Aspen Olympic ski racer Andy Mill headed to another hall of fame — this time for sport fishing
Courtesy photo
Who is Andy Mill?
Yes, he’s a two-time Olympic ski racer and an Aspen legend on snow. But if you ask him, his best sport is fishing, and he’s about to add some serious weight to that argument.
On Feb. 19, the International Game Fish Association (IGFA), the sport’s leading international authority, announced its 2025 Hall of Fame class, a list that includes Mill. The induction ceremony is Sept. 6 in Springfield, Missouri.
Notable members of the IGFA hall of fame already include famed author Ernest Hemingway and former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.
“My life as a fisherman was better,” Mill recently told The Aspen Times when comparing fishing to skiing. “Because people say, ‘You were a great skier,’ and I’ve always come to the conclusion — a hard fact — that no, great skiers win the Olympics. Great ones don’t finish sixth. It’s all kind of relative. But in the fishing world, I won all that stuff. I felt very fortunate to have a second chance at a sport like fishing because a lot of times, you don’t have a second chance to do something great.”
A Colorado native who briefly lived in Wyoming, a 7-year-old Mill moved with his family to Aspen in 1960. His racing career dominated his early life, and he would become one of the best downhill skiers in U.S. history. He went to both the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, finishing sixth in the former’s downhill race. He also competed in four world championships and was inducted into the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame in 1994.
He’s even in the Aspen Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2022.
For a spell after retiring from ski racing, he served as a racing commentator and even hosted his own show, “Ski with Andy Mill.” But none of this was all that exciting for a man who had spent much of his life pushing the boundaries of speed and competition.
Fishing brought that passion back into his life.
“It was flatlined in the fact there was no real excitement with all that. I hated broadcasting. I hated calling the Olympics,” he admitted. “But when I got the phone call from the Versus Network (now NBC Sports Network), now I had the chance to go do something exciting again, like chase these big fish all over the world for the next nine years and get paid for it.”
He hosted “Sportsman’s Journal with Andy Mill” and made around 100 episodes where he traveled the globe chasing after some of the biggest fish. He also became one of the best tarpon fishers on the planet, winning five Gold Cups. His tabletop book, “A Passion for Tarpon,” is considered one of the best ever printed on the topic and includes a forward from President Bush.
“To do what I did as a fisherman is my greatest achievement, for sure,” Mill said. “I gravitated toward winning all the tarpon tournaments. And for about 15 years, that’s what I was focused on. I fished for tarpon with fly rods for probably 50 to 60 days a year, and I’ve done that for almost 40 years now.”
While fishing dominated his career later in life, it’s always been at the forefront of his being. He recalled heading to baseball practice one day as a child and, for the first time, seeing people practice fly casting at Aspen’s Wagner Park.
He grew up on the shores of the Roaring Fork River and remembers that fishing its waters was much different then than it is today.
“Here in Aspen when I was very young, I was connected to fishing as much as I was skiing,” he said. “The Aspen valley, it was so fun to fish here back then because that was before “The River Runs Through It” came out and people started gravitating to fly fishing. As a youngster, we had a chance to fish this river when no one else was fishing. It was ours.”
Mill is currently on the IGFA Board of Trustees and has long been the emcee for its hall of fame induction ceremonies, a role he’ll give up for at least this year. His son, Nicky Mill, is a fishing guide in Aspen who produces the popular “Mill House” podcast alongside his father. Yes, it’s about fishing.
Before heading to the induction ceremony in Springfield — they moved the ceremony up a week, so Mill could fit in a decent amount of elk hunting after — he will head to Bolivia to chase after the golden dorado, a popular sport fish in the Amazon region.
“That’s what I love to do. I love hunting fish, where you see them before you ever throw your fly,” he said. “I want to go chase and target a fish. That’s what really gets my blood going, is when you see that thing out there.”
Aspen Olympic ski racer Andy Mill headed to another hall of fame — this time for sport fishing
“I felt very fortunate to have a second chance at a sport like fishing, because a lot of times you don’t have a second chance to do something great.”
