About me:
My name is Jason Rieke and I am a 22 year old Minnesota native living and working in Colorado. Fly fishing brought me to Colorado this past May when I had the opportunity to spend the summer living in Estes Park and working as a fly fishing guide with Sasquatch Fly Fishing. Once the guide season wrapped up I moved to Denver and currently work as a fly fishing associate at the Denver Bass Pro Shop.
I don’t remember exactly when it all started but my dad introduced to trout fishing at a young age. We would take trips to the local trout streams in southeast Minnesota a couple times a year until I moved to Winona Minnesota for college. During my freshman year at Winona State University I fell in love with exploring the local streams and in January 2015 I picked up a fly rod for the first time and landed my first trout on the fly. In September of that year I hung up the spin rod for the last time and haven’t used one since. The following three years of college became a quest to explore as much of the Driftless Area with a fly rod as I could and still somehow figure out a way to graduate. The obsession became so real that during my last semester at WSU I went trout fishing 80 times between January 1st and May 6th. It was a wild time! On May 4th 2018 I graduated from Winona State University with a degree in Composite Materials Engineering and on May 11th hit the road for Colorado a week later.
When I started fly fishing I had no idea that it would give me the opportunity to move halfway across the country and have the incredible experience that I have been having in Colorado. I love the challenge fly fishing, the satisfaction of catching fish on flies that I tie, the beautiful places it takes me, and the awesome people I have met through fly fishing. All I can say is that I am excited to see where fly fishing will continue to lead me in the future.
Trout Travels | Why I want to Blog:
Years before I ever picked up a fly rod I got big into reading area fishing reports and blogs. The blogs that majorly influenced my interest in fly fishing are the following; The Winona Fly Factory, On A Fly and Adrift. Within the posts of these blogs I learned an immense amount of information about the Driftless Area, the tactics used to catch trout here, the flies to catch them with. I could also tell from the way that these guys articulated their thoughts about fly fishing that it was something that I had to try out.
I have tired to start a blog in the past but unfortunately I didn’t keep up with it. You can check out that first attempt here. It actually captured a number of memorable moments during my transition time between spin fishing and fly fishing including my first trout on a fly and my first tiger trout. Man I wish I would have kept up with it!
As I have gotten more into the sport of fly fishing and have stepped further into the photography game I feel as though making instagram and facebook posts has not been enough of an outlet for me; I have more content that I want to share and more I want to say but I don’t want to flood my media sites. With Trout Travels I will be able to have a place that I can put up as many pictures as I want to and write to my hearts content. In reality, I hope to use Trout Travels as a journal that I can use to record my time on the water so that I can look back on the outings and for others to hopefully enjoy reading and following my travels. I hope to become a better writer and story teller through this blog as well to use it to challenge my photo and video editing skills.
I look forward to this next chapter of my fly fishing journey and I hope that you follow along with me!
-Jason
Trout Travels 