A lot of words can accurately describe Gil Nyerges: teacher, artist, craftsman. To some Whidbey Island anglers, he’s a legend.
But the 93-year-old Langley resident waves off such compliments. He maintains he’s just a guy who fell in love with fishing, a long time ago, on the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio. Armed with a 20-foot bamboo pole and a bit of line on the end — it had no reel — he learned from his father the basics of a past time he would later characterize as a “science,” an “art form.”