Building Relationships: Meet Ted Demetriou

By Admin | February 13, 2022 |

One story that Ted Demetriou tells captures his approach as a fly fishing guide. And one phrase sums up that approach: building relationships.

Building Relationships

The story goes like this. One of Ted’s clients received a gift card for a trip. While gift cards are definitely not unusual, this one trip did take some logistics to get set up. It wasn’t a big deal, just a little different since the actual client for the guided trip hadn’t made the purchase. After a few phone calls to touch base and get the trip dialed in, they spent the day at Deckers.

“Well, it ends up being a great trip. He caught a lot of fish. Just a great day. After the trip, he booked me twice for some other trips, including a trip with his son. I’d say we have turned into good friends, really.”

As Ted talks about other trips and guiding in general, he mentions this idea of working with people, building relationships with the clients, repeatedly.

“I really like to work with the client who wants to know ‘the why’ behind what we are doing. For instance, I’ll pull out my fly box and they’ll be really curious – ‘what are all those?’ It’s those kind of folks who are committed to learning.”

The relationship built between teacher and student, between guide and client, is at the heart of all learning.

“A good trip from my perspective is when the client wants to get better. To really grow as an angler.”

Ted remembers this great outing with Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing — and I am guessing that Cade remembers it, too.

Changing Circumstances

Prior to guiding, Ted worked for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife for about ten years. After graduating from Colorado State University with a Bachelors of Science from the College of Forestry and Natural Resources, he spent his summers working on watershed crews studying fisheries throughout the state.

“That was really fun. I liked doing the population counts on some of the small streams. You think you have a good idea of the numbers of fish there until you shock the stream and discover how many are really there. And there are a lot of fish! You’ll discover some huge browns living [in those small streams], too.”

Around 2016, though, the Parks and Wildlife had a huge layoff and Ted’s position was part of that cut. Near the same time, his mother had suffered a broken back, so he came back to the Springs to care for her and get his feet on the ground after the layoff.

“I decided to take the Colorado Fly Fishing Guide Academy.” That week-long experience launched Ted’s guiding career.

After the Academy, he spent time shadowing more experienced guides to develop his own approach to guiding. And his approach is pretty much a no-frills kind of guy. You’re going to get a full day of fishing with Ted. His approach to lunches, for example, is to make it quick and get back on the water. “It might be a jelly sandwich and chips, and then we’re back out there.”

All of the different personalities you meet in a season really makes guiding a great job.
~~ Ted

Different Challenges

One thing Ted enjoys about guiding is that no two trips are the same. “Each time you go out to the river, you can learn something. And different rivers have different challenges. And each person has different skills and different expectations. Even if the client is an experienced angler but from out of the area, there are always things to learn about local waters.”

At the end of the day, Ted considers the success of a trip not by just how many fish they bring to the net. “I want them to be more independent. Have they grown as an angler?”