bush.
At their very best, fly shops inspire. Tyers get ideas from new materials and patterns in the fly crates. Good news from the guide might be the last bit of motivation needed for a tired angler to give it one more go before the season closes. A kid in their first summer of fishing may be struck by a particular image on the corkboard wall of fame and say “I have to do this.”
Those thoughts didn’t come until later. At the time, I was just grabbing a new hat and heading home. Someone will ask me if I really needed another one, but you can never leave the fly shop empty-handed.
