PHWFF Fly Tying Contest Began Five Years Ago With Local Veteran Taking Top Honors

Wherever you see Kevin Gabert, fish are not far away. His fly tying skills work for trout like this one, or for warm water species like those at James A. Reed Conservation Area.

When Kevin Gabert was notified that he had won Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing’s the first-ever National Fly Tying Competition in the Fall of 2013, he thought they had contacted the wrong person.

Gabert’s surprise was understandable. The fledgling Greater Kansas City Program of Project Healing Waters wasn’t even a year old, and Gabert had been a participant for less than that. He had been tying basic flies since he was 10, but not at this level.

Nevertheless, the news was real – Gabert had won.

“I had no idea I’d win,” Gabert says. “When they told me, I thought it must be some mistake.”

The PHWFF Fly Tying Contest is now in its fifth year, running through Sept. 15. In early October, the judging panel will announce five national finalists, who will receive an all-expenses paid trip to participate in the International Fly Tying Symposium in Lancaster, PA, in November. At the conclusion of the Symposium, the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners will be announced, along with two honorable mention winners. Judges include PHWFF volunteer leadership, and celebrity and professional fly tiers.

 A deer hair popper gets a haircut from Kevin Gabert, who learned to spin deer hair from Mike George of Olathe, an internationally renowned fly tyer. Those sessions helped Gabert in the first Project Healing Waters Fly Tying competition.

Gabert, a retired Staff Sergeant, served in the Army from 1984-96 and from 2005-2009. He served in both Gulf Wars and even got in some fishing R&R on Saddam Hussein’s palace grounds in Baghdad.

“I fly fished in Iraq, in a couple of Saddam’s lakes,” he says with a smile. “I used some yellow chenille wrapped around a hook and fished for carp.”

Adjusting to civilian life was difficult for Gabert, as it is for many Veterans. The scars of war, including Post Traumatic Stress, are reluctant to let their victims go. But in January 2013, Gabert found his way to the Kansas City Boat and Sports Show at Bartle Hall, where he met fellow Veteran Mike Davis at the Missouri Trout Fishermen’s Association (MTFA) booth. Davis, Outreach Coordinator for the Greater Kansas City Program, talked to Gabert about Project Healing Waters. Gabert decided to look into it.

“I went to the Sports Show and talked to Mike, and he got me to go to a meeting,” Gabert says. “That first meeting was about rod building, which I’d never done before. It caught my interest.”

The fly tying competition followed the rod building contest. The Greater Kansas City Program is blessed with wonderful support from the fly fishing community, including its MTFA sponsors, K&K Flyfishers, Rainbow Fly Shop, and Mike George, internationally acclaimed fly tyer and a master of tying deer hair flies. Their tutelage has helped the program compete successfully in all of PHWFF’s contests.

“I had two one-hour sessions with Mike George,” says Gabert, in addition to the twice-monthly Healing Waters fly tying sessions. “I also spent about 300 hours practicing at home on my own. I tied a mouse and two different poppers. I guess the judges liked them.”

Indeed they did. Others did, too.

“I got to go to Somerset (NJ) to the International Fly Tying Symposium,” Gabert says. “I got to hang out with Hall of Famers like Bob Clouser and Gary Borger. It was like being on the field for the World Series and playing in the game.

“It was neat. They watched me tie and said, ‘You obviously know what you’re doing.’ That made me feel good.”

Gabert has tied salmon flies, among the most difficult flies to tie, and now pours his own bass jigs. You can see him regularly at James A. Reed Conservation Area in Lee’s Summit, and displaying his catches on Facebook. It’s a process, he says.

“You can’t get disappointed,” he says. “You have to be persistent and don’t get discouraged, don’t give up. When you look at your first 30 flies, you can’t say, ‘This isn’t working.’ You’ve got to keep going back and working on it. It will get better.”

Improvement in fly tying isn’t the only benefit Gabert felt, even if he hadn’t won the PHWFF Fly Tying Contest.

“It was the first time I was able to sit down and focus on something in six years, and have a mission completed without quitting,” he says. “It meant the world to me.”

Paying it forward, Kevin Gabert (right) passes on some of the fly tying techniques he learned in winning the first Project Healing Waters Fly Tying Contest in 2013.