Whats your story? Who got you into Fly fishing?

[Chris_in_Louisiana 0]

While my love of fishing started with a pair of brown trout caught on a worm when I was three, it was late elementary school or early middle school when I finally picked up a fly rod.

My grandfathers were my earliest influences.  Both were avid fly fishermen and readers.  And, as soon as I could read, I found myself pulling from their shelves.  The stories of Traver and Gierach intertwined with both grandfathers' own childhood tales of the water, and I found myself growing further enamored with the sport before I ever held a fly rod.  Though neither of my grandfathers wanted to teach me to cast, for fear they'd teach me bad habits, both laid the foundation for my passion.

From there my father took the reins.  Though he wasn't much of a fisherman himself, he did believe strongly in encouraging his children.  As such, he took it upon himself to purchase my first fly rod, a cheap shakespeare outfit (affectionately nicknamed "The Broomstick" after it needed to be re-tipped multiple times).  When he learned a co-worker was president of a local TU chapter, he immediately signed both of us up for the Fly Fishing 101 and Fly Tying 101 classes his co-worker taught.  After that, I was off and running.  Armed with the basics, I hung up my spinning rod and spent countless evenings chasing bass, panfish and anything else that would take a fly.

Though I counted myself as well established in the hobby by this point in my development, two further men deserve mention:

1.  My 8th grade social studies/history teacher - An avid fly fisherman who spent his summers working in a fly shop, he gave me my first "real" fly rod.  It was a Cortland 5wt and allowed me to improve my casting well beyond anything I was capable of with "The Broomstick."  I used that rod for everything from panfish and trout to jack and snook.  The day that rod broke some 12 years later was heartbreaking.

2.  An older gentleman in my grandfather's retirement community - Though I continued to fly fish throughout my teen years, I had largely given up on tying.  While chasing jack one evening at my grandfather's home in Florida, a neighbor approached him and asked if my grandfather would introduce him to me.  The gentleman was a recent retiree who no longer fly fished or tied, but enjoyed seeing a teenager with the same passion of the sport.  He joined my grandfather and I the next few evenings as I fished, and, as my visit came to an end, presented me with his rather extensive tying kit.  It had been tucked away in his closet, and he simply wanted it to go to someone who would put it to good use.  While I drifted away from fly tying during my 20s, I still have the box and have often used those same 30+ year old materials when I tie today.

 

[chugbug27 0]

Nice to have you aboard, Chris. You in Sorrento? (I checked out your website) That's east of the big surge, yeah? 

[Chris_in_Louisiana 0]

Thanks, chugbug.  I work in Baton Rouge, but live in Sorrento these days.  Nice to have a little distance between home life and the city. 

And thankfully, we were well east of the worst of it.  I'm far enough inland to avoid any surge and wind/rain were fairly limited.  A couple of potted plants were knocked around the backyard (shame on me for not securing them better), but otherwise we made it through unscathed.  Hope New Orleans avoided any surge or flash flooding.

 

Chris

[WWKimba 0]

I was a fly tier 10 years before I was a fly fisher!  I used to (and still do!) use light and ultralight spin gear.  Bought poppers and such and casted them with a casting bubble and had fun.  Then I was reading one of my Dad's Outdoor Life magazines and they had a 3 page article on a thing called a Flutter Minn - something to catch BULLgills with.  I didn't need a vice or tying thread just the bottom of a soda can (back then the cans were 3-part - top (with a PULL tab, body and a flat bottom), a gold Aberdeen hook - size 6 or 8, and some model paint in white, black and blue (the blue was optional.  I also needed some tin snips and flat pliers (needle nose) - borrowed those from my Dad.  Made 10 of them and I know there are 2 or 3 more left in an old cheap tackle box in some dark recess of this house that were part of that original tie almost 50 years ago!  They NEVER wore out - lot some due to imperfect knot tying skills - but never wore one out!

[chugbug27 0]

1 hour ago, Chris_in_Louisiana said:

Hope New Orleans avoided any surge or flash flooding.

All clear over here, too. My dog would disagree, but he's afraid of thunder.

[Mars Rover 0]

Some cool stories here. I started fly fishing and tying when I was about 10 or 11 in the 1960’s. I fished a lot for a few years prior to that with spinning and spin-cast gear. My folks and siblings didn’t fish but we camped constantly in the Missouri Ozarks. Except for an older cousin who showed me how to wrap hackle by the light of a Coleman lantern, I’ve had no formal instruction on any of this, ever. I learned by watching and reading.

