A lot of people ask me, “where did you come up with the name “Finny Tribe”? I always smile when someone asks because I love telling this story.

I have a passion for fishing. No, that’s not quite true; I am obsessed with, and consumed by, fishing. It’s always been a very important part of my life. The man responsible for this obsession is my Grandad, Raymond Fleming. Grandad took me on my first fishing trip; we caught trout in a small pond near his cabin outside Tres Ritos, New Mexico when I was 2 years old. Of course, I don’t remember the trip, but I have the pictures. Grandad taught me to fish and made sure I had plenty of fishing trips to keep me occupied. I grew up flyfishing in Colorado; walleye fishing in Lake Meredith near Amarillo, Texas; crappie fishing at Hubbard Creek Lake, Bass Fishing at Amistad Reservior and catfishing in the playa lakes of the Texas Panhandle.

If it swam, I wanted to catch it, and Grandad helped me do that for 40 years. I have no idea where he heard this phrase, or if he simply made it up one day, but he didn’t refer to fishing like everybody else. We didn’t just “go fishing”; that was too boring. We went in search of the “Finny Tribe”. We didn’t cast lures, we would “shoot our bait to the Finny Tribe”. A good cast was a “good shot”. “That’s the way you shoot the bait to the Finny Tribe,” Grandad would exclaim after you made a good cast.

Although we can’t fish together anymore, I keep shootin’ my bait to the Finny Tribe, knowing that he’s doing the same.