How does a year on the water change a family?
For Eli Lorg — @Fly High Eli — his kids Isla and Axel, and the whole crew, this past year brought more change than any before it. A new home in Wyoming. An unexpected new baby. A brutal winter where Axel broke both legs skiing. And then, on the other side of all of it, the best fly fishing of their lives.
"I look back at my photos from a year ago and I kind of laugh at how much has changed," Eli says.
This isn't just a fishing story. It's the story of a family that sold the fifth wheel, let the kids pick where to live, and built their whole life around chasing trout full time.
Check it out:
They Let the Kids Choose Home
Most families don't hand the map to an 8-year-old. The Lorgs did.
After years of traveling from fishery to fishery, they noticed they kept circling back to the same few places. So they slowed down — and let the kids point to where they'd put down roots. The kids picked a small Wyoming town they'd always loved coming back to, and it became the center of everything: a home base for exploring every river and mountain within reach.
Then Wyoming tested them. Locals call it being Wyoming strong, and the Lorgs earned it fast — Axel broke both legs almost as soon as they settled in. "Now this summer has just been bliss," Eli's wife, Nina, says, "and it's exactly why we moved here." Winter behind them, they've been fishing like crazy ever since. "The southerners out west," she calls them, exploring water they'd only dreamed about.
Watch These Kids Grow Up
Watch Isla drop a streamer like a pro and treat 20-inch fish like they're routine.
"Now my dad doesn't have to tell me back right or back left, I just know it," she says. She talks about being mature on the water now — focusing on landing the fish instead of slapping oars around. And she's already chasing the next skill: running the reel and line entirely on her own. "I want to learn so bad. So I'm going to do it. I'm going to learn."
Here's what her parents see in it. "The things that I've seen them grow in are things that I feel like I did in my 20s," Nina says — the courage to try new things, to be nervous and go anyway. It shows up off the water, too: when the kids started school, teachers reported back on how kind and thoughtful they were with everyone else.
And the big fish? Not luck. They're built on hundreds of missed ones. "There's an expectation that they now know that in order to get what they want, they're going to have to put in work," their mom says. "To see them learn that at 8 and 9 years old is just the reason why we're doing everything that we do."
The Thing Most Anglers Won't Say
Watch Eli hunt big browns, and you'll hear him explain why every great day on the water is built on years of failure.
But listen closely and you'll hear something else — a family that genuinely cares about protecting public water saying the thing most anglers won't: stop killing fish you don't keep.
"It's a natural resource and it's a public resource," Eli says. He still sees dead fish left in the rivers, and it ticks him off. His message to newcomers is simple: get out there, fall in love with it, but don't damage it on your way. Educate yourself — he had to. He came from a warm-water climate and learned everything from scratch. And come for the whole experience, not just the fish. "When you're out there to absorb everything around you, there's a different type of attitude everyone has."
Then He Gets Into the Boat
Eli treats gear like a craftsman treats tools — he wants to know exactly how good a tool really is. So when he tells you the Flycraft is still the boat he runs, it means something.
It's quiet. It's sneaky. That dark bottom keeps fish close. It shrugs off rocks that would wreck a drift boat, and it's light enough to carry over anything. With two kids who are, in his words, "always banging stuff," he loves that it dampens everything. His words for it: an "assassin machine." The toughest tool he owns.
West for trout. Southeast for smallmouth. Everywhere in between. "I've done all types of water," he says. "That's the reason I'm still rocking them."
The Whole Thing Started With One Decision
Get out there and try.
Everything after that — the town the kids picked, the confidence on the water, the kindness their teachers noticed — grew from the same soil. "That's what all of us are obsessed with is failure," Eli says. "And then when you have that success, it's like, holy crap."
Or, as Nina puts it: "It's just been pretty magical to see how much nature can teach us when we don't even realize we're being taught these things."
If you fish from a raft or any other boat, or you're just trying to get your kids on the water, this is the family to follow — and this is the boat that does it all.
The boat that does all this → flycraftusa.com
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