Michael Johnson


I was born and raised outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1976, my family moved to Arizona, fleeing the icebox that is Midwestern winter. I started fly-fishing at the San Juan River, which was like graduate school for a kindergarten student. Despite a long weekend of no trout, frequent birdsnests, and a stumble that filled my waders, I was hooked. I’m a self taught fly caster, fisherman, and fly tier. I cut my teeth on the small lstreams of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado and finally managed to figure things out. My wife and I spend our summers traveling the great American west sampling its trout water, and we’ve found it to be a very rewarding pursuit.

While I consider myself first and foremost a trout angler, the majority of my fishing is done for warmwater species in my own back yard, so I tie a lot of panfish and bass flies as well. I spend about thirty hours a week at the vise and find it to be very relaxing and a great way to unwind after a trying day at work.

I am an elementary school classroom teacher at an inner city school, a second career. Prior to that, I was a chief draftsman/project manager for a small architectural firm. A parallel "career" I started a few years back is building bamboo rods.

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