Was your FIRST fly fishing trip....

[flytire 0]

....successful?

mine wasnt and neither was the second, third, fourth.....

it took me about a year to get it just right

fishing in the rocky mountains was tough to say the least

[mikechell 0]

My memory of my childhood is ... almost non-existent.  I remember that I "fly fished" with a popper on a cane pole for a while before my Dad would let me use an actual fly rod.  I also remember that I was successful enough to want to continue learning how to fly fish.   Sunfish and bass in Indiana loved the little bluegill poppers we used then.

As far as my first actual use of a fly rod ... I can't remember it.  I do  know I loved fishing the Wabash River for sunfish and bass with a fly rod.  Did it through most of my teen years.

[dogfacedoc 0]

I think I went for a few months before I was able to get the line out far enough to catch anything. I caught maybe one 12" bass in GA before I moved home. Gave it up to focus on school, and got back into it after switching to day shift and having all this time and energy. I found an area to cast away from others at a pond by my house and watched a whole lot of youtube videos. Took about a week of dedicated practice and I got a lot better and then decided to go looking for the fish. Was pretty satisfying to be pulling in fish regularly next to guys watching their bait soak. 

[RickZieger 0]

Several years ago I bought a rod with an automatic reel on it form a hardware store going out of business. He threw in two round plastic boxes of flies for $10.00.  The next Saturday I was out fishing in a pond with my canoe. Using my spinning rod I could not catch the fish that were very close to the bank. Decided to use the fly rod. I was like Moses with the first cast. Parted the water.   Got slightly better with the cast and managed to catch some fish.  I was hooked.Told a friend that I had caught a few fish with the fly rod. He told me I need to learn to tie flies.  He gave me his vice as he had two trunks full of flies in boxes.

Now your stuck with me.

 

Rick

[richmce 0]

took a casting lesson at the sanibel orvis shopback in the ninetys. purchased 5 flies and went to the causeway   . my dad caught 4 spanish mackeral on shrimp. and i lost all my flies since i didnt have a steel leader .    but that was fun

[Rocco 0]

My first fly rodding experience was on a small lake in MI casting small poppers to eager bluegills in the evening 65+ years ago.  It was a great, formative, experience.

Rocco

   

[chugbug27 0]

Caught a bunch of trout my first trip, a few my second trip. Then it went very dark for what seemed a very long time, the better part of a year I'm sure, and several entire trips over the next several years -- including a whole week on the Upper Sac and McCloud. I discovered I'm a quick study but a slow learner. And that patience with personal failure pays off.

Eventually I figured out what to do in a way that translates to new water, but I do still get skunked at times nearly 30 years later, even on familiar water. Last time that happened I blamed conditions and then learned someone upriver was catching a bunch, no problem. So I blamed my fly selection. Then the flies he was using didn't work for me either. Still, a nice day on the river. (I suppose if that part ever changes I'm done.)

[Steeldrifter 0]

I still remember my first trip. Was about 1992/93 range and my Dad and I fished a section of the Au Sable near our cabin. Didn't catch a fish that first time out but remember Dad had a rainbow rise and miss his dry fly which we were both thrilled with seeing since it was our first time out on the fly. So not successful in fish catching, but successful in making memories for sure because here it is almost 30 yrs later, Dad has long since past (lost him in 1996) and yet I still remember the trip vividly.

[Mark Knapp 0]

My first trip was very successful but it's not my fault. Two of my best friends took my wife and I ( We were already in our late forties) and they were very avid fly fisher-people.

He was/is an old school caster from Colorado and his wife a pretty good caster in her own right. She owned her own drift boat and piloted it (she went to school for that, fly-guiding and such). They brought us to the upper China river.

We had a great day on the water and landed over a hundred grayling. At the end of the float they gave me the fly rod I had used, a Sage 6 wt. That was the beginning of the end for me, now my fly tying room is bigger than my bed room.

[robow7 0]

About 55 years ago, I used my dad's bamboo rod and Southbend automatic reel (that combination weighed as much as I did) to toss some small spiders to bluegill up in the lily pads of a northern Wisconsin lake.   Though I wore out quickly from that heavy rig, I had a ball.  When I bought my first Fenwick 8' 5wt. glass rod in about 71 with my paper route money I never looked back.

[Philly 0]

Mine was a disaster.   Opening day around here is a mad house.  People are back to back, belly to belly on the stocked creeks.  I might have just started tying flies.  I definitely wasn't confident about my fly fishing because I'd brought my spinning rod and small tackle box with me.  My fly selection was a store bought  guaranteed to catch trout from Orvis.  There's a creek that runs through Valley Forge State Park, called Valley Creek.  The state had stocked it with browns and rainbows for years but had quit stocking it  6 or 7 years before because it had been contaminated with PCBs from a Super Fund site.  They made the creek "catch and release" only though it took them a few years to ban bait.   No one practices catch and release on Opening Day"  besides it wasn't stocked.  The trout, at least the browns, didn't seem to mind the PCB's  and  they were still there.   Figured it be a good place to where I could embarrass myself without being seen.    I found a nice spot , and I knew enough to realize that there were trout rising and if trout were rising I should use dry flies, had know idea what an emerger was back then.   I spent an hour tossing dry flies at them, nothing.   Then I notice these small black bugs flying around, some landing on me.  Again, I knew enough to recognize a caddis fly.  Problem was no one had told me me they could be so damn small, and there was such a thing as a micro-caddis.  Probably what I would later learn were about a size 20.   Put my fly rod down, picked up my spinning rod tied on a Mepp's spinner.  Something flashed at it a couple of times but no hits.  I gave up in disgust.  It took me six years to get over that trauma.  When I went back I knew things, was tying my own flies.   A little better results then.  Only one but it's a tough stream to fish.

 

 

[Chisum 0]

It was in 1983 and I was going into my Senior Year in college.  I was hired on as a camp counselor at Lake CouerD’Alene, so I thought “what the heck, it’s time to give it a try.” 

My grandfather gave me a bamboo fly rod several years earlier and I had no idea how to cast let along what a Tippet was.  I did a little reading and bought Martin 65 reel (Which I still have) put some 7wt floating line on with no backing, tied on what I thought was a leader and off I went during one day off in a canoe to a nearby cove.

Got no clue what fly I put on from the local hardware store, but after several hours, managed to hook up on what I though was a monster.  I finally stopped using the reel to bring in all that line I threw out, and slowly managed to land that 3-inch Bluegill.  I couldn’t tell you much more about that summer, except I did a lot of casting and caught a lot of Bluegill. 

After I graduated, I bought a graphic Rod (Which I still have) and spent more time learning how to fish, just with flies.  I eventually began tying my own, and I can honestly say there is no feeling better than seeing a fish chase down a fly you tied.  It was a simple Renegade, but to me it looked like Jaws coming after Richard Dreyfuss.

[redietz 0]

I got a fly rod for Christmas in 1963.  I caught a pickerel on it the next day.

[Guest]

Took paper route loot to hardware store bought HCH line, Martin auto reel, and South bend rod and hit anywhere there were bass and bream.   Ten years old 1959.

1963 AirForce brat in Wiesbaden Germany first trouted and started tying.  Fished couple R&G Club leased streams and few trips to Garmish and Bertcshgaden. Every now and then catch the beautiful native Browns.  Had a medalist reel.  That’s a lil brown soft hackle.  The caddis larva cases were made of lil rocks and sticks.  I tied some with cream chenille and  black head/legs.

Pics are amazing as all  we had was 110BW cameras.   This musta been Pops with his jazzy 35mm he got from Japan. 

[Mark Knapp 0]

Very cool