Fly-fishing for women only: executive stress reliever.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: TOURISM

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No phones, no computer, no walls--and no men. This, fly-fishing guru Cecilia "Pudge" Kleinkauf says, is the perfect prescription for women executives who need a little stress relief from a lot of job. And it's exactly what she has been offering working women for the past 25 years, instructing and guiding female-only fly-fishing trips on some of the state's most remote and remarkable waterways in areas such as Brooks River, Lake Clark, the Denali Highway, Cordova, Nome, Wood Tikchik State Park, Kodiak and the Kenai Peninsula.

Although her clients are all ages, skill levels and from all walks of life, including mothers, divorcees, widows, and those battling health problems or other personal issues, one thing they all agree on, she says, is how soothing fly-fishing is.

"It's wonderful to be outside with no telephones ringing, no subordinates needing their help, no pressing deadlines, or any of the other things that cause stress in the working world. These trips allow them to be somewhere all of those things aren't," Kleinkauf says.

As far as Pam Finnesand is concerned, whether she catches fish on the annual trips she takes with Kleinkauf's company, Women's Flyfishing, has little to do with whether she considers the outing a success--though she can only remember one time when she went home empty-handed, the trip was still the highlight of her year. As president and chief executive officer of Ahtna Support and Training Services, where she averages 60-hour workweeks, Finnesand says, just as much as the fly-fishing, she relishes the one time of the year when she's not thinking of business. Even when going on a cruise, she says, there was an Internet connection so the temptation to check in with the office was too great. But on Kleinkauf's trips, the locations are so remote it's impossible to have any contact with the outside world.

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"It gives me a real chance to renew, rejuvenate and have a week of self-reflection because when I'm out fishing, I'm pretty much on the water in a world by myself."

As she prepares to go on Kleinkauf's Nome trip this month--one of her favorites because of the trophy-size Arctic grayling that average 20 inches--looking back Finnesand says she sought out Kleinkauf's expertise 15 years ago after a fishing trip on the Kenai River when she saw another angler land a fish on a fly rod in just under 15 minutes, while those around him had been casting for hours. Although she talked...