A small shop on Church Street keeps fly fishing alive in Fairhope
Walk down Church Street in downtown Fairhope and you may spot him: Spencer Johnson, out on the pavement, walking a beginner through the smooth rhythm of a fly cast. It has become part of the town’s character. Behind the storefront that now houses Willow + Gray Home — once The Church Mouse — at 14 Church Street sits the Fairhope Fly Shop, a small but fully stocked outpost for one of angling’s most demanding disciplines.
Johnson sells everything an angler needs to start, and just as important, he teaches. Casting lessons happen on the street outside the shop, and fly-tying classes run throughout the year — fair warning, his classes come with homework.
Hooked at ten years old
Johnson’s own story starts on a family farm in Macon County, Alabama. Fishing a pond on his 10th birthday, he landed eleven bluegill weighing more than twelve pounds, and the fly rod never left his hands. His first rod was an L.L. Bean special. In high school in Tuskegee he was a 5-foot-6 offensive guard and remains the only player from that school to make all-state two years running. Farming, quail raising and corporate fishing-guide work followed, until his brother-in-law persuaded him to move to Fairhope. There he and his wife Mary Ann opened an antiques business, The Church Mouse, alongside the fly shop — more than two decades ago now.
The antique trade took the couple to England, Scotland and Ireland every year, and Johnson took his fly rod along. His one great regret from those travels, he admits: he never landed a Scottish salmon.
The Lefty Kreh lesson
Even accomplished anglers can plateau. For Johnson, the turning point came about two decades ago at the Fly-Fishing Show in Denver, when he met Lefty Kreh, widely considered the preeminent fly fisherman of the modern era. “Lefty Kreh’s cast is the most important thing I’ve learned about fly fishing,” Johnson says. He now teaches that cast to customers, with an emphasis on protecting the rotator cuff — think of a polished two-by-four held perfectly parallel to the ground. The roll cast, the double haul, and kayak casting each get their own instruction.
A shop stocked for beginners and experts
The store is small but covers the full waterline: rods, reels, line, backing, nets, clothing and footwear from brands like Bauer, Cortland, Echo, G. Loomis, Guy Harvey, Hardy, Nautilus, Scientific Anglers, Temple Fork, Van Staal and Waterworks-Lamson. Johnson’s real passion, though, is the vise. His hand-tied flies are the shop’s showpiece, each pattern matched to local fish.
The Arctic Fox pattern, he explains, imitates a sand flea in bright colors and draws strikes from pompano running the Gulf beaches, along with sheepshead and largemouth bass. Mantis shrimp Clouser minnows are a local favorite, tied in different materials and colors depending on the target. For redfish, he reaches for a bright, oversized gold mylar fly that he calls simply “the best.”
Learning to tie, learning to fish
Fly-tying classes are capped at four or five students and run one day a week for five weeks, homework included. Johnson has taught hundreds of students over more than two decades, and his motto doubles as his business plan: “If you tie a fly, you will fish.”
He also carries a message about the waters themselves. Johnson wants the community to do better keeping local rivers and bays clean and healthy — the same waters his customers fish. For anyone curious why fly anglers are so passionate about the sport, he points newcomers to Harold Raines’ “Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis,” and for the serious student, Lefty Kreh’s own “Little Library of Fly Fishing.”
Tucked behind an antiques storefront on a quiet street, the Fairhope Fly Shop remains one of the Eastern Shore’s more distinctive small businesses — part classroom, part workshop, and entirely a labor of love.