Julia Bell Pope has spent countless days fishing on Wyoming’s scenic Snake River, but she’ll never forget one day in particular.
Her fly-fishing client for the day was a 6-year-old girl who arrived dressed head-to-toe in pink — and then learned to fly-fish quicker than anyone Pope had ever seen.
“It was like looking at a little version of myself,” Pope recalls upon meeting the girl.
Pope too liked to dress in pink as a girl and was drawing skirts and dresses from a young age, but it was ultimately fly-fishing that would win her heart as a professional passion.
Growing up in Mountain Brook, Pope took camping trips to Western North Carolina with her dad and his cousins, who are avid fly fisherman, so she learned the sport on the Davidson River in the Brevard area.
In her early years, Pope also traveled to national parks in the Western United States with her family; they’d ultimately decided Death Valley in California was their favorite place in the world. Pope even has a picture of herself standing in the Snake River — where she is now a fly-fishing guide — outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, when she was about 6 years old.
While studying fashion at the University of Kentucky, Pope first began to “crave being outside and standing in a river,” she said. “Fly-fishing is very calming and very relaxing. It makes you slow down in really pretty places.”
She’d considered moving to New York or Florence, Italy, after college, but just as the world was shutting down for the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 and she was preparing to graduate, she decided to take a westward turn instead.
Pope would go on to take a “stab at a real-word desk job,” running shipping and logistics at Giv’r Gloves in Jackson Hole for a year and a half, but the whole time she craved being outside and was fishing as much as she could — even if it meant starting her workday at 6 a.m.
So she signed up for a weeklong fly-fishing guide school and started guiding in the summer of 2022.
“It wasn’t ever what I expected to do, but now I don’t see myself doing anything else,” she said.
Pope said her dad’s biggest concern about her working in fishing was that she’d lose her love of it, but “I have found that hasn’t changed one bit,” she said, even as she works many 12-hour days six days a week through the summer.
“I was surprised by how easy it can be to learn to fly-fish if you take some time,” she said. “It’s very approachable and a lot less complicated than people think it is, especially when you have a guide.”
About 98% of the job as a fly-fishing guide is dealing with people, Pope said, which she really enjoys as a “huge people person.”
“You learn a lot about how people work,” she said. “You interact with different walks of life and never know who is going to be in your boat that day.”
Few Female Fly-Fishing Guides
Pope is one of few females in the fly-fishing industry. She is the only female guide out of the 18 on staff with her guide shop, Snake River Angler, and she estimates that five of the guides out of the approximately 250 in the Jackson Hole area are female.
“We call our clients the night before we meet them, and they are sometimes surprised J.B., as I go by in Jackson Hole, is a girl,” she said. “For every negative interaction, though, I have had eight other incredible interactions, and often people request a female guide. Women tend to be a lot more patient, so I think it’s a gentler day.”
Though Pope said fly-fishing can be an intimidating environment, she knows her skin is thick.
“My mom is a lawyer and started practicing when there weren’t a lot of women in law, so I think I have always been around strong women,” she said.
Building on the artistic skills she learned sewing and painting growing up, Pope has also started tying flies and most recently has been using pheasant feathers a client from Wisconsin sent her from his hunting trips for her flies.
“When you get fishy clients — clients who have fished a lot — and they see your flies, it opens up a whole other range of conversation on the boat,” she said.
Pope is also putting her fashion degree to use working with the buyer for Snake River Angler on inventory and meeting with sales reps. It can be hard to find good women’s fly-fishing clothes, she said, but the women’s side is starting to catch up with the men’s.
Simms, a fishing product brand, incorporated a lot of the design ideas Pope and her female colleague shared with them recently, “which is a huge compliment,” she said.
While most of the fly-fishing clothes Pope wears are non-patterned, she always adds a patterned buff, hat, or pair of Chacos “to add a little pizazz,” she said.
“I like to look cute when I guide and wear things that function well,” she said. “I think if you look good, you work better, period, in any job.”
On occasion, she even dons pink.
To book Julia Bell Pope as a fly-fishing guide in Jackson Hole, call Snake River Angler at 307-733-3699 and request her. She recommends booking fly-fishing guides as early as possible when planning a trip to the area.
