How did you get into fly fishing?

[Chromez 0]

I've been fishing for as long as I can remember,ever since I was a young boy. My dad and I only seemed to get along and talk when we were fishing and to this day its remained therapeutic. He had fly fished a few times but never really took to it as a regular hobby. I learned everything I know about fishing from my dad and mimicked all of his techniques for years never really coming into my own. Up until this year I honestly never really had any interest in fly fishing as it seemed to me that learning to fly fish after all these years of using a spinning setup would be too difficult and time consuming. I'm ashamed to say that because I was totally misunderstanding the beauty and finesse of it. This year during the summer steelhead (skamania) run my interest was sparked. A few locals that I had been fishing with brought out their fly rods and I was amazed. At this time I had been throwing spawn bags under a float with little luck. The fish were definitely there,as a matter of fact it was one of the best summer runs I'd seen in years. So I went out and bought a cheap rod and reel combo with couple flies and hit the river. I remember the first thing I thought was I don't even care if I catch a fish right now because there was something so surreal about being that close to the fish. Feeling the water flow and listening to the creeks pitter patter over the rocks it felt so natural to be there. I lost track of time I was there for nearly 5 hours with only a few bites but I didnt care and I knew this was something I wanted to pursue long term. I began reading everything I could and soon buying flies wasn't cutting it, I had to tie. There is a certain satisfaction when you hook up with a fish on a fly you tied with your own hands. Its telling you "you're doing something right". That's my story and I hope to read some of yours. I also want to thank all the members of this forum for being so welcoming and patient with beginners its awesome to see. So many forums have a way of dividing experts and beginners and here there is a real community feeling that I've really come to appreciate so thank you all.

[Crackaig 0]

Back in the 1960's and '70's there were several TV series on UK TV featuring Jack Hargreaves, mostly about country crafts. A Walk in the Old Country is perhaps the most well known of them. As a child I was an avid watcher of them, usually with my father. One day, after arriving home from school, there was one such program on; it was about the management and fishing of a river, including fly tying. A very different river to the local open sewers of the industrial north. When my father arrived home from work I was keen to tell him about it. I recall saying that that was the kind of fishing I wanted to do.

 

Many years later I was posted to RAF Kinloss in the Highlands of Scotland. That was the first opportunity I had to start fly fishing. There was fly fishing close to home, but not as available to me as it was in the north of Scotland. At that time I bought some fly tying materials and had a go. Not brilliant but they worked.

 

After leaving the Royal Air Force, and spending some time in the middle east, I returned to my home area. At that time I met up with Alan Roe. He taught me the basics of fly tying techniques. It's all his fault. The rest is history. One which I may set down on paper some day

 

As for helping beginners, well I was there once, and at a time when the help was not so available. I am just paying forward what I learned.

 

Cheers,

C.

[flytire 0]

the recreation department where i used to work in the early 1980's was offering free fly tying and fly fishing classes. i have been doing both since then. thats my story and i'm sticking to it!

[JSzymczyk 0]

I grew up fishing. I had a fishing rod in my had as soon as I could stand upright. Maybe earlier. As a 9 or 10 year old kid in the late 70s I started making spinning lures, and dressing treble hooks. It was a short jump from there to tying bucktail jigs, then tying flies. My Dad had a fly rod but had largely stopped using it, he was more content in the types of fishing he did with spinning tackle. He had fly fished extensively for trout in the past.

 

One fly rod, a level line, and go figure it out. Caught a hell of a lot of fish before learning how complicated and advanced fly fishing was supposed to be....

 

I grew up in an area where fishing is what we DID. We skipped school to go fishing. We fished for EVERYTHING. My buddies and I used to catch carp on flies in one of the local creeks just because we were bored and nothing else was biting... Little could we ever imagine that fly fishing for CARP would become a fad and people with a lot of money would pay large to go do it.

 

In fact pretty much all of my "hobbies"... I've been doing since I was child. A child with minimal resources but a lot of resourcefulness. Probably that is why I have a misunderstanding of all the BS in fly fishing (and other things too) when people come into it as an adult and say "I am going to do that" and then get told by a hundred people what they NEED in order to get into it.