There were some trout streams in state parks that we visited that had fly-only stretches, so of course I had to fish that water. I remember Mom buying my first fly rod that I picked out in a department store. I’m thinking that it was at Monkey Wards which sold Sport King, I think. It was a decent quality, nice looking fiberglass rod I remember. Dark Green. I still have the reel, a Shakespeare automatic. My second fly rod was an 8.5 foot Heddon fiberglass, a freebee from my high school days that I still have. I lawn-casted it just a few days ago but nowadays it has a better reel seat, a better grip-and the proper number of good quality line guides.

As a much younger man, I built several good fly rods, both glass and graphite, from Orvis, Fenwick, Powell and Lamiglass blanks. These days for fly fishing, I only fish the graphites – three old ones that I built in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Although just last year, I did break down and buy a new Orvis 4-weight because I really needed a 4-piece pack rod and didn’t feel like making one. Eventually, I’ll start replacing the old 2-piece graphites.

Because I built all types of rods, even surf casters, at one time I had more rod building stuff than gear that I actually used for fishing. And when it comes to tying, I’m like a junkie with tons of tools and materials, while my actual fishing tackle remains fairly old and minimal. Except for the number of flies of course.

[Bryon Anderson 0]

I grew up in rural north-central Missouri. To say that fly fishing was not much of a thing there would be quite an understatement. "Fishing", at least in my family, was a food-gathering method that involved worms, bobbers, and catfish. Fishing for largemouth bass with artificial lures was considered about as fancy as it got, and was practiced only by "serious" anglers. Even among those guys, catch and release was unheard of. If you happened to have a good time while fishing, good for you, but that was not the point of the thing. The point was to catch fish to eat, period. 

As a kid, I wasn't much of a fan. I liked being outside, but worms, leeches, crawdads, and a million other creepy-crawly slimy things that appeared to be part and parcel of the fishing experience--no thanks. Not to mention the boredom of sitting for what seemed like hours watching a motionless bobber while the sun beat down, the mosquitos and chiggers ate you alive and all you could think about was where the nearest water moccasin would attack from...after a few tries, fishing was a hard pass for me. 

Fast-forward about twenty years. Like several others who have shared their stories here, I found some old fishing rods in a basement while cleaning it out. I still don't really know why, but that made something click for me. I wondered if I tried it again, the way I wanted to do it, if it would be different. 

Turned out it was, happily. I decided to skip the bait thing entirely and bought a shiny new spinning rod and a bunch of the cool-looking lures I had coveted as a kid. I lived then near a great bass lake that had a bunch of old rowboats for rent for $5 per day. I spent a lot of time there, caught some fish, and had a lot of fun. For all that, though, it was still just...fishin'. If I caught a fish, I kept it and ate it. I had fun doing it, but still didn't really see much to it beyond periodic recreation; a diversion from my college classes and the crap jobs I was working to pay for them.

Then I saw "The Movie". Now, I know what you're thinking: "Oh, geez, another one of those guys...", and I wouldn't blame you, but it's not like that. Not exactly, anyway. I loved the movie, but it had nothing to do with the fly fishing. I loved the story -- Norman Maclean's writing, Robert Redford's direction, the cinematography--perfection. What I remembered of the fishing scenes was how they were always accompanied by this sensitive piano music and slow-motion photography, like it was holy or something. What was up with that? Honestly, I found it a little silly.  It just didn't jive with what I knew of fishing.

It did, however, remind me of the first (and only) time before that I'd ever seen anyone fly fishing. That was many years earlier, on a little lake called Lake San Lyn, near my hometown. My parents had taken us there to go swimming, and there was a man wading around in the shallows, waving a long, whippy rod back and forth, to no apparent purpose. I asked my dad what he was doing. He said the guy had a little piece of thread tied to his line, and he was flicking it around trying to make it look like a fly lighting on the water over and over. His tone was less than respectful. I never quite forgot about that guy, though. It was one of those things that bounced around in my head for years in the place labeled "I should really learn more about this some time." 

Shortly after I saw the movie and it brought the weird guy whipping the little piece of thread around on Lake San Lyn back to my mind, I met a guy from Michigan. He was a friend of my then-fiancee's who had come to Missouri to get his Ph.D. in Philosophy. He'd recently seen the movie, too. I was like, "What was up with those fishing scenes, though?" He, being a fly fisherman since childhood, tried to explain it to me. I didn't really get it, and the conversation ended in us agreeing that, when we both got to Michigan (where we both intended to move after graduation), he would take me fly fishing. A few years later, that's what happened. We fished the Au Sable and the Manistee rivers that day, and I have fly fished at every reasonable opportunity since that day. That was (oh, here comes one of those moments...) almost a quarter-century ago. 

Although Jordan got me started, and taught me the basics, I've done the vast majority of my fishing on my own, as is my preference. If I had to name another "mentor" in my fly fishing life, it would have to be the Huron River near Ann Arbor, MI. That was where my wife and I lived for the first two years after we moved to Michigan. The river was within sight of our apartment, and teeming with smallmouth bass. It was there that I really learned to fly fish. Reading the water, wading, casting, fighting fish, all of it. That river taught me to catch fish with a fly rod. Landing in that crummy, roach-infested apartment on its banks was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me!

So that's it -- not the most conventional "how I became a fly fisherman" story, maybe, but it got me there, and I'm glad for that. 

[dogfacedoc 0]

2010ish, on deployment to Iraq, came across a magazine called The Drake in a put-and-take book bin. It had an article about kayak fly fishing for tailing reds in coastal Georgia. I was stationed 45 minutes away from where the article was highlighting. I decided when I got home to give it a shot. Picked up a 5wt combo from the Bass Pro in Savannah, and watched youtube vids on how to cast. I had no success catching reds but did get a few bass. Fast forward to me leaving the army and coming home to OK. I didn't fish for a few years because the lakes were boring.. I got rid of my kayaks, and focused on school. Finished a couple of bachelor's degrees and worked nights for 2 years, then switched to days and had a lot of free time. I decided to fish every chance I could. I fished a bunch of streams in OK and have fallen in love with smallmouth. I have not gotten my redfish yet though!

[Jacks Grampa 0]

1965. Wide World of Sports. Curt Gowdy fishing the Snake from a drift boat. I was 10 years old.

[SilverCreek 0]

My father grew up in Watsonville, Calif, where he was born. He fished his who life, mainly in the sloughs and beaches on the Pacific Ocean. After WWII we moved to NJ and Ican remember fishing the local lakes and ponds from about the age of 5 or 6 and the Atlantic Ocean from shore. I went trout fishing for the first time at about the age of 7 and caught an 18 inch rainbow trout from a planted lake.

When we moved to Los Angeles, I fished the Pacific Ocean from piers and shore. Then during college after I was married my wife and I fished California lakes for trout.

By the time I moved to Wisconsin, I was a very good spin fisher and could "catch my limit" fairly often. Eventually, I wanted more of a challenge and fly fishing was the next step. So I signed my wife and myself up for a weekend Fenwick Fly Fishing Class. Our instructor was Gary Borger and his assistants were Bob Pils and Royce Dam.

After the course, I learned that both Gary and Bob lived in the same city I did and my wife and I invited Gary and his wife over for dinner. We gradually became good friends. Jason Borger was an artistic as were both my sons and Jason graduated with a degree in Film as one of my sons did so our families had a natural connection. Gary taught me to tie flies and became my fly fishing mentor.

We went out to restaurants about once a month and went fishing had dinners at each others homes.

Even today, since Gary and Nancy have moved away, we still communicate often.

Gary was interviewed in the Jan-Mar issue of "The Loop".

https://flyfishersinternational.org/Portals/0/Documents/Casting/The Loop/2017.JAN-MAR.LOOP.PDF?

On the bottom of page 13 is Gary with "AG, " one of his poodles. I took that photo at our cottage on a Northern Wisconsin lake. I also took the photo below with AG on his lap and another with Gary holding a bass he caught.

[Sandan 0]

I started fishing I guess about the age of 6 or 7. Local creek was walking distance. Spinning w/ minnows or worms or a mepps. By the time I was 11 I was thoroughly addicted to fishing and Field and Stream magazine. Some how I got the notion that fly fishing was the most productive way to fish our creeks, rivers and streams. So I went down to the local general store and picked out a yellow eagle claw fly rod some cheap reel a cheap level line and some flies Mr. Schwimmer said were good ones.  I used all of my allowance and lawn mowing money for that stuff.  Maybe 10 bucks  in 67.  Well I had seen pictures of how to cast,  how tough could it be?  I ultimately figured it out. As to being the most productive way to fish IU don't think I caught one for almost 2 whole seasons, but I kept with it.  Never looked back either. Schoharie Creek, the Westkill , the Eastkill and when I got older I'd ride my bike down to fish the Esopus.  Those were my home waters.

[Moshup 0]

On 8/27/2020 at 12:36 PM, chugbug27 said:

All clear over here, too. My dog would disagree, but he's afraid of thunder.

Looks like Oblio’s dog “Arrow”

[niveker 0]

Great stories and photos, very enjoyable reading. 

[chugbug27 0]

Maybe a little

[troutmaster08 0]

My Dad. We were staying on vacation in North Carolina and he was teaching me so we could try and get some browns in a river. I was about 8 or 9 though I am still a kid so this was probably 5 years ago. Right by the river there was this very small pond but it was loaded with panfish. We had some san juan worms and I probably caught 30 panfish. It was the perfect spot to learn.