Fly-fishing guru Bill Carman dedicates his retired years to teaching and sharing his passion with others
With a flick of his wrist, the bead-headed wooly bugger flies out over the water, pulling yards of test line behind it and landing in one of Bill Carman’s favorite fishing spots. It won’t be long before there’s a fish on Carman’s line and a smile on his face.
Chevy Chase resident Carman lives for fly fishing. Each year, he takes dozens of would-be anglers into the Red River Gorge or Elkhorn Creek to teach them how to fly fish or help them find the best spot to fish. And when he’s not in the river, he’s writing about fishing.
“I’ve been a fly fisherman since I was a child,” he said. “I would go out into these streams and I would look around in these special and beautiful places and think ‘I wish I could share this with someone.’”
Even as a teenager, Carman would help people find the best places to fish. In the streams near his childhood home, he would lead fishermen from out of town to spots where they could catch white bass. Working with the owner of a nearby bait shop, he’d pocket $10 per trip, enough to keep him in flies and fishing gear, he said.
Now, after other careers, Carman says he’s living the dream.
1 of 5
With his business Kentucky Wild, Carman leads fly fishing expeditions in several Kentucky streams, including this one near Midway. Photo by Mick Jeffries
2 of 5
With his business Kentucky Wild, Carman leads fly fishing expeditions in several Kentucky streams, including this one near Midway. Photo by Mick Jeffries
3 of 5
With his business Kentucky Wild, Carman leads fly fishing expeditions in several Kentucky streams, including this one near Midway. Photo by Mick Jeffries
4 of 5
With his business Kentucky Wild, Carman leads fly fishing expeditions in several Kentucky streams, including this one near Midway. Photo by Mick Jeffries
5 of 5
With his business Kentucky Wild, Carman leads fly fishing expeditions in several Kentucky streams, including this one near Midway. Photo by Mick Jeffries
“I get paid to be outside,” he said.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky in the 1970s and getting a master’s degree from Utah State University, Carman spent 30 years designing parks and recreation areas, including 23 years for Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s Parks and Recreation, the last five in management.
After retiring, Carman spent 10 years in wildlife conservation as the regional director for the wildlife restoration organization Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Now, with his business, Kentucky Wild, LLC., he spends his time guiding anglers, holding outdoor skills clinics and writing about the outdoors.
Carman says he has a list of 20 to 25 streams where he’ll take those interested in learning to fly fish, some public, and some private. Each has different attributes and qualities that he’s kept records of.
“I try to match people up to the streams,” he said. “It’s really about matching their abilities to what they want to do.”
Typically, he says, he’ll either pick people up or meet them somewhere and then lead to the stream. Once at a particular stream, he’ll give instructions on how to fly fish, and then work with them to perfect their skills. After that, it’s up to the angler as to how long they fish. Once an angler has caught a fish, he’ll memorialize the moment with a picture and help them release the fish back into the stream.
“Kentucky has more miles of streams than any other state except Alaska,” he said. “I am the only fishing guide in the state that exclusively provides small stream fly fishing adventures. Generally, we fly fish for trout in the fall, winter and spring, and fish for smallmouth bass in the summer.
”The expertise in fishing comes from more than 50 years of navigating streams around the state. But that experience has led to a lot more, Carman says.
Carman has written a number of outdoor adventure articles, three books on fishing and hunting, and “Saving Noah,” the story of Rockcastle County sheriff Noah Tipton, an ancestor of Carman who was brutally murdered, execution-style, in 1932. Carman also teaches about outdoor writing at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
The combination of all those experiences have led to his latest book, “Fishing with Daniel Boone: Fly Fishing the Streams of an American Hero.”
“Several times, I’d be sitting on a rock or standing in a stream and I’d think ‘Daniel Boone may have sat on this rock,’” he said. “I’ve read a number of Boone biographies, and I’d use a Post-It note to jot a note about a place I’d fished or a thought I had… After several years of collecting those notes, I decided to write a book about fishing and Daniel Boone.”
The book is scheduled for a book launch at A Likely Story bookstore in Midway on May 25. The book provides information about the streams in which Boone may have fished, highlights of some of his adventures, and Carman’s own take on fishing those streams from Ohio to Kentucky to Missouri.
Carman spent the last few years focusing heavily on the book, arranging trips to some of the streams just for the purpose of researching and developing it.
Now, however, his fishing is more about teaching others, with the times spent fishing for his own fun fewer and fewer. He spends more time, he says, sharing his knowledge with others and taking people to Elkhorn Creek or up a little stream on the Upper Dix, the place he learned to fish.
It’s a dream life, he says, and one he enjoys sharing with others.
“I’ve been a fly fishing guide for seven years,” he said. “I’m going to do this until I can’t do it anymore.”
Carman recently published a book (cover pictured above) called “Fishing with Daniel Boone: Fly Fishing the Streams of an American Hero,” in which he explores the adventures Boone might have had on some of those same streams. Photo by Mick Jeffries