When Linda Leary started fly fishing, most women had no choice but to trudge out to the stream in oversized, ill-fitting, and dark-colored gear made for men. After decades of this, Leary started Fishe. It’s one of only a few fishing companies making clothing and gear specifically for women.
And though her designs are eye-catching and feminine, Leary shared that she has a greater mission than mere looks.
“I grew up in Maine, and I used to fly fish with my dad,” Leary told IW Features. “And I carried that passion on when I moved to Alaska.”
Arriving to the Last Frontier state in search of job opportunities, Leary said she began a career in the trucking industry and often took company clients fishing.
Short of driving the trucks herself, Leary worked in every aspect of overseeing and managing a trucking company. After a 10-year stint away from Alaska and in Seattle, she returned to Alaska as president of Carlile Transportation.
“If you ever watched the show Ice Road Truckers when they filmed in Alaska, that was our company,” Leary added.
Shortly after she left Carlisle, she started dreaming up fishing attire and gear for the more than 20 million women who fish. The years she spent managing a large, complex company planted the seed of the skills she uses running Fishe today.
“It’s an underserved market to create clothing gear for gals for fishing,” Leary said. “There are a lot of companies that make products for men that were operating, but they weren’t really designing things to fit women or that women would like.”
In 2015, Leary took the leap and launched Fishe.
“I started in a small office that I leased from a friend of mine,” Leary said, “and took about six months getting the company up and running.”
Though Leary shared that “it’s gone by fast,” she also said that creating Fishe’s signature eye-catching, colorful designs is no easy feat.
“I love art,” Leary said. “When we first started, I really wanted to create beautiful art around fish and celebrate the fish that we all love to catch… We wanted our clothes to have a little fashion take to them and also [be] something you’d go from the river to dinner [in].”
Leary works with primarily female artists to create the designs and oversees the process herself, working closely on coloring, layout, and Fishe’s bold art style. Each design, she said, starts with an illustration based on a real fish, but with a twist.
“The fish could have eyelashes. It might have pinkish lips. It’s definitely a girl fish,” Leary said. “We try to make sure they’re always happy fish—they’re smiling fish. And then we abstract those fish and then create our art.”
In its 11 years, Fishe has grown to sell waders, boots, sun shirts, leggings, bags, and more. And this year, Fishe’s new Brookie 1/4 Zip Thermal won the International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades’ Best Women’s Technical Apparel award.
“It’s not just a pretty pattern,” Leary added. “It’s also made for [women’s] bodies too.”
As fun as Leary said the design process can be, she added that taking a product from design to market is also extremely challenging.
“When I first got into it, people would say, ‘Oh, it’s 18 months to two years to get a product to production,’” she said. “It takes time to come up with the concept, have a designer do the design and the tech packs and the patterns and get it fitted.
From there, Leary explained that finding factories, working on production, shipping, and marketing all bring their unique challenges. But the results in Fishe’s bold and feminine prints speak for themselves, and the company keeps expanding into new products and markets.
Next year, Leary shared Fishe is launching a wader bag with a gear wallet, along with some new collaborations with other brands, adding to their products with companies like OtterBox and Rumbl blankets.
But Leary said that her goal with Fishe’s products goes beyond just form and function.
“I want women to get outside,” Leary said. “It builds confidence… I also own another company called Women’s Fly Fishing, and we teach them to fly fish, and we do hosted trips. Women come to us for a class, and they’re like, ‘I just want to be independent, and I want to know how to tie a fly on… I don’t want to have to have somebody helping me.’”
Leary is also deeply involved with conservation efforts in Alaska, working with Kenai River Sportfishing Association to keep Alaska’s riverways fishable for years to come.
“We’re very active in protecting the fishery,” she said.
Balancing Alaska’s rich natural beauty and natural resources is also a unique challenge to the place Leary calls home, and having also been president of an oil and gas service company, Leary has seen firsthand the pairing of conservation and resource use.
“There’s a way to do some of both, but do it carefully and responsibly,” Leary said. “We have a lot of responsible operators that work here in Alaska, definitely. But if you’re not conserving the environment where the fish live and trying to protect it and take care of it, then you won’t have fish.”
“What I have learned over the years is there are a lot of really good producers out there that really go above and beyond to protect things and take care of the environment far more than what we ourselves personally do probably in [our] own yards,” Leary continued.
Above all else, Leary’s conservation perspective and companies are rooted in her love of fishing and her desire to see women gear up in clothes they feel confident in and get outdoors with equipment made especially for them.
“I just want gals to be feel independent and in charge of their own lives,” Leary said. “They can go out and enjoy the outdoors and build a community of people that they can share that with and fish with.”
