Dave Skok

Official Version
Dave Skok is a Boston-based fly tier, photographer and writer with twenty years of fresh and saltwater fly-fishing experience. He is a two-time winner of the Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby and was lucky enough to be the only fly fisherman in the sixty-year history of the Derby to win the Grand Prize. He has held the IGFA 6-lb. tippet record for Atlantic Bonito since 1994. Dave's skill with rod, vise, pen and camera has been featured in over a dozen books including Bob Veverka's Innovative Saltwater Flies (Stackpole, 1999), Rich Murphy's Fly Fishing for Striped Bass (Wild River Press, 2007) and numerous periodicals including The Drake, Field & Stream, Fish & Fly, Fly Fisherman, Fly Fishing in Saltwaters, Fly Fishing & Tying Journal, Marlin, Motor Boating, Offshore, Saltwater Fly Fishing, Salt Water Sportsman, Sedge & Mayfly (Italy) and Sportfishing amongst others.

Or . . .

The Truth
I was born two weeks late, at one minute after six in the evening, in the spring of 1974 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I mention this seemingly trivial fact only because I think it explains a lot about me; I'm a diehard night owl and tardiness is a problem that has plagued me for thirty years (although I'm a lot better about it nowadays). I grew up in the suburban coastal town of Fairfield, CT where a great part of my youth was spent with a fishing rod in hand, which almost any faculty member of the Fairfield public school system could attest to.

My parents separated when I was just a little tyke and my fishing education benefited from this tremendously. My mother would take me to the Housatonic and Farmington Rivers to fly fish for trout on one weekend day and my Dad would take me saltwater fishing the other. I brought it all together when I was fifteen by scoring a handful of fly-caught schoolie stripers in the back of Southport Harbor.

I began tying flies when I was ten years old. Like many before me, I thought I could save money by making flies rather than buying them. WRONG! By the time I was sixteen I was selling #24 Blue-Winged Olive parachutes to the local fly shop and soon after I tied about 1,000,000,000,000 popper tails (or at least it felt that way) for the now-defunct Mystic Bay Flies.

Two events really lit the salty flame for me. The first was a trip to fish the Watch Hill reefs with Capt. Steve Burnett (http://www.fishwatchhill.com/captain_steve.htm). I took my first fly rod 3-footer that day and also witnessed squid-frenzied bass for the first time. WOW. Not long after, I spent an entire summer on Cape Cod and Nantucket. I went to the Cape to be an instructor for the inaugural season of the Orvis saltwater fly fishing school. I didn't care for teaching the school all that much, but I sure didn't mind having the other four days of the week off to fish and spin bugs! Our dumpy Dennis apartment was condemned mid-summer due to some plumbing issues (it's a long story - ask me about it sometime for a laugh, though) and I ended up spending the remainder of August on Nantucket with my then girlfriend and her Dad. Having grown up fishing Long Island Sound and Catskill trout streams I was completely blown away by the quality and diversity of the Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard fisheries (I had been there before - thought it was too crowded; I know better now).

After employment at Mystic Bay and a part-time fly shop tour-of-duty, I moved to Boston in 1997 to run the fishing department at the Orvis corporate store. I stayed at Orvis Boston for a year-and-a-half before again pursuing a lifestyle where I could hopefully work less and fish more. Unfortunately, I have been only partially successful in that pursuit as I definitely do fish longer and more often now, but that damn work thing still keeps getting in the way.

I currently reside in Winthrop, Massachusetts, a small peninsular suburb only five miles from downtown Boston; it's a cool place to live if you're an urban fisherman. I can check one of my favorite fall-time blitz spots from my porch and I can still hop on the T and be downtown in half an hour. Most of my winter days are spent either tying flies, writing about tying flies, thinking about tying flies or traveling to fly-tying classes and fly-fishing shows. It's a little tougher to track me down in the summer and fall when I'm crazed and running around New England in hot pursuit of stripers and blues, bones and albies, skippies and bluefin and even an occasional trout.

Not a bad life, but I've still got to work on that "work less, fish more" program.

See what Dave Skok is up to at: www.dwskok.com

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