(soothing rhythmic music) (boots splash) - You see all the shells down as you're walking.

- Yeah.

- All the rocks and stuff.

- Oh, this is cool.

- This is all that structure.

This is where food lays underneath those, baby crabs, all sorts of stuff.

- [Alison] Oh my gosh.

I hooked myself.

- [Gian] You got yourself.

- [Alison] (laughs) Yeah, not bad.

- [Gian] I see it.

It's behind the hood back there.

(laughs) You get that cast.

Watch that cast.

- I know.

- There you go, like that.

There it is.

There it is.

So now that you have your motion down, grab that line, you can set it down, you can lay your rod down.

- Oh.

- Boom, lay it out.

Boom, okay.

- [Alison] Ah.

- [Gian] Now this will be flipped around here.

Flip that around.

Pick that up again and start casting it.

But you don't have to have your trigger finger.

- [Alison] Got it.

- [Gian] Now you have this hand.

Go ahead.

(celestial music) (whimsical music) My name is Giancarlo Lawrence.

A lot of people call me Gian, and I'm born and raised here in Tacoma, Washington.

I'm a fly fisherman, I'm a chef, I'm a father.

I love the outdoors.

So anything that has to do with the outdoors, that's me.

- And today we're talking about fly fishing.

- Yes, Ma'am, that's number one.

- Which is, I gotta say, not a thing Black people do.

- Not at all.

- On the list of things we do, fly fishing is like way at the bottom.

- There's about this many of us, you know, hands and toes.

There's not a lot of us so.

- How do you get into fly fishing?

- So, growing up in the suburbs, and being right next to the inner city, I had this like pull back and forth.

In the suburbs, I had kids being like, you're supposed to be like this.

And then you go to the inner city and they're like you're not like this enough.

And I'm just getting yanked back and forth, not really understanding who I am or what I am supposed to be doing.

So I ended up taking this pathway, trying to impress the people around me and trying to be what they say I should be.

And it was bad.

It was horrible.

I got in lots of trouble.

I wasn't heading down the good path at all.

- Wow.

- So when I started fishing and hiking and stuff like that, like I said, my head just turned the other way.

And got fishing with a few friends and I saw a guy fly fishing across the creek from me and he was just catching fish and back and forth nonstop.

All this gear, he is walking in the water.

It was just like beautiful, right, like these old pictures you've seen.

And I knew, I was like, I want to do that.

That's what I want to do.

I want to get in the water, I want to be connected.

And I started fly fishing and it took off.

It opened up so many doors for me - That is so powerful.

And exactly why the outdoors need to be accessible and everybody needs to be able to enjoy them because- - Absolutely.

- I mean, I think about that for my son.

Ultimately, that's why I left New York.

I left New York because I wanted my son to feel exactly the way that you described.

To just know in his bones that the outdoors is his birthright and that being connected to nature is good for you, improves your mental health.

Right, like I want him to have that experience but there's still this war in my mind of just like, fully letting go.

- It's scary.

It really is.

It's, you know, like, especially like black parents kind of almost warn you in a way which is a fault of ours, cuz we wanna protect.

So we're like, oh, don't go out there.

You know, don't be out in the woods.

Like, you be careful cuz like, you'll get hurt by white people out there.

Like things like that, which is great to protect us and stuff, but it's extremely misleading and that stuff sticks to us as we get older.

- You're absolutely right.

I think about that all the time.

The generational trauma that informs the decisions we make.

- Absolutely.

- [Alison] Historically bad things, historically and presently, bad things happen outdoors.

- Absolutely right.

- But that can't be a reason for us never experiencing the beauty and transformative power of the outdoors.

So we're fishing tomorrow.

- [Gian] Yes.

- [Alison] Tell me, what could I expect?

- [Gian] So you're gonna expect, number one a great time.

It's gonna be a bit cold out there and it's probably gonna be windy and stuff, but it's all part of it, you know, it's an experience.

- Yeah, I'm already much warmer.

This is good.

- [Gian] Stuff those things right down the boot.

All right, you ready?

- Let's do it.

- Let's get it.

(laughs) - Oh my gosh.

I feel it like suctioning to my body, right?

(Gian and Alison laugh) I'm still like, am I gonna get wet?

Like what's happening?

- So we can stay, we can fish right about here.

It's a really calming thing.

You really want to just, all you're really doing is flinging this out there but you have to propel it the right way.

It's not like, the tip is not leading the way, the line is leading the way.

So the rod has nothing to do with it anymore.

It's the line, how you lay it out there, right.

So it's like a bounce.

- Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

- Got it.

- Tick-tock, tick-tock, there you go, tick-tock, beautiful.

- Ah-huh.

- [Gian] There it is.

There you go.

That's perfect.

It's a good roll cast.

- [Alison] Thank you.

- Fish.

Got 'em.

(joyful music) Got 'em.

(laughs) - Ah!

- It's funny cuz they're following it the whole way.

Right?

That's a - Oh my gosh.

- Beautiful sea-run cutthroat.

That hook just usually pops right out.

It's barbless.

There they are.

- Wow.

- All we do is just let 'em go.

- Bye buddy.

Oh my gosh.

- Pretty cool.

That easy.

- That was so cool.

- There you are.

- Thank you for an awesome day.

- Thank you for coming out here.

Got you in my backyard.

Got to see what I, you know, what I like to indulge myself in.

- And I totally get it.

I get it.

- This is it.

It's relaxing.

This is meditation.

This is everything.

- Tell me about the power of representation for you being a black angler.

- If 10 black kids can see me fishing and start fishing, and 10 of their friends can see them fishing, that's gonna be something.

- That's exponential.

- In a few years, that's gonna be huge.

In 40 years, that's gonna be, that's what it is.

And I love being like the face for the outsiders, you know?

As as they call it.

I wanna get the outsiders outside.

Yeah, that's what we do.

(whimsical music) - Hear more about this episode on the "Out & Back with Alison Mariella Desir" podcast.

Just search "Out & Back" wherever you listen.

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