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3. Age Beginning Fly-Fishing?, Page 2

I was about 16 or so. Had a 5 wt Shakespeare rod from walmart. The kind where the base of the rod above the handle was about 1/2 inch in diameter, haha. That rod was wicked, no flex, just a straight whip when I tried casting. Anyway, went down to Tennessee to visit family and my cousin said he'd show me the ropes a little bit if I felt like it. I agreed quickly because I liked the idea and it was a chance to see some new streams with someone who knew what he was doing. We get up in this mountain stream and he puts a little San Juan on my line. Little red worm, never thought it would get anything ( I still had a hard time realizing you could catch a fish on a hook that size. We walked a ways hitting every little pool we could find, and we get to this little pocket surrounded by laurels. Just thick, line grabbing, losing your fly, indicator, everything but the kitchen sink kind of stuff. And he tells me to toss that little bug right next to the tiny waterfall and let the current take her under this laurel. After five or six...ok about a dozen tries I hit it right. My indicator was floating down and all of a sudden it stopped. I stood staring at it trying to figure out why it moving when my arm just gave a little tug and I realized I hooked one! Two quick exaggerated excited enthusiastic oh my god I got one tugs of the line later out from the water came this beauty of a trout. That little bow was massive, measuring about the size of my index finger (maybe). Ok, so in the literal sense it wasn't that big but to me it's the best one I've ever caught. Unfortunately as we were fumbling for a camera that little trout gave a little flip spit the hook and was gone. I still have that little San Juan tucked away in one of my boxes. My own personal little trophy. That trout still is in my head, along with the dream of thousands of others and hundreds of places, and another couple hundred flies I could tie someday. Needless to say I'm pretty much a goner. If I could I'd be doing something pertaining tfish everyday for the duration. And I'm only 20 so hopefully that takes awhile.

Ryan

Ryan, find yourself a local fly-tying course and you'll be even more of a goner...and in the long run, you'll save money on flies!

Your mention of mountain laurel reminded me of the year I spent in Marietta, GA (2002)...that's a pretty plant when it's in bloom, even though it does like to steal flies! Just the botanist in me talking...

Jonathon

Jonathan

Oh trust me I know about the flies. I'm a self taught tier with an obsession for trying new (well new to me) patterns. Warm and coldwater patterns. It's a struggle deciding to try that new fly or write a paper. Spend money on a date or a new cape. So I know what you mean about that.

Ryan

Paul,

With the guys continuing to keep this thread in play I took another look at it. That first picture of Beck, except for the sophisticated equipment he's holding, is probably not too far from how the very first anglers fooled their fish...Dapping of some sort...They say it takes patience to be a fisherman...A very patient observer watching a fish rising to the surface and snatching an insect and a little bell went off...

Beck may not know it but he was stirring up some very primative collective memories from ancient hunters there and lighting up deep parts of his brain...Those parts of the brain, that once stimulated, eventually separated us from our simian cousins and sent us off in all directions around the globe. We are a crafty lot...:)

The next few hundred steps led those primitive folks to cut the fish up, roll him in some bread crumbs, and fry him in some seasoned butter...Then wash it all down with a Pinot Grigio...It must be getting close to dinner time here...Sorry!

Spence

Nice story, Ryan. It's a wonder how FF goes deep into...whatever Spence was talking about. (Just teasing Spence. I could wax poetic, and technical, on that subject. but won't. Suffice it to say chasing critters feels physically and mentally right -which might just be a pretty good definition of "spiritual" or "connected".)

Ryan, pardon my assumptions, and glad to hear you are a self-taught tyer! Look up my Killer Bass Fly elsewhere on this site and give them a try. They are easy to tie and, at least for me, deadly effective on warm-water fishies...

Jonathon

Jonathan,

It's alright there's no way too assume the levels of depth someone has reached in Fly fishing. I'll look up that fly, I think I read it once around here already before I was a member.

Ryan

I had the great pleasure of having a maternal Uncle and grandfather who were avid flyfishermen. Every summer for as long as i can remember back we would all meet up at a ranch in northwest Colorado for two weeks of horseback riding, exploring and flyfishing. If I had to guess, I'd say I started around 8-10 years old. I also caught my first fish that same year. A whitefish that my grandfather said was a garbage fish. I didn't know any better, to me it was a trophy rainbow. Unfortunatly living in suburban Detroit does not make a great environment for a teenage flyfisherman. Needless to say our family vacations petered out as i went to college and so forth. Fastforward 10 years or so and the family decided to have another go at "The Ranch". I'm 37 at this point and absolutly killed it for the week I was there. So here I am reestablishing a long lost passion. Living in Colorado, more or less based on my fondest memories of my childhood. Hell, I even live in a cabin a 1 minute walk from a trout stream. Talk about going full circle.
By the way...I love these stories.

Bellsporter,
Which cabin??

Where exactly???

Spence

I grew up in the suburban Detroit area too (Troy). My first fly fishing experiences were during my undergrad years at the University of Michigan Biological Station, up between Pellston and Cheboygan back in '85. However, there is a lake less than three miles from where I grew up (folks still live there to this day - gonna be 40 years in September!) that I began fly fishing on the following year, for bass, sunfish, and crappie (and the occasional yellow perch), and I have been flyrodding it avidly ever since (and exclusively by flyrod since '05). So, one certainly needs inspiration (mine was a forestry professor), but the opportunities may be closer than you think...

Fly fishing - it's not just for trout anymore (never was for me)...

Jonathon

I grew up in Lathrup Village nestled in the heart of scenic Southfield.

Nope, not much fly fishing to be had there...

Jonathon

Sorry man! You are going to have to get in the car and drive a bit, aways from Southfield, before there's any fish...Did you ever go to the Michigan Fly Fishing Expo when we held them at the Civil Center?

I tutor once a week in an after school program that was organized by a retired teacher from Novi...She's in her upper 80's and lived in Southfield when it was still farmland...She lived near 12-Mile and attended a one room school. She told me that each student had a little chore or something they had to bring from home for the class, some fire wood, potatoes, carrots, etc...They would cut up whatever was brought in and it was placed on the pot-bellied stove to cook until lunchtime...Can you imagine sitting there all damn day smelling that soup!? I had a hard enough time keeping my brain in the classroom when a bird flew by the window, or Linda Miller worn her mini-skirt! Soup!!! