5 Steps to Fishing Bliss

OK, I admit it, this title is all wrong.

For the past couple of years I have been trying to learn how to fly fish. It has a lot of neat qualities. You never go to ugly places. Initial equipment costs can be pretty reasonable. Aging does not limit your skills.

But as I have spent more time on it - I think I have come down to 5 basic skill sets. (Not in order)

#1 - Finding - fish have some peculiar habits, especially trout. You need to understand where they live and why. I spent a lot of time this week working on that one.
#2 - Matching - fish are a lot like your 5 year old, they are finicky eaters. They generally will eat what is available (and to keep alive they need to almost constantly feed) but if you approach them wrong they will tell you to buzz off. One of the fun parts of this is figuring out what they are eating right now and trying to match it in something you have in your fly collection (they are not all flies). But there is a second part to this rule. When someone else has hit on something, you might do better at trying something different. (This is sort of a reverse psychology, again like a 5 year old, but only for something with a brain the size of a large pea.)
There are also lots of variations of rigging for fish - some involve little insect like hooks called nymphs (who are under water). Others involve things that are on top of the water (flies of all sorts or grasshoppers). Still others look like injured fish (streamers) or even Salmon eggs (glow bugs). The latter are considered by some of the purists to be not reasonable. (That is bunk).
#3 - Casting - This is the effort to move line off your reel and over the water. Notice I said over and not through. There is a natural tendency to try to hurl the line - but this step takes a lot of patience. The trick is to let the rod do the work - much easier said than done. There are all sorts of tips - but for me none of them work any better than looking a bit at the line and hoping it has a small loop when you transfer from the back cast to the forward one. The best line I have heard is 11-1 (like the positions on a clock) - but again practice makes better here. I still need some practice.
#4 - Setting - What do you do after the fish grabs your hook? - you yank it with care to make sure he has it. In catch and release - which is what I have been doing - the ultimate game is to land the fish and then release him. The trick here is to set the hook but not rip it. I am actually pretty good at this skill. Trout hits can be very subtle and the excitement of feeling the hit (sometimes you can see the hit and sometimes you only feel it) can get you to yank too much. If you do that you lose the fish.
#5 - Playing - After the set comes the attempt to land the fish. Trout (mostly) do not think this is a fun event - so they give it their best not to be landed. After the strike (hit) and the set, they tend to run. If you have some line out you need to do two things. First you need to get your rod tip up in the air - that allows the flexibility of the rod to work for you. But second you need to begin to reel the fish in. If you have line out (and you often do because you are bringing the line in slowly as you wait for the hit - called "stripping") you need to first establish a reasonable tension on the fish and then slowly wind up the reel. But if the fish runs - you need to let him do that. Each reel has a control which adjusts tension(drag) and that needs to be loose enough to allow him to run but not so loose that he gets away. He will try to run all sorts of places - in and under rocks, around trees in the water, through debris. Your job is to bring him back to you and away from the places he wants to go.

There are some things I have not mentioned. Knots - the basic knots are not that tough - but try tying something with clear line that is very tiny and threading it through a very tiny hole. On Wednesday, when I was alone on the water, if did one fly change in about 30 minutes. Clearly, here vision helps.

The two pictures (one of a 22" Rainbow and the other of a spectacular Brown) have been cropped to show you that at least this week I was able to catch some fish. The first Browns I have ever caught were here - notice the colors. Wild fish tend to look better than raised and planted ones. The Brown in the picture was gussied up a bit because spawing season is near. Their colors become richer now. But this is not about me - so I intentionally cropped out the part with me in it. There is one other thing about this hobby, (Especially where I was this week) the locations are often spectacular. So even if you do not get many fish, you see beautiful country. On a future post I will offer some pictures of the kinds of locations where this sport happens.