18-Year-Old Lilli Holt Will Be Happy to Teach You Fly Fishing
At age 18, having just graduated high school and with an eye on medical school, Lilli Holt finds that fly fishing is an important component in achieving her life goals.
“Fly fishing has changed my life in helping me know how to overcome problems,” said the Wyoming native. “It’s improved my mental focus. It’s a relaxing thing that helps me focus, learn new skills. Learning fly fishing was difficult and challenging, and sometimes it would get frustrating, but it taught me help over coming challenges in life, to relax and when overcoming the big things.”
Lilli fly fishing in Montana.
As of July 2024, Lilli and her mother, Havely Bauersachs, had just returned from a fly-fishing trip in Dillon, Montana. It was their first fly-fishing trip together and Lilli’s inaugural guided expedition. Lilli thought the trip was “a big deal. Fly fishing has definitely brought my mother and me closer together. It’s enriched our relationship.”
After they returned, she continued preparation to leave for the University of Wyoming where she’ll major in kinesiology, which is the study of human movement to help remove imbalances in the body. She sees the curriculum as a pathway to medical school, with her objective to become a doctor in the biology-intensive practice of functional medicine.
From left: Lilly, Havely and guide Kara fly fishing in Montana.
In a way, you could say that fly fishing is in Lilli’s blood. Her father and grandfather grew up fly fishing on the family property in the mountains of Wyoming. Her 14-year-old brother, Lane, also fly fishes. And her mother, Havely Bauersachs, a fourth-grade teacher, started the PEAK Fish Camp in Wyoming where Lilli eventually became an instructor and mentor. PEAK is an acronym for Promoting, Empowerment, Adventure and Knowledge.
Havely describes the PEAK Fish Camp as “a three-part fly-fishing camp that includes fly-rod casting clinic, fly-tying clinic and then we go our family’s property in the mountains and learn to land and release trout. It’s a place where you can easily catch the big ones. We all wanted to throw a line out there. It’s easy and exciting in the beginning.”
The program is promoted by the Wyoming Game & Fish Department and the National Rifle Association’s First Hunt Foundation. The First Hunt Foundation is a non-profit national organization dedicated to keeping America’s hunting heritage alive through education, mentorships and training for acquiring hunting skills. The PEAK Fish Camp began welcoming students in 2019. Held annually, it’s open to people of all ages who want to learn the basics of fly fishing.
Lilli was already a rifle hunter of antelope, deer and elk before she gravitated to fly fishing. Her journey into the sport closely follows the one of Havely, who didn’t start fly fishing until one day in 2015 “my father stuck a rod in my hand.”
Lilli in the process of mentoring a young girl in fly fishing at the PEAK Fish Camp.
Come 2020, Havely needed some help at the PEAK Fish Camp and asked Lilli to join her. From there, Lilli began practicing her own skills. Two years later, she had learned all the essential skills to mentor other people.
According to Havely, “I felt like she was ready to be mentor because I was watching Lilli’s skill progression. I recognized her confidence, which is what is she does now – give other people the confidence to fly fish.”
One of Lilli’s favorite stories about mentoring at PEAK Fish Camp was teaching her physics teacher how to fly fish. “My teacher loved it.”
Lilli showing her physics teacher how to assemble a fly rod.
She went on to explain that since they live in a small town “people thought it was cool to learn from me. Usually when we have older people, they are willing and open to learn, and some have come with a little bit of background. They were open to trying this new skill.”
Now that Lilli is getting ready for college “the fly fishing has slowed down a lot. I have to focus in other parts of my life. It will still kind of act like a way to take a break from life for second.”
Havely reflected “I think that any activity that you can share with your children is pretty special and of course being able to watch her to grow over the past four, five years has been satisfying and comforting, and fly fishing gives us an opportunity to get together when life gets super busy.”
Lilli agrees: “I want to show my kids and future family how to fly fish.”
Irwin Greenstein is the publisher of Young Awesome Hunter and Shotgun Life (www.shotgunlife.com).
Irwin Greenstein is Publisher of Shotgun Life. Please send your comments to letters@shotgunlife.com.
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