Casting Call

Todd Holman says his profession and his hobby have at least one thing in common. “Commercial real estate sales is a lot like fly-fishing in one respect: You spend a lot of time throwing at the target, and every once in a while you catch one.”

Holman, a broker with Woodyard & Associates Commercial Real Estate in Fort Myers, took up fishing about 10 years ago and fly-fishing a few years after that. “I saw a guy fly-fishing and it was just a neat thing; the line was folding and refolding. It looked like much more of a challenge than spin fishing,” he says.

It’s not just about catching fish, he adds. Much of the pleasure and challenge comes from improving one’s casting technique and learning to tie effective flies. Like golf, which is more about the stroke than the hole-in-one, “Fly-fishing is not about landing, it’s about casting,” he says. And like golf, it’s a “lifetime sport” that can continually be improved upon.

Does he golf, too?

“I could not possibly take up two frustrating sports at the same time,” he says, laughing again. “I used to golf. I never was a good golfer.”

He describes fly-fishing as “a way for me to get my mind off business for a while. When you’re casting, you have to be completely focused on what you’re doing.”

But he doesn’t get too far away from business. The fly-fishing buddies he goes with on a regular basis are all in the same business—for other brokerages, plus one “concrete guy,” he says. In the summer months, until hunting season begins, he and his companions can be found casting for redfish, trout and snook along the beaches of Sanibel, Captiva and Cayo Costa and around Pine Island Sound and Matlacha.

Last year, Holman hooked a snook he figures weighed about 20 pounds.

“It was exciting while it lasted. He broke me off after about six-minute fight,” he says. “But the 20-pounders are few and far between. We say it was 20 pounds, but it’s always the big ones that get away.”