Jun 17, 2018
Matt Smythe enlisted in the Army as a senior in high school at the medium-rare age of 17, serving for 8 years before heading home to grow his hair long on top and change majors 7 times in college. Back in the late 90s, as an undergrad, he was hired as the diener at Genesee Hospital in Rochester, NY. Over the course of a year he performed 56 autopsies and removed 11 brains from the skulls of their previous owners to be fixed in formalin and scrutinized by Pathologists. Matt also worked at an environmental chem lab, as a bouncer at a college bar, and coached high school varsity lacrosse. After earning a Master’s in poetry, having three kids, and learning how to cast a fly rod, he discovered the joys of writing advertising copy and blogging and wound up placing work in the Fly Fish Journal, Drake, SCOF, Revive, Midcurrent, and a handful of other non-fishing-related magazines and journals. Matt is now the Communications Director for the American Fly Fishing Trade Association and lives with his family and a couple dogs in the Finger Lakes Region of Western NY.