Beginner Fly Fishing

Zac is a young man that lives in my neighborhood. Within the last couple of months he had gotten really into fly fishing.  His old-timer neighbor, Wayne, had gotten him into it and he seemed to be hooked.  Zac was to be leaving on an LDS mission in the next few months so he had nothing to do besides his part time job.  Having gotten to know him over the last few years, replacing the basketball with a fly rod seemed a little out of his character. Regardless, he really enjoys it. He’d gone out and fished the Provo River with his neighbor a number of times and had limited success. I knew that before he left I had to make a trip or to out with him. It’s fun to take a beginner fly fishing.

One evening we set out to fish one of my favorite streams.  I knew the hoppers would be on and it would be perfect for beginner fly fishing.  Although he’d told me how his past trips went I still didn’t really understand what level he was at.  It became apparent as I coached him on the first stretch that we’d be starting from scratch.  I gave him pointers as we fished and asked if Wayne had gone over any of this stuff with him.  “No! He just took me with him and told me where to stand!”  Haha, Wayne is one of my favorite people in my neighborhood and now I had a clear picture of what their outings must have been like!  It took a few casts to get the bugs where they needed to be but I knew it would be good enough to get the job done.  The first bank was one of my favorites on the whole stream: a perfect undercut bank with long grass hanging over.  After missing a few takes, we came up empty and moved on.  I now understand when Grant told me stories about getting clients to Set! Set! Set!  It seemed like when you saw a fish come and slam your hopper you’d naturally set the hook.  Nope.  It cracked me up.  So I quickly got in the habit of reminding him to set the hook!  It wasn’t long before his line was tight and he was into a fish!  Zac is a kind of timid kid who doesn’t express his excitement much so I could barely tell if he was even happy to have caught one or not.  When I questioned he awkwardly assured me that it was awesome.  It was his first fish on a dry.  He’d caught a small number of fish on the Provo and they weren’t much bigger (if any) than the ones we were catching here.

Between the hits and misses he ended up getting into a good number of fish and I was stoked to help him experience more of the excitement that fishing has to offer.  It’s fun taking beginners fly fishing – especially those that are brand new.  They don’t know what to expect and they often don’t realize that it’s possible to catch as many fish as we did in a short time.  Many people hate fishing or think it’s boring, but it’s likely because the only experiences they’ve had were dunkin’ bobbers and sitting around waiting.  As we chatted on the walk back to the car Zac mentioned how fly fishing was not at all how he imagined it would be – and especially today.  Most people would probably be surprised at how much fun fly fishing actually is but rather than shout it from the rooftops I’ll just take them one by one.