Fly Fishing

This past Sunday, I decided to strike out on my own to a local fishing hole. In one hand was clutched my fly rod and reel and in the other I grasped my tackle box. I was determined that at last I was going to catch a fish with the blasted thing!

I have fished with flies for panfish for years, but only recently have begun to attempt to fish for them with a bona fide fly rod. The experience has been challenging to say the least.

First of all, my fly rod is only 6 1/2' long. From what I have been told, it is helpful to have a rod that is at least 8' - 9' long for delivering the fly. Secondly, most of the times that I have attempted to use the fly rod I have had people fishing around me. Learning to whip a line around with other people present is undoubtedly not the best way to win friends and influence people - at least not positively! Thirdly, the times that I have been out fishing with said fly rod haven't been the times of the day that I have found that panfish typically rise to flies. With these three strikes against me, it is hardly any wonder that I hadn't had any success yet!

So it was with a mixture of trepidation and growing excitement that I headed out to the fishing hole late that Sunday afternoon.

Predictably, things went pretty slowly at first. I was attempting to roll cast, but it wasn't working very well. The wooly bugger that I had tied on didn't seem to want to break out of the water on the cast, so I basically ended up thrashing around a bit. After that, I decided to go back to the false cast style that I had been practicing on and off for the past year or so. It was of little avail. In fact, after fishing for the better part of an hour, all I was doing was making some really nice splashes in the pond, catching lots of grass (on the back cast) and working up quite a sweat from the casting. I eventually gave up on the wooly bugger and switched to a small white fly. (I have no idea what it is supposed to represent, but know that bream dig them.) I fished with this for a while without much success.

However, just as I was beginning to despair I switched locations on the pond. I hate to admit it, but the first fish that I caught on a fly rod wasn't bigger than a quarter. No, I'm not really exaggerating much. I'd wager that a quarter would cover at least 2/3 of the fish with only a little bit of his tail hanging out!

Anyway, the catch was somewhat of a surprise. I was starting a back cast to try to let out some line when out of the water flies this itty bitty silver rocket fish right by my face! I don't know who was more surprised: me, or the fish! It was actually quite amusing.

Once I had caught the first one, others followed. I also started getting more proficient with my casting. All told, I managed to catch 10 fish before it got too dark for me to go on. One of them was a really nice crappie. It measured 11 1/2 inches. Unfortunately, my scale wouldn't register him, but I'm guessing that he came in between 1/4 and 1/2 a pound. He wasn't as fat as he could have been for his length. Not a bad total I think. I only lost 2 flies - both were victims of back cast snags in tall grass.

Hopefully, I will be able to remember what I learned, so that I don't have to fish for an hour and a half next time before I start getting the hang of it again! Now, if I can only figure out the roll cast!...