by Carolee Boyles

Psychological data may tell us that women first engage in outdoor sports and activities because men do. Once they have some successes in the outdoors, and find that it brings them peace and balance in their lives, they stay.

While that may be true for many women anglers, a lot of us come to the water for our own reasons. For me, it began as a substitute for hunting. After 18 years of living where hunting was as close as my back door, changing circumstances in my life forced me back to suburbia, to Tampa Bay on the west coast of Florida. Instead of woods in my backyard, now I had water. I was cast adrift, away from the woods and the peace and isolation I had found there.

After a year, I was desperate for the outdoors. The blue water of the Gulf of Mexico tempted me, and I wondered if fishing would be anything like hunting. Finally, I had to try it.

What I found is that fishing is totally different from hunting. Yet being on the water brings its own peace, and its own closeness to the primitive parts of the human soul. When I fish, I’m doing the same thing my many-times-removed progenitors did. I may not need to fish to put food on the table, but the satisfaction of being able to do so is still there.

Early Exposure

That harkening to our elders and ancestors is part of what brings many women to fishing. Sugar Ferris, a fishing instructor and founder of the Bass ‘n’ Gal fishing organization, remembers fishing with her mother when she was quite small.

“I’ve fished all my life,” she says. “When the milk wouldn’t make butter, or something else went wrong, my mother would grab her bonnet and put on a clean apron, and say, ‘Go get us some coals from under the smokehouse, Shug, we’re going to go get some perspective.’ We’d dig some grubs and she’d take me to the creek. It was a time for us to get acquainted with one another. It was such a wonderful experience, and it instilled a love of fishing in me. When I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with phones ringing and people pulling at me from every direction, I get out there and it gives me a sense of perspective.”

For Ferris and many other women, the lure of fishing is being out there away from everyone and everything. The catching is just a bonus.

Late Bloomers

Some women fit the classic psychological profile to a T, having been introduced to fishing later in life and quickly getting hooked. Sarah Johnson is an avid tournament angler who was turned on to fishing through her husband. She had always enjoyed being outdoors, playing softball, riding motorcycles and other outdoor pursuits. But her husband, Dallas, took her fishing 25 years ago and her life has never been the same.

“Now I spend all my free time fishing, and on my vacation, I go somewhere to go fishing,” she says. “I’m two years away from retirement, and I keep thinking about all the fish I haven’t caught yet. I’m absolutely positive there’s a fish in every lake in the United States with my name on it, and I have to go find it!”

If there’s any one reason she keeps fishing, Johnson says, it’s just being outside.

“It’s therapy for me,” she says. “I’m in a stressful work environment, and it’s a way to unwind and find peace and calmness. There are days that I think I’d need a therapist if it weren’t for my fishing.”

Marilyn Stone, an outdoor writer and avid angler, learned to fish from a boyfriend when she was in her 20s. But then she reversed the profile later in life. Her husband, Mike Drake, had fished a little where he grew up in Ohio, but Stone taught him the different skills needed for fishing in the West.

“I like the challenge of reading the water. I especially like to fish in late spring when you can finally get back into the high country and the streams are finally clear of snow and ice,” she says. “The water moves as though it’s alive. You can move up and down the bank, trying different holes. There's always a challenge of how to fish that little riffle on the other side, or how to get a fly over a log into a good-looking hole clear across the creek.”

So Why Go Fishing?

Because Ferris has a lot of experience working with numbers of women in a variety of settings, she’s heard many reasons why women fish. She believes women are drawn to competitive fishing for some of the same reasons as men: for the recognition and the camaraderie, and to be around other women who enjoy the same sport they do.

In other cases, women who have recently retired and now have time to fish, do so to spend time outdoors with their husbands. She’s also taught fishing to women who just wanted to add an outdoor activity to their lifestyle. “And these days, I meet a lot of women who want to learn to fish so they can teach their children,” she says. “These are young women, mostly single mothers, with younger children.”

Betty Bauman is the founder of an instructional program based in south Florida called “Ladies, Let’s Go Fishing!” In her fishing classes, she asks women to fill out a survey that includes questions on why they fish.

“One of the most common reasons is that they want to enjoy the outdoors and enjoy nature, and fishing gives them a way to do that,” Bauman says. “I’d say about 70 percent of women cite that as the main reason.”

Another big reason women give is that they want bonding time with their families and friends, away from the daily distractions that interrupt quality time at home. “When they go fishing, especially when they’re on a boat, they interact with each other for long periods of time without the demands of home,” Bauman says.

Many women say they fish to bring home dinner, she adds. In fact, dining on freshly caught – rather than store-bought – fish may be a more powerful motivator than actually catching fish. Other women are just the opposite. They don’t care if they keep the fish or even if the fish is edible; they just want the challenge of catching one that’s hard to catch.

Stress relief is another major reason. “More and more women have multiple roles,” Bauman says. “They’re the breadwinner, the homemaker, the family limousine driver and the cleaning service. It’s so much responsibility that they feel the need to get away from that for a day or half a day. We get a lot of medical professionals who just want to be in a peaceful environment with nature.”

Bauman recently added a question to her survey about what brought the student to fishing. “A lot of them are empty nesters,” she says. “They’ve never done anything for themselves, and they’re looking for a sport they can enjoy, plus be good at.”

Regardless of how they come to fishing, most women seem to stay for a few common reasons. They enjoy fishing alone for peace and solitude at some times, and fishing with friends and family – including their children – for the shared experience with others. Add in the sheer thrills of bonus of sometimes bringing home dinner, and you have a set of reasons for which women are likely to continue fishing for a long time.