Fly Fishing Lessons

The following report is an essay I wrote for my fly fishing class after my first on the water experience. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to go with it.  

Lessons at Birch Creek

March 2015

By Justin Call

Like a little boy impatiently waiting Christmas morning I tossed and turned all through the night. Saturday morning could not come soon enough. I have been taking a fly fishing class this semester on campus and Saturday was our first fishing trip. Although, an avid fisherman for most of my life, I have never had the patience to figure out the art of fly fishing. Typically, whenever I have gone fishing I have packed both my spin fishing pole and my fly fishing rod. Many times I have started with the fly rod only to become frustrated and then pull out my spinner equipment. Saturday, however, was no ordinary fishing trip for me. It was the first time in my life that I have gone fishing with nothing but my fly rod.

Lessons Learned

We loaded the van just after 8 a.m. and with a fairly long drive toward the West Mountains we arrived at the creek where we were greeted by a cold breeze.  The cold made for the first out of the classroom challenge. Tying a small fly to tiny tippet can be a difficult with warm fingers, but with cold fingers it becomes ridiculously challenging. Once we were all rigged up and after a brief inspection of our licenses by the Game Warden we were ready to start fishing. I was surprised by the creeks crystal clear water and abundance of small trout that could be seen scattering up and down the creek. I was able to head up the creek and find a nice spot to start fishing. A few things that I learned that are particularly important include:

• ·         Fly fishing takes practice

• ·         Controlling slack and drag

• ·         Visibility of the indicator fly

Fly Fishing Takes Practice

Not long after we started fishing I realized that I wasn’t a fly fishing natural. I was spending a lot of time un-tying knots and wishing I had my spinning rod. I even mentioned to Brian, as I untangled a particularly bad mess that had I another option I wouldn’t be fly fishing. After a while of struggling through beginners mistakes, I was finally able to catch my first fish of the day. The energetic 6 inch rainbow darted as I brought it to shore. I felt as if a portion of the energy that the little trout expounded in the fight flowed through my line, onto my rod, into my hand, and straight to my heart. Suddenly, my focus and determination increased and I was caught in the moment. I was shortly treated to another shot of energy as another little trout ran with my fly.  Feeling motivated the horn of the van called us to lunch.

 Controlling Slack and Drag

After lunch my motivated, energetic-heart was boosted by a full stomach, I was more than ready to start fishing again. I was able to receive some one on one instruction from Brother Murdock who was very good about letting me know what I needed to fixed. “Look at all that slack,” he would say, “you will never be able to set a hook fast enough with so much slack.” This was exactly what I needed. I realized that I couldn’t just leisurely cast my flies, watch them float by, and then cast again. I needed aggression. Stripping the line coming toward me in the current had to done quickly and at any time I needed to be ready to react to a fish. Drag was a similar story. Brian helped me realize that I needed to anticipate the drag of my fly and to mend accordingly. I couldn’t wait until I noticed the fly scooting across the water then try some awkward mend to try to stop the drag. By looking at the flow of the water I was able to mend my line at the beginning of my cast so the fly never presented drag.

Visibility of Indicator Fly

Throughout the day, one of my biggest challenges was seeing my indicator fly well enough to know what I needed to do. I found that in a soft ripple a white winged fly was nicely, but in runs where there was foam on the water, I was fishing blind. Visibility was also affected by the light. I am going to look into improving my visibility on the water by maybe trying my prescription glasses on cloudy days rather than my sun glasses. I certainly caught most, if not all my fish, when I could see the indicator fly dunk under the water. I had a couple embarrassing “walks of shame” when I realized I couldn’t see my fly because it was no longer on my line. I call it a “walk of shame” because I lost 3 flies because of poor casting and each time I had to go find Brother Murdock for a new fly.

Summary

All in all, the day turned out spectacular. I was grateful I was able to stick with the fly rod all day and work through several hours of beginners mistakes. The instructions of both Brother Murdock and Brian were particularly beneficial and best of all I was able to feel the different trout’s transmission of energy through my line, onto my rod, and into my heart a total of 19 times leaving me excited to continue learning and hopefully move on to some bigger fish