Boyhood experiences led him to believe that everybody went fishing.
These days he’s working toward that goal.
Jesse Cheers
Jimmy Cheers on the South Holston River: “The wildlife changes every single day. Usually on a daily basis, we get to see ospreys, for sure, probably an eagle, maybe a beaver. We have been seeing some otters this year, which has been pretty cool.”
One of Jimmy Cheers’ earliest memories is of cruising Virginia’s South Holston River on a drift boat with his grandfather and dad during the TVA-sponsored River Rat Race, deliberately bringing up the rear and rescuing competitors whose crafts ran into trouble. Cheers was just 4 years old.
As the years passed, the men spent a lot of time on the SoHo and Watauga rivers in search of brown and rainbow trout.
“It was really special when we’d get to fish in the summertime, fishing the Sulphur hatches,” he says. “Not to be arrogant, but I kind of thought that everybody got to fish. I had no idea how lucky I was to have that upbringing. Fast forward 15-plus years, it’s an amazing, amazing river for so many different reasons, and now I’m able to share that resource with people on a daily basis. It’s very fulfilling to get to do that.”
Now 30 and a third-generation fly fishing expert at his family’s outdoor adventure store and guide service, Mountain Sports Ltd., in Bristol, Virginia, Cheers doesn’t appear to have an arrogant bone in his body. Easygoing and fun-loving, with a self-described thick skin—“people never have to worry about hurting my feelings,” he says with a laugh—he also oversees the fly shop.
According to the company website, Cheers “knows the river better than most of the big brown trout living in the SoHo.”
Jesse Cheers
Jimmy Cheers (right) shows off a catch alongside his grandfather, Jimmy Cheers, Sr.
“Well, I didn’t come up with that [phrase],” he says, laughing. “But we fool a few of [the fish] every once in a while. It all boils down to spending more time on the river. Fly fishing guide is my profession and I’m 100 percent immersed in it. I really just love all things about it. On my days off, I do the same thing as the days I’m on. If I’m not fly fishing on my days off, something might be wrong.”
Cheers’ relationship with the river runs so deep, he says, that “I find myself missing it whenever I’m gone. I feel right at home as soon as I step on the boat. It’s not even a transition at this point. I feel just as comfortable on the boat as I do on the land.”
Despite his lifelong obsession with the river, Cheers originally set out to take to the air. But in his senior year of studying aeronautics at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, he realized he didn’t want to fly for a living. After graduation in 2010, he moved to nearby Roanoke to work for Orvis, a leader in the fly fishing industry. At first, he answered phone and email questions from customers.
“They’d say things like, ‘Hey, I’m going to Montana this fall and I’ve never been there. What should I take? Where should I go?’” Cheers remembers. “Or they’d ask, ‘I’ve got this old fishing rod and I don’t know much about it. Can you help me?’”
He later took over the business side of the fly fishing merchandise repair program. In 2016, he moved back home to work at the company started by his grandparents in 1981.
“It was a big decision,” Cheers says. “But it was an easy one to make.”
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The excerpt above appears in our March/April 2019 issue. For the rest of the story and more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription.