GANGGREEN
Active member
- Joined
- May 26, 2016
- Messages
- 145
I've fly fished, at least a bit, for 40 years or a bit more. The problem is that I've had lousy gear for a portion of that time and even since I've gotten some better stuff, I never really committed to learning how to fly fish. Finally as I approached an early retirement, I decided that if I fished for trout (and often if I fished for smallmouth on a river/stream) that I'd take a fly rod and learn to use it. That was several years ago and I now feel quite comfortable with a fly rod in hand and feel like I'm at least an adequate fly fisherman, if not a "good" fly fisherman.
I started when I was a teenager. Found a fly rod that had been broken, so I kept the butt section, found a spinning rod tip and attached the two with thick cord and fingernail polish. What a Frankenstein mess, but I fished with it throughout high school, sometimes riding my bike for 10-15 miles one way to get to a stream with the rod strapped to the frame of the bike. I rarely caught fish with that rig, then was gifted an inexpensive Mitchell fly rod for graduation from the Ross Leffler School of Conservation. I used that rod for years and actually caught a few trout on it. Then moved on to various rods from Cabelas, TFO, etc., but still never really got it.
Recently, I've been able to afford some better stuff from Diamondback, Sage, Orvis, etc. and now I feel like I catch plenty of trout and I frequently outfish the other guys on the stream. It's not the quality of gear though, it's the experience and the willingness to leave a spinning rod at home and to succeed or fail with a fly rod, regardless of the conditions. The truth is that had I taken the position that I WOULD learn to use a fly rod when I was a kid or a young man, I could have and would have done it then. I'd encourage all of the people who come here to read and learn to keep after it and to trust that it's not rocket science and that you can learn to fly fish and enjoy the experience if you simply make the decision to do so and stick with it. Yeah, hiring guides would be nice if price wasn't an issue, but there's SO MUCH information out there these days on websites, social media, video and TV, etc. etc..
I used to enjoy trout fishing, but if it was a choice between fly fishing for trout or fishing for bass, walleye, panfish, etc. out of my boat, the boat almost always won out. That's not the case anymore. I'm retired now and while I still enjoy fishing on the lake, I try to fly fish on a trout stream at least once per week and I sometimes get out twice per week and I've been thoroughly enjoying myself.
I started when I was a teenager. Found a fly rod that had been broken, so I kept the butt section, found a spinning rod tip and attached the two with thick cord and fingernail polish. What a Frankenstein mess, but I fished with it throughout high school, sometimes riding my bike for 10-15 miles one way to get to a stream with the rod strapped to the frame of the bike. I rarely caught fish with that rig, then was gifted an inexpensive Mitchell fly rod for graduation from the Ross Leffler School of Conservation. I used that rod for years and actually caught a few trout on it. Then moved on to various rods from Cabelas, TFO, etc., but still never really got it.
Recently, I've been able to afford some better stuff from Diamondback, Sage, Orvis, etc. and now I feel like I catch plenty of trout and I frequently outfish the other guys on the stream. It's not the quality of gear though, it's the experience and the willingness to leave a spinning rod at home and to succeed or fail with a fly rod, regardless of the conditions. The truth is that had I taken the position that I WOULD learn to use a fly rod when I was a kid or a young man, I could have and would have done it then. I'd encourage all of the people who come here to read and learn to keep after it and to trust that it's not rocket science and that you can learn to fly fish and enjoy the experience if you simply make the decision to do so and stick with it. Yeah, hiring guides would be nice if price wasn't an issue, but there's SO MUCH information out there these days on websites, social media, video and TV, etc. etc..
I used to enjoy trout fishing, but if it was a choice between fly fishing for trout or fishing for bass, walleye, panfish, etc. out of my boat, the boat almost always won out. That's not the case anymore. I'm retired now and while I still enjoy fishing on the lake, I try to fly fish on a trout stream at least once per week and I sometimes get out twice per week and I've been thoroughly enjoying myself.
