The Canadian Fly Fisher is hard work, but founder loves it

"I thought it was just going to be fun, but it's tremendously hard work. I've never worked so hard in my life," says Chris Marshall, founder of the magazine The Canadian Fly Fisher.

Canada's first national fly-fishing magazine has just won Belleville's business award for best service and professionalism for 2007, according to a story by Tara Wilkins in a student blog from Loyalist College.

The magazine debuted in 1999. Marshall worked as an English department head for a local high school for "umpteen years," and retired in 1997 and started the project a year after he retired.

Inspiration for the magazine came when Marshall's wife, Liz, who works at Loyalist College, told Marshall about a student that was starting his own magazine. Liz persuaded Marshall into thinking of doing his own magazine as well.

The magazine started out with just Marshall and his wife onboard but soon he began hiring and recruiting writers, people to do design and lay-out, and photographers. Marshall, an avid fly-fisher himself, had a lot of connections within the field, which benefited him in the long run.

"I was able to get these guys because they were my friends," he said.

The quarterly has grown to 96 pages each issue and has 12 field reporters ranging from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia, and has over 6,000 subscribers. The magazine also publishes a fifth issue called Canadian Hatcher, which gives data to fly fishermen about what flies are hatching a when.

Fly-fishing has been a part of Marshall's life since he was about four years old and was able to catch fish with his bare hands. In his teens Marshall became more serious about fly-fishing. Even though fly-fishing gear was tremendously expensive, he had some help along the way.

"I had a cousin who discovered girls and decided to give up fishing and give me all his gear!" he laughs.