Doug Persico was the heart and mind behind Rock Creek Fisherman’s Mercantile, establishing the business in 1990 and infusing it with his steadfast passion for the art of fly fishing.
Doug’s upbringing in places like New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco might not have hinted at a future as an outdoorsman. He spent most of his life working as a computer programmer for Bank of America, traveling the world, and playing a key role in developing the original credit card.
In 1963, he fell in love with his wife, Carolyn, over their shared appreciation for baseball and the Giants. After learning about Rock Creek from one of their friends in California, Doug and Carolyn began coming up every summer. Over the years, they frequented Rock Creek so much that they built a vacation home 10 miles up the road.
Then, in 1989, a handshake marked a pivotal moment in Doug’s life and the future of recreators at Rock Creek. This handshake sealed a deal between Doug and Jim Ekstrom, where Doug would acquire Jim’s saloon at the entrance to Rock Creek and transform it into a fly shop. Thus, Rock Creek Fisherman’s Mercantile was born. At 50, Doug, along with Carolyn and their grandson, John, left California behind to follow a new journey.
The Merc quickly became more than a fly shop, and Doug was more than a fly shop owner. The Merc held valuable insider knowledge about fly fishing–a sport that is known for intimidating beginners–and, even more, about the intricacies of fishing one of the most precious rivers in Montana. Doug shared his expertise about which flies to use in which hatches, where to fish, what time of day to fish, and how to appreciate and respect the creek and its community. He never charged for a fishing lesson and conducted them frequently. And notably, he did business with a personalized touch. You would often find him sitting outside on his porch, chatting with friends, and smoking a cigar.
“He had a very gruff exterior, but he was a marshmallow,” said Doug’s grandson John. “As soon as you got under that exterior, he was your best friend, and he would go out of his way for you to help you out. He loved fishing, and he loved helping people get into fishing. He really set a legacy here that I’m trying to live up to still. He’d remember people. He liked to socialize, and he would actually talk to people, not at them, which I think is an important distinction.”
This sentiment is reflected in Greg Thomas’s book, “Fly Fisher’s Bible,” when he describes his experience shopping at the Merc and interacting with Doug.
“When I began fly-fishing, approaching fly shops always was an interesting proposition,” Greg wrote. “I found some shop owners totally high-minded and unwilling to lead new anglers into the sport. It was as if their only purpose on earth was to give naive anglers a ration of shit. Doug Persico wasn’t one of those guys. … Don’t get me wrong, Persico can deal out some sarcasm with the best of them. But he does so in a manner that doesn’t confuse. In the end, Persico gives you what you need to know and anglers walk out the door with a firm notion that he’s a man on your side, hopeful that your time on Rock Creek will be memorable. Basically, Doug Persico is one of Montana’s most entertaining fly-fishing characters.”
Doug passed away at age 70 in 2010 following a fight with prostate cancer. If you Google his name, one of the first links to pop up is a string of comments on a website called Classic Fly Rod Forum where anglers around the country mourned his death, writing how they learned the news from a long-distance friend in Missoula or that they stopped by the shop to learn to see him when they were informed of his passing. Reading this conversation among people Doug interacted with describing him as a “landmark to the area” and lamenting on how “the history of the sport will lose one of the good ones” captures the impact he had not only on those local to Rock Creek but the fly fishing world as a whole.
Doug told Greg Thomas in an interview for another one of his books, “Fly Fisher’s Guide to Montana” that Rock Creek is a “world treasure.”
“There is no place like it, and when it’s gone, there won’t be any place to turn,” Doug said.”
See an interview featuring the Merc and Doug for Northwest Backroads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcO4vLZ7S_0