4 minute read
Melissa Monroe Handley ‘Forever Addicted. And In Love’
12TH Real Annual
Nor westOF FISHING PICTURE
Fishing for Chinook, winter steelhead and half-pounders in the beauty of Southern Oregon is a “spiritual experience” for Melissa
Monroe Handley. (MELISSA MONROE HANDLEY)
It’s been since childhood that I’ve held a rod in my hands, practicing a cast to prove to my dad and brother that I could fish too. Most of the time I watched as they hauled in salmon from our local Rogue River, bottomfish from the Pacific and trout from Klamath Lake. I loved it, but deep down I also wanted to be a bigger part of it.
I grew older and busy with school, college and becoming a young mother. Life took over. Many stresses and years went by.
Twenty years later, as a mom with a fulltime career as a leader in the medical imaging profession, with all of the changes life has brought, there’s one thing I have recently found that manages to bring me back to center. The ability to go back to childhood. Forget the stress. Remember where I started.
Fishing.
In the last three years, I met and married the love of my life, Jonathan Handley. Turns out his passion in life has always been fishing. He’s been fishing and guiding the Rogue River for years. Little did I know just how obsessed he was. I soon found out, as I was fishing alongside him every free moment we had, learning all the techniques that he’s been taught and tried throughout the years. He’s taken me for multiday river trips, just us two, me in the front of the drift boat, the only one fishing for days as he gave instruction. Steelhead, salmon, halfpounders – life changing, and through some of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen. It’s a spiritual experience.
To go from the excitement and adrenaline of hooking into a steelhead or salmon, to the more relaxing parts of the river, where the chaos of the world seems to disappear in the sounds of the flowing river, calms the soul.
I get to spend time with the best fishing partner God could have blessed me with. We have had so many adventures fishing together, and a lifetime to go! Rivers in Southern Oregon, Northern California. Ocean kayak fishing – one of the scariest but most exciting things I’ve ever done!
I’m still in awe at the beauty of places fishing can take you. I am forever addicted. And in love.
Up next: fly fishing. I can’t wait! –Melissa
Monroe Handley
“She’s a trooper,” Mike Harcourt says of wife Michelle, here with a Detroit Lake kokanee, caught on a throwback Wallowa Lake monster koke setup. (MIKE
HARCOURT)
PICTURE
“I have been fishing all my life and love it!” says Sharon Horn, who reports fishing three days a week while also working full time. “It was a blast!” she says of fighting this Drano Lake Chinook. “Took line out to 150!” (SHARON HORN) Christina Miller doesn’t just fill stringers, she fills bellies, donating the trout she catches out of Western Oregon lakes to local food share programs. Nicknamed “Trout Slayer/Easy Limit,” the big-hearted angler detailed in 2017 how taking up fishing and the physical challenge of accessing the waters literally helped her fight back against crippling disabilities in one of the most powerful essays we’ve ever run with Real Women of Northwest Fishing.
(CHRISTINA MILLER)
Hard to get any brighter than this great Chinook that Leann Johnston
hooked. (LEANN JOHNSTON)
This 24-pound mid-August Westport Chinook was no match for Linda McDonald and her Lamiglas Classic Glass rod and Shimano Tekota 600HG
reel combo. (LINDA MCDONALD) That mid-August day off the mouth of the Columbia was gray as all get out, but Jamie McLeod and her pink rod, nails and fleece brightened it right up with this chrome fall king! (RICH MCLEOD)
12TH Real Annual