[mikechell 0]

As with others, I've been fishing most of my life. Spinning gear and fly fishing were the two ways my Dad and my Grandpa (Mother's side) taught me. My Dad was very restrictive in his method of teaching, because he was tight with his money. He made every purchase feel like it was ripping him apart. Cheap, I think, is the adjective that best fits his demeanor ... but I seemed to have inherited it. Although I am not nearly as dramatic about it as he was.

 

So ... I've fly fished, on and off, for my entire adult life. There were times when I didn't pick up a fly rod for years. During my time in the military, I was stationed on the North Carolina east coast. I had plenty of time, a van and, for the first time in my life, a boat. I found out that fly fishing was a great way to catch fish in the brackish waters I found my self in. It was also a fantastic search bait for BIG bass. Not by catching them, but by pointing to their existence through lack of sunfish.

 

Fly fishing was a blast, and always produced eating sized sunfish. But I was more into bass at the time. Anytime the sunfish stopped hitting, I'd grab a spinning rod with a large Rapala or worm on it and BOOM, catch a very nice sized bass. Being cheap, I only had one fly rod, and never even thought of tying on a bass sized fly.

Since fly fishing was more of a search method, I didn't want to spend money on flies, and started tying my own to save money.

 

It worked. I tied poppers to catch sunfish.

 

Now, I am fly fishing 90% of the time. Now, though, the sunfish are all I really want to catch. If I get a bass, great, but I am not searching for them any more. I still tie flies to save money and it still works. The only difference is, I tie a few more patterns. Not only poppers, but subsurface and bottom hugging flies, to cover the entire water column.

[Steeldrifter 0]

I've been an angler my entire life, Dad started taking me fishing when I was only about 3-4 yrs old back in the early 70's with spin gear. Then about 1989 my Grandfather passed away and while my Dad & I were cleaning my Grandfathers basement I came across Grandpa's old fly rod tube with his 1950's glass fly rod in it. That was the start of a life long passion for me at that point. I put down the spin gear and have been fly fishing for the past 25 years now and it's been the driving factor in my life every since.

[ihang10 0]

I fished all my life, but never with a fly. A couple of years ago I recived a fly rod/reel as a gift. It sat for a year unopened because I didn't know the first thing about fly fishing. Fast forward, I was on a fishing trip with a guy and he was catching fish 5:1 compared to everyone else. Later in the month I had two weeks off, learned the basics of casting and techniques and that was it. Addicted.

[ditz2 0]

I started fishing when I was about 5 or 6 by soaking a worm under a big red bobber on a bait casting reel that would cast at least 10' if you had a 6oz sinker on it. Thick ole black braid for line and 1/0 hooks. I sat on the bank and watched the fish eating bugs off the water and longed to figure out how to cast some of the flies that Sears sold. When I was about 13 Dad and I took a rare day trip to a lake that had a row boat rental and that evening I saw an adult male and what appeared to be his father fly fishing a lilly pad edge for sunfish and was hooked. I just did not know how to get started. Indiana was not exactly a fly fishing mecca. A couple of years later I heard about a fella that fly fished for bass so I looked him up and tried to start a conversation but he did not seem to have any interest in discussing it with me so I did not press it further. When I got my first full time job I was in a Kmart and found a Shakespeare combo and I bought it and went to the library for a book or two. The combo was terrible and a very heavy 8wt with a level line and an auto reel. I spent about $5 on baits and preceded to lose them all during my first outing and never caught a fish. That is when I started tying flies thinking it would be cheaper than buying. I started making small poppers and catching sunfish. I still love catching sunfish.

[FlaFly 0]

As with others, I started fishing very young with my dad, using cane poles and black braided line (monofilament didn't exist yet). My dad had a bait casting rod made of steel.

