A River Never Sleeps

Determined to be prepared for whatever the river throws at her the next day, she has spread her fishing tackle out on the dining room table, to check lines, reels and all the other stuff in her arsenal.

In the morning, while other fly fishermen are realizing that they need to tie on a new leader, or are searching through their bags for a fast sink tip, Kathy will be bearing down on the water with a fierce intensity.

“When you have a camera crew trailing you, you have to catch fish and you have to catch fish now,” she said. “There’s a certain amount of luck in fishing, but there’s no excuse for being unprepared. You’ve got to be ready when your chance comes.”

With her stomach in a knot, Kathy will cast and move on, dragging the crew behind her over log jams and through willow thickets, until she has searched out a salmon and got it to the bank.

Kathy , co-owner of Ruddick’s Fly Shop, in Vancouver, is rapidly becoming one of Canada’s best known fly fishers.

She has long been one of its best.

Co-host of Reel Adventures, with Dawn Wells, and a frequent guest on Canadian fishing shows like Sport Fishing on the Fly and Sport Fishing B.C., Kathy is in demand not only because of her phtogenic looks - but because she’s an expert at the sport of fishing.

She proved that in Australia, during the 1999 World Fly Fishing tournament, when she recorded one of the best ever finishes by a Canadian angler, ranking 10th overall.

There were 109 male anglers at that competition - and one woman.

Regarded at first by the other internationals as a token female, Kathy took just one day to make a statement.

After the opening session, she ranked first overall.

“I remember walking up to the bus after and seeing all the guys there, taking off their waders and putting their rods away. All of a sudden they just stopped talking and stared at me. I was thinking, ‘What did I do wrong? Am I dressed funny?’ What it was, was that word had gotten back with the results - and they all knew I was in the lead.”

Kathy said some of the men shunned her - after all, who wants to get outfished by a woman - but it didn’t bother her much. She’d been there before.

Her earliest memories of fishing are of going to the Alouette River, just outside Vancouver, in southern British Columbia - not with her dad, but with her mom, Edna Austin.

Kathy was seven when she learned to cast with a spinning rod, and caught her first trout on an outing with her mom.

Several years later she and her family joined the Dogwood Fly Fishing Club, in Maple Ridge.

“I was intrigued by the fly tying, and really got into that,” she recalls. But it was still very much a man’s game.

When she was 12 or 14, she went on a club outing to Loon Lake, near Princeton. She was incredibly excited to be fishing with the guys - but in the morning, she found they’d all gone off to the far end of the lake, leaving her alone at camp, with her mom.

“Mother let me go out in the boat by myself. She said, ‘Ok, put on the life jacket. You can row from that stump to that rock, but you can’t go out any farther than that.’”

Alone in the boat, Kathy put on a fly she’d tied herself, and began to slowly troll back and forth in front of their camp.

“I just started whacking trout. That was it. I was hooked on fly fishing. I was so excited: this fly that I tied really worked!”

Later, the men came back. They’d all been skunked.

A few years later Kathy’s family was fishing at Hatheume Lake, when they met Ken Ruddick, one of B.C.’s legendary fly fishing masters, who was there with his son, Malcolm.

Parents arranged for the two teenagers to fish together, and Kathy’s family instructed her to come back with lots of fishing tips and inside information on the Ruddick’s secret techniques for catching the sulky Hatheume rainbows.

“I was terrified to go alone with a guy in a boat. But we ended up just talking up a storm and having a great time. Later, when everybody asked: ‘How was he fishing? What did he use?’ I had to say, I didn’t have a clue. I hadn’t even noticed.”

Later, when Malcolm opened a fly shop, Kathy went to work with him. One day they put a closed sign in the window, and got married.

Since then Ruddick’s has evolved into the leading fly shop in Vancouver, and Kathy’s skill on the water has started to give her legendary status of her own.

She’s represented Canada in the World Fly Fishing Championships three times, and has been invited to join the team again in 2001.

She’s not sure she’ll go.

The competition, she said, is gut wrenchingly intense. In some ways, like the TV shows, in that you have to produce, or else. She’s questioning whether it’s worth it.

“I’m not sure why I do it,” she said of the competitive, pressure packed fishing that has become such a big part of her life. “But I like it. It’s very difficult to do and there are no special measures because I’m a woman. I like that.”

In addition to her television work, Kathy is a special guest every Friday, spring through fall, on Rafe Mair’s talk show on CKNW radio. With some 700,000 listeners, the show is the most popular radio show in Western Canada.

She also spends five or six days a week in the fly shop, behind the counter, runs a fly fishing school and organizes fishing trips to exotic destinations like Belize, the Christmas Islands and Costa Rica. Closer to home she goes each spring to fish B.C.’s famed Rainbow Alley.

“I like the teaching most of all,” she says. “I like to see people do well, especially on those destination trips. . . When you see them get a fish, a big bone fish or something, it is such a thrill.”

With all this going on does Kathy Ruddick have any time left for fishing herself?

“Oh yeah,” she says. “And I still love getting out there and just having fun.”