Rock ’n’ Roll Fly Fishing: Susie Greilich’s long, strange trip

May 4, 2005

By Bump Diamond
Man About Town

    Once you get past the idea that one of the best fishermen in Mammoth isn’t a fisherman at all, you come plumb up against the fact that one of the best fisherwomen in town is a former New York rocker who learned fishing as a result of a club date that her Southern rock band had in Santa Fe, N.M.
    And once past that notion, you run flat into the fact that Susie Greilich, a fishing guide in her 17th year in these waters, actually is made up of two people:
   There is Greilich, 45, by now a familiar fixture behind the counter at Kittredge Sports and Outdoor Image and along the backcountry streams of the Mammoth High Sierra. And if she’s not there, she’s most likely out behind Kittredge’s, back by the casting pond, teaching first-timers and veterans the subtleties of the overhead cast, the ever-useful roll cast, the tower cast, wye cast and other casts of her own invention.
    Then there is Felicia Flycaster, Susie’s alter-persona, who began writing fishing reports for the local weekly in 1988 and whose byline now appears in Kittredge’s promotional newsletter.
    “She’s more outgoing and a lot more fun than I am,” Greilich said of Felicia Flycaster, enjoying the joke. “Well, maybe not a lot more fun, but she likes to”—Greilich paused, searching for just the right words—“she’s more risqué.
    “She’s a fun person who, oh gosh, who kinda is a tongue-in-cheek kinda girl.”
With that, Greilich leaned back in her chair and laughed, slapping her hand on the table in front of her. Typical Susie, typical Felicia.
    Greilich’s pal and colleague, Jennifer Arenz, said the combination of Greilich’s knowledge and Felicia’s enthusiasm is a hard combination to beat.
    “She is so enthusiastic about it and really patient,” said Arenz, who took up fly fishing three seasons ago. “She loves it so much that her enthusiasm is infectious. She doesn’t get frustrated. She shows you what to do, a little hands-on—and the fact that she loves it so much, she’s really a fun person to fish with.”
    This is a godsend for the women of the Eastern Sierra, said Arenz.
     “I sometimes wonder if men might question a woman’s skill and not choose a woman for a guide because they might think women are not as good. But she’s great. She knows what she’s doing, for sure.”
    Added Greilich:
    “I have a lot of women clients who would prefer another woman to take them out. I think it’s a little more comfortable for them. And in some cases, the husbands of these women just want to get their wife learning how to fly  fish, but they don’t want to teach them. It’s like skiing—(they should) get a lesson.”

In a town like Mammoth, which is filled with people who have amazing stories of how they got here—8,000 feet up, 3 1/2 hours from a commercial airport and 2 1/2 hours from the nearest parking meter—Greilich’s story ranks right up there.
     She grew up as the youngest of three sisters in Massapequa Park, N.Y., within shooting distance of New York City on the south side of Long Island—a half-hour from Kennedy Airport and 2 1/2 minutes, at most, from the nearest parking meter. She had a guitar, learned a few licks and found herself in a five-person, Southern rock cover band called Boy Howdy—a moniker since taken by a Los Angeles-based group of cowboy pickers who are not connected to the Massapequa Park band.
    They played a club or two here and there, and then Greilich had an impulse to leave New York—if not forever, then at least for long enough to see what was out West.
    “At the Bicentennial (1976) I saw the Tall Ships go down the Hudson River and decided that was the last time I was going to see New York for a while,” she said. “So a group of us from the band went to New Mexico.”

    This is how pivotal moments work: one day you’re a New Yorker driving around the West with a cowboy band, and the next thing you know, you’re a fly  fisherwoman in California’s high country, reading currents and stalking rainbows, cutthroats, browns, brookies and goldens. Two decades later, it takes a little effort to figure out how you got there at all.
    “We went to New Mexico to look for another drummer,” said Greilich, “and we were playing a club called Faces. The owner of that club wanted to take me fishing, so we went, and I was using lures and a spinning rig and he was using a fly  rod. At the end of the day, he’d caught a bunch of fish, and I didn’t catch anything.
    “So while he was cleaning his fish streamside, I picked up his fly rod and just kind of practiced throwing the fly  into the water, not knowing what I was doing at all. But throughout the day I’d been watching him whip this thing around, and I caught a fish.
    “That’s how it all started. Outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. On that day I put down my guitar and picked up my fly rod.”
    A couple of years later she found herself in California, visiting one of her sisters on Balboa Island. She had her fly rod, heard that there was trout fishing in Big Bear and made tracks into the California mountains.
    Oops.
    “When I went up there,” she said, “they said, ‘Stream fishing? No streams.’ Then I asked them about fly fishing and they said ‘No fly fishing.’ And then I asked them about catch-and-release and they didn’t even know what that was.
    “Right next door to this shop was a pool hall, and I went in there and talked to some of the bikers, and one of those guys told me that if I wanted streams and fly fishing, go up to Mammoth.
    “So I came up here and I put my sleeping bag out in Mammoth Meadow, and I walked into Kittredge’s the next morning, and they told me to go to Hot Creek and Lake Mamie. I caught fish—and I’ve been here ever since.” 
    Greilich paused, reflecting on the memory, and then added, “Maybe once a year I pick up a guitar and tinker around with it. But now, I tinker around with Tony Bennett on the piano. Hah!”

Winter in Mammoth is a long ordeal for Greilich. When she has a few moments she might be back in the store’s warehouse, taking a hopeful inventory of the fishing gear, while, in the front of the store, skiing still holds sway.
    But at the first sign of spring, Greilich slips back into her familiar alter-ego, morphing into Felicia Flycaster as surely as the days get longer and the fishing gear migrates from the warehouse to the front of the store.
    “On my days off,” she said, “I’m backpacking in search of trout. It’s all about the search for trout. If I have a couple of hours, I’m in search of trout. All the time. Everything I do in the summer pertains to some kind of fishing, whether it’s teaching casting classes or taking a backcountry guide trip or taking my friends into the backcountry for fly fishing.
     “I probably fish five days a week. I have a rod in my hand almost all the time, whether it’s demonstrating different rods that we sell, or being out on water, fishing.”
    Greilich paused and broke out into another of her signature smiles.
    “Most people come (to Mammoth) for the skiing and tend to stay for the summer,” she said. “I was in search of trout.”
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This story first appeared in the April 2004 edition of Mammoth Monthly.