I started moving into high-tech about the time fiberglass rods became available. Still used braided line on my bait cast reel. I didn't cast artificial lures, just used it with bobber and lead sinker and live bait (minnows). About high school age, closed faced spinning reels (zebco) came about. They were notoriously prone to unfixable tangles, so I didn't use them. I first tried an open faced reel at a fishing expo in Dallas. I didn't get into using that stuff till I came to Florida in the Coast Guard... used it in saltwater. I still have my first Pflueger reel, and it still works.

However, sometime around 1959 (pre Coast Guard) I came across a fly rig in a sports store in Dallas. It was a Garcia Mitchell rod (I'm guessing 5 wt. ... it wasn't marked) and a Pflueger Medalist reel. I still have them and still use them. I started making my own popping bugs and fished for bluegills. I have absolutely no idea how I learned to do either. Nobody else I ever saw in Texas using fly gear, and I never saw it on a fishing tv. show. Until I got ultralight spinning tackle sometime in the 1960s or 70s, fly fishing was all I did in freshwater. I gave up using live bait on anything years ago... only use lures, saltwater or freshwater, or flies.

[Bryon Anderson 0]

I fished briefly as a kid, but didn't like what I was shown of it, which was dangling worms under a bobber and waiting for something to happen. I was not your typical little boy; I didn't like getting dirty and I had zero interest in all creepy-crawly life forms, which of course are what you handle in bait fishing. The men who were "teaching" me were less than kind about my aversion to bugs, worms, crawdads and the like. I put down the rod, picked up a book and walked away from fishing for almost 20 years.

 

One day when I was about 22 I was cleaning out the basement of a house I was renting half of, and found an old spincasting rod in a corner collecting dust. I decided to give it another try. I soon remembered how much I loved the vast and fascinating world of fishing tackle--lures, plugs, spinners, rods, reels, tackle boxes, all of it--and now I wasn't confined to the nasty world of bait by overbearing adults who didn't want to be bothered to teach a kid to do anything other than sit down and shut up. Just like that, I was into fishing. Hook, line and sinker, as they say.

 

From spincasting and spinning rods, it was only a matter of time before my interest expanded to fly fishing. I'd seen it in the movie version of A River Runs Through It and it looked pretty and fun. It was and still is.

[SilverCreek 0]

I've fished since I was a youngster. Our family would go to the ocean along the New Jersey shore, and my dad would fish, or we would go crabbing along the sloughs. When I was about I got my first rod and my dad would take me fishing. When he worked nights, I would be waiting for him with my rod and he would drive me to the lake and he would sleep in the car and I would fish all day and we would go home for dinner. When he worked during the days, i would bike or hike to a local pond. I caught my first trout when I was about 12.

 

After we moved to Los Angeles, I would fish slat water off a pier or break water, taking a city bus to the beach/pier in Santa Monica or to Redondo Beach. When I was in Palo Alto, going to Med School my wife and I would drive to Loch Lomond or we would go backpacking and trout fish for food. When we moved to Salt Lake City, i spin fished the Ogden River and the Provo River.

 

I tried to teach myself to fly fish the last year I was in Salt Lake City buy I could not do it. I reverted back to spin fishing and after moving to Wisconsin, I spin fished for the first 2 years. Then I decided to give fly fishing another try and my wife and I took a weekend course at a Fenwick Fly Fishing Course. Gary Borger was the Director and it was only when I took the course that I learned he lived in the same city that I did. After the course, we invited Gary and Nancy over for dinner, and our families have ben friends ever since. Gary had a regular group of friends that got together to tie flies and that is how I learned to tie. He also gave me private casting lessons for time to time, like when I wanted to learn to double haul.

 

Even after taking the course, it took me until the next year before I caught a trout on a fly. It was in Yellowstone park on the Firehole River. I caught it on a Gary Borger Strip Leech. My wife caught a trout before I did on a fly rod. So beginners, take heart. It is not where you begin but were you end up that matters.

[netabrookie 0]

I guess I am like a lot of members because I have fished since I was a very young boy. I got interested in fly fishing in my early teens when I discovered the old bamboo rod that my grandpa had. He would let me try to cast in the yard but I never got the chance to actually use it to fish. I found a few books about fly tying in the public library and tried to get into that but had very limited materials and used vise grip pliers to hold the hook. The flies, if you could call the ugly things flies, were then cast with a spinning rod. I did manage to catch pan fish and smallmouth out of the Bull Run river with the so called flies but I knew that it wasn't really fly fishing. I spotted a new fly rod in one of the hardware stores but got distracted from it by girls and dirt bikes and girls and did I mention girls? I got interested again when my wife and I were shopping and I noticed a cheap fly fishing outfit and decided to finally buy my own fly rod. I think that was around 9 or 10 years ago and I have only picked up spinning gear a few times since then. I still have a lot of my old spinning stuff but its been quite a few years since I used it. I live near many trout streams but rarely see anyone with a fly rod except myself and I often think that if they would only give it a chance then their trout fishing would turn into a whole new world for them.

[BnD 0]

I fished with my dad when i was a kid 10 years old i would say, just spin casting though. Kept at it up until 3 years ago when my wife bought me a fly rod for my birthday...been hooked since...taught myself by watching videos and reading lots. Now just recently have also started tying flies, and catching fish with my flies I plan to teach my 6 week old son as soon as he can hold a rod as well :)

[JSzymczyk 0]

FlaFly, I figured there was something OK about you.... we'll have to swap CG stories some time. Mikechell might get jealous, but Marines can be sensitive like that. After I hit the lottery and he Crew Chiefs my C-130 he'll get over it.

 

BnD, keep at it, my son grew up fishing with me as much as possible, but when he turned about 9 he lost interest. He was learning to tie flies, and some of his first fish he caught on fly gear. I'm everything but a fly snob, and use most sorts of tackle... No real idea why he stopped liking to fish, but he's 15 now and just last week told me "I want to go fishing with you a lot more next spring" so I'm happy and it might come around yet.

[Philly 0]

Pretty much the same for me. My dad started taking me out when I was about 5. We used to walk down the street to the river. Back then before the Clean Water act, it was common to come home with a ring of coal tar around the bobber and globs of it clinging to the line. Urban river with it source in coal country. I fished on and off through high school even packed a rod when I was in the Navy in the late sixties. When I was in college in NW Tennessee, in the mid-70s fishing became a way for my buddy and I to supplement our dinner diet of pork steaks and Kraft Mac and cheese with some fresh fish. We were on good terms with a few professors that we had classes with and partyed and drank with. That's where I met my first fly fisherman he was one of the guys in our group of freaks and one day when we went fishing he showed up with a fly rod and did a number on the bream. I ticked him off when I dropped my Jitterbug under a willow at one end of the pond and had it blown up by a 5 lb bass which went in to the bucket and made several excellent meals. He planted the seed in my mind but it took a good 20 years before it bore fruit. Thanks, Roger where ever you are. I had worked my way down to fishing ultralight tackle and the next step was fly fishing. Since I was building my own rods by then. I built a fly rod and brought a reel. It was either a 5 or 6 wgt. Attended a class taught by Ed Jaworowski in the late 80s. Joined a local club. Started carrying a fly rod along with my ultralight gear, took about 6 years before I got tired carrying both and left the ultralight tackle home. By then I was also doing a lot of saltwater fishing, boat, jetty and surf. One fall my college buddy and I headed up to Montauk in late October. We were fishing below the lighthouse and when the sun came up there were hundreds of schoolies at the base of the rocks and they would take anything we threw at them. They were focused on small silversides and it dawned on me that if I had a fly rod I probably could have thrown something small enough for them to take interest in. Just like freshwater it took me a few years to quit carrying two sets of gear. I did solve the problem of carrying two rods, by building an 8 wgt with single foot spinning guides a reel seat big enough to handle both the fly reel and a medium spinning reel, two fighting butts a 2" one for fly fishing and a 7" one when I used the spinning reel. Did that for a while, realized I was never going to get proficient with the fly rod and left the spinning reel and lures home. That was 16 or 17 years ago. Haven't looked back. Still have the urge to make flies that look and act like the popper and plugs I used but the spinning gear gathers dust, and I bring it out once a year for my Canadian trip, and use maybe 40% of the time.