February 03, 2026
By Fly Fisherman Staff
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Chuck Furimsky graduated from Penn State and when he was there, he took fly-fishing courses from the legendary George Harvey. In the 1980s he even filmed an interview with the original Penn State instructor, which you’ll glimpse in the video version. From there Chuck went on to start The Fly Fishing Show, a traveling carnival of fly-fishing experts and celebrities that has introduced tens of thousands of people to the joys of fly fishing. Listen to Chuck’s stories about “roasting” Lefty Kreh, introducing new fly tiers like Bob Popovics to the world, and many other stories that come from decades and decades of working with the world’s leading fly-fishing authorities.
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Truncated transcript:
00:00:00.900 --> 00:00:28.000: I went to college. Of course I took the course from another person that you don't know and a lot of people might not know because that was a long time ago. That was in 1963 that I took the course with George. George Harvey. Did you really? Oh … Yeah. Yeah… Oh man, this is amazing. One of the reasons I love doing this podcast is 'cause I learned so many things. I never took his, I you took his Class.
00:00:28.000 --> 00:01:03.720: I hope I'm remembering everything. 'Cause I don't tell everybody how this all started. You were actually one of his students start to be with one question and look what happened. I'm going crazy. But anyway, George was tough. He would come around with his scissors and if your wings were crooked, cut 'em right off with the scissors. Better make those straight the next time. Anyway, I loved the guy and we became friends and every time I went back to trout season at Pennsylvania, it was always at State College. And I would go truck fishing and always stop at his house on Friday and say hello.
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00:01:03.720 --> 00:01:36.300: And he'd check out my equipment. It'd criticize it. I didn't know you had to clean your fly lines. He said, you know, you got all these cracks in your fly line. I said, yeah, I know. It sticks a lot when I ca cast, you know. Anyway, he, he was so instrumental in, in making me love the sport. That was way before I even started thinking about the show.
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00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:46.710: It is our great honor today to be joined by Chuck Furimsky, who knows people like Bob Popovics and Lefty Kreh knew them very well. You are an influential person in the fly fishing industry because you created the Fly Fishing Show, which is a nationwide event that draws tens of thousands of people over the years and has changed the sport of fly fishing. Taught so many people how to Fly Fish. Thank you for joining us today, Chuck.
00:02:46.710 --> 00:03:17.710: Oh, thank you. I'm impressed. I didn't know I was so good. Yeah, you made significant impacts on the sport of fly fishing. Like you, you completely changed our sport and how we communicate with each other, how we fish. Like a lot of these fly fishing greats that influenced us, a lot of them got their start presenting at the Fly Fishing show.
00:03:17.710 --> 00:03:35.110: Absolutely. Yeah. So I wanted to dive into today like how the Fly Fishing Show got started, like little bit of history, take us in the way back time machine and how did the Fly Fishing show get started?
00:03:35.110 --> 00:04:10.840: Well, I had an a visit to a show that actually was one of the first shows I think that was created for all fly fishing people. And that was in Michigan. Was it Detroit? It, it was a, i it wasn't IFF it was FFF at that time. And they put on a, a club show, but it was all fly fishing. I'd never heard of such a thing 'cause I was always at the sportsman shows in Pittsburgh. I was actually an exhibitor there. That's how I first started to think about shows in exhibiting…
