WORTH HER SALT
SALTWATER FLY GUIDE ABBIE SCHUSTER IS MAKING A PLACE FOR HERSELF IN A MALE-DOMINATED INDUSTRY
In a male-dominated profession, saltwater fly-fishing guide Abbie Schuster has earned the trust of clients who return year after year. By KRISTA KARLSON
AAbbie Schuster gazes out the window of her old, red pickup truck at beaches swamped with anglers during the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. Her black Lab, Rupert, is seated beside her. Clouser minnows, squid patterns and sand eels adorn the headliner, and there’s enough sand in the foot wells for a small beach. Rumor has it that if a client is a good caster, Rupert sits on the angler’s lap on the way home. As we roll along Beach Road, passing through Joseph Sylvia State Beach on the island’s east side, Schuster points to the spot where she learned to fly-fish as a kid with her father. Her grandmother lived on the island off Massachusetts year-round, and her family, who lived in Connecticut, visited often during summers. “My dad was the patient one,” she says. “He’s a good teacher.” Tanned with a wind-whipped ponytail, Schuster inherited her father’s qualities as a good educator. At 29, the saltwater fly guide teaches casting with a gentleness that makes anything feel possible, and with the wisdom of a guide twice her age. Schuster’s passion for fishing grew when she attended the University of Montana, where she earned a degree in environmental studies. Fly-fishing on the Clark Fork River helped her make friends, and when she learned that she could get paid to fish, she signed up for Sweetwater Guide School in Livingston, Montana. It was an intense one-week program. Around the same time, she caught her first bonefish with her father in the Bahamas. It weighed 11 pounds, larger than her father’s best bony. It remains her most memorable catch.
Schuster graduated from college in 2012 and started a