https://coloradosun.com/2024/02/13/women-fly-fishing-gear-outfitter
SITE LINK: THE COLORADO SUN
She started fishing to connect with her late husband. She started a company because of the problems she ran into.
Brokenhearted and missing the man she’d loved since she was 12, Dylan Demery dug out her husband’s fishing gear, things she bought him for his birthday, as a way to connect with him.
Tony loved to fish, so much so that he would sometimes go straight from the office after work, and Dylan loved to be with him when he did. She loved the joy it brought him, and she loved the way he’d greet a fish as he reeled it in. “Hey, little guy,” he’d say before thanking it and tossing it back.
She’d hoped for a little of the peace fishing gave him, but she was surprised at how much it gave back. She actually enjoyed it, so much so that she tried fly-fishing. She fell in love with it, soaked in the serenity it gave her and felt empowered enough to start a fly-fishing company in 2020 that introduces women to the sport and sells them gear designed to fit them.
Tony and Demery were both 31 when he died in 2009 from a head injury after a seizure. It was quick and awful, she said, and fly-fishing took the horror of it away, even more than meditating, another valuable piece of her healing journey.
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A weird and uncomfortable welcoming committee
The same man who asked her about her husband tried to fit Demery with waders that were made for men, and she didn’t want him to measure her. Emily Anderson, Demery’s business partner, fishing buddy and marketing director, was with her that day.
“The gentleman helping us was kind,” Anderson said, “but his eyes went straight to her chest. At that point we both wanted to do things differently.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, sizes for waders stopped at size 14. More than 70% of all women are size 14 and above, Demery said. Waders fit her like a sausage casing.
“It was an awful experience,” Demery said.
Just imagine, she thought, if this was a woman’s introduction to the sport. The thought made her sad.
“It’s why we lose anglers,” said Kim Ranalla, the owner of Miss Mayfly, a business based in southwestern Pennsylvania that sells fishing gear cut and proportioned for women.
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Demery now works with Ranalla to sell her gear on She’s Fly. Other women have followed Ranalla’s lead, including Colorado women who make fishing rods (for all genders), such as SaraBella Fishing and Karin Miller with Zen Tenkara.
Ranalla cries when she talks about some of the women who have contacted her to tell her the gear changed their lives.
“These women are my heroes,” she said. “It’s truly my love for them that keeps me propelling forward. Women tell me all the time that if they hadn’t found Mayfly they wouldn’t have continued to fish.”