About Us

Somehow, I had gotten my hands on a copy of Fly Fisherman Magazine, and I decided that for my 15th Christmas, I wanted a fly rod. I'm not sure if you can see where this story is headed, but I didn't get one. My dad rationalized that it was winter and I couldn't fly-fish anyway and that, regardless, he didn't think I really wanted to learn to fly-fish. He had known how to fly-fish in his youth and had abandoned it entirely before I was born in favor of spin fishing. Let's suffice it to say that I did not react well that Christmas morning. I wore my disappointment in true 15-year-old fashion.

In April of that year, I turned 16, and I told my parents I didn't even want the keys to the car. I just wanted a fly rod. Having by then seen the light, they got me a fly rod. An old fiberglass Fenwick with an automatic reel that must have weighed five pounds. My parents also generously gave me the keys to my mother's old Chrysler LeBaron convertible, a car that already had a well-worn 100,000-plus miles on it and was not ideal for Forest Service roads.

I literally do not remember how it started, I began heading to our own little "Saint Vrain" with a local minister's grandson in an effort to teach myself to fly-fish, something I don't recommend anyone doing. I loved it. It was magical. In that first year, I can't even say whether I caught more than one fish, but it was at that point that I decided standing thigh-deep in rushing water, waiting for a trout to rise, had therapeutic powers beyond anything I had ever experienced. I was hooked, as they say. The river showed up when I needed it most.

That fall, I went to college, still at age 16, with pretty much no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I changed majors three times during my first semester. But I also did a lot of fly-fishing while trying to figure it out. In the spring of my freshman year, I convinced my parents I had an afternoon class that did not even exist so I could sneak off to the river to fly-fish one of the only catch-and-release mountain streams I knew of in what were my earliest efforts to perfect my craft (sorry, Mom, that you're just finding this out now). The following year, I transferred to West Virginia University, a mountain girl in the mountains, and started fly-fishing in the heart of Appalachia.

I worked full time in undergrad and went to school full time. The days were long, but on the weekends the river always beckoned. It was then that I first attended a Trout Unlimited meeting of the P. Pendleton Kennedy Chapter, a chapter I would later lead as president, once in my 20s and again in my 40s. There, I met a guy who would ultimately become a West Virginia fisheries biologist.

"Have you fished the Elk River? You HAVE to fish the Elk River," he said.

And fish it we did.

The first time I went there, I was very close to God, which is to say that I prayed fervently that I would catch at least one fish and not make a total fool of myself in front of everyone, a prayer I still repeat at times. It was the heyday of the Elk, then a river of 100-fish days.

And there our story comes full circle. On that very first night on the Elk River, after gathering around the Mill Pool to fly-fish the evening hatch until dark with David the Biologist, Charlie the Trout Bum, Dave the Guide, and Ken, a retired Navy admiral many simply called "The Old Man," someone cracked open a bottle of bourbon and poured it into my blue enameled Coleman tin cup in the moonlight. We told fish story after fish story, sitting on tailgates beneath a black Appalachian sky.

These people were immediately my tribe, bourbon immediately my drink, fly-fishing still my avocation, and the river ever-growing as my soul place.

That river, and the trout who live in it, along with so many others, have had their challenges. Appalachia is an odd and fickle mistress, one of the most beautiful places on earth, constantly fighting against absentee land ownership, power lines, and data centers. From coal mines to Clorox, the rivers have many enemies, and the cold, clean waters trout need are harder and harder to come by and harder and harder to protect. Protections lessen. Development encroaches. Global temperatures rise. And the trout soldier on.

Years later, I would discover the wilds of Montana, a place where I have always told people I can just breathe easier. It was the West before the characters changed. Rivers that the wildest trout I had ever met called home. The Montana before Yellowstone (spoiler alert... that wasn't actually filmed in Bozeman, people). Mountains that took my breath away... and then gave it back. And the bluest sky that stretched on forever.

I would discover drift boats and rodeos and wild huckleberries. Owls and bison and national parks. Cutthroats and fly shops and new friends. Backpacking and winds like I had never felt, and pancake breakfasts that fed 1,000.

And through it all, from Appalachia to Montana, two constants persisted in the creation of magic, never separated by more than a few hours: trout streams and whiskey. Both dependent on cold, clean water... and that is where we take it from here.

Catch & Release Distilling was founded to be there for the river and for all the waters we fly-fish, from Maine to Florida and from West Virginia to Oregon. To celebrate the whiskey that ends so many days on the water and the trout who live in the rivers and streams that run through wild mountains, both dependent on the cold, clean waters from Appalachia to Montana.

Catch & Release Distilling was founded as a celebration of those two water-dependent treasures and as a means to positively impact cold, clean water and the people who value it.

The river has always been there for us.

It's time we show up for it.

Kentucky gave us the bourbon.

The trout gave us the inspiration.

Their cold water gives us the reason.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. Cheers to days shared. To an ever-growing tribe of fly fishers who love bourbon and trout and who respect the cold water they need. Cheers to Good Water, Good Whiskey, and No Bad Days.

A lifetime on the water.

From somewhere in Montana,

Jacquelyn