Dale Greenley (Myrtle Creek) is a fly tyer and angler who grew up doing both on the North Umpqua River near Roseburg. He's worked as a fishing guide on the Umpqua, but his real passion is tying flies, which he did that commercially for many years for Orvis.
Bio
Dale Greenley is a well-known fly tyer and angler who grew up doing both on the North Umpqua River near Roseburg. He's worked as a fishing guide on both the North and South Umpqua (mostly wading but some on the South Umpqua in a drift boat) as well as in Steamboat, but his real passion is tying flies. He did that commercially for many years for Orvis, tying nights and weekends so he'd make enough to fish during the week. A microbiologist before retirement, his passion was and remains tying flies and fly fishing.
Greenley grew up in Roseburg and got started tying flies when he received a kit for Christmas one year. This gift coincided with new neighbors moving in with a son his age. That twist of fate began a lifelong friendship between Gary Lewis and Greenley who have been friends and fishing buddies for over 60 years. Lewis’s father also fished and tied flies and frequently took both boys fishing. Joe Howell was another major influence on Greenley. The started a field and stream club in high school and began fishing and tying together. As boys, none of them had any money to buy materials; they made do with fur and feathers from animals they shot or trapped such as muskrats, ducks, deer, and elk. Greenley remembers even raiding his mother’s sewing basket for yarn to use for their flies. He explained that they learned “from each other, and you pick up little things. . . . . Like anything, the more you do, the better you get.” Learning remains an important part of Greenley’s passion for fishing, and he continues to pick up knowledge from colleagues, especially from Howell. He explained, “my flies are for fishing; Joe's are for putting on walls.”
For Greenley, “fishing is about learning to read the water, watching the current lines, the underwater structure will tell you all you need to know. . . . Each fish goes to same spot, likes certain current conditions.” While he continues to enjoy tying flies, he also noted that “flies are really for the fishermen and not the fish—they’re colorblind.” He's fished with just a piece of yarn and loves to challenge other fly-tyers about the mystique of specialty flies.
Greenley speaks lyrically about the North Umpqua River, which he regards as the prettiest river anywhere. The clarity and turquoise color of his boyhood memories have changed, he explained, thanks to logging, which has disrupted the 3-4 feet of duff along the riverbanks. The duff filtered the winter snow melt slowly throughout the summer and kept the river clean, clear, and cold. Now there are algae blooms because the river is warmer. According to Greenley, it’ll be another 300-400 years to build back that duff; “it takes time.”
Dale Greenley is an easy talker, a talent that lent itself to his time as a fishing guide. Being a guide involved driving along the North Umpqua and stopping to wade and then fish in pools where fish congregate. The Umpqua, he explained, is a treacherousness river, and he always took care to make sure his customers were safe. He took such care that he doesn’t have a lot of disaster stories to tell. The closest he came was taking fire hall buddies out in his drift boat when the water was low; they grazed a rock and nearly flipped the boat. Most of his talk to clients had to do with the river and the surrounding forests, which he loves passionately. Greenley’s method of guiding was, he said, to get folks to the point where they didn’t need him.