Mike Watt

Fly Fisher

Mike Watt grew up in Southern California and started fishing in the saltwater for smelt with a drop line at the age of five. He moved on to using a spinning rod to catch everything from sand sharks to bonita off the ocean piers. On family vacations to Wyoming, he began using a bubble and flies to fish for trout. He received his first fly rod at 11 years old and spent the rest of his childhood chasing trout with a fly rod as often as he could. He was able to do a lot of trout fishing while working in Wyoming during college summer breaks.

His fishing took a back seat during his medical training, the early years of his orthopedic practice, and while starting a family. As his kids got older, he spent as much time as possible floating and fishing in eastern Washington. He also began swinging for anadromous fish, which remains a significant part of his fishing time each year.

Mike went on his first saltwater flats trip in 2009 to the Florida Keys, where he managed to catch some bonefish and cast to migratory tarpon. Since then, he has been completely addicted to saltwater flats fly fishing. He has primarily fished multiple-species destinations including the Yucatan, Belize, Cuba, the Florida Keys, and Christmas Island.

His personal passion is chasing permit and migratory tarpon, though he enjoys all flats species. In addition, he still spends 4–5 weeks a year swinging flies for steelhead in Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, as well as for king salmon in Alaska. He has also traveled to Tierra del Fuego a couple of times for sea-run brown trout and to Mongolia for Taimen.

As a surgeon, he was alway.s intrigued by the technical aspects of rigging and began putting together a series of “tips of the day” for the group trips he participated in. These tips became the basis for this book The Mangrove Diaries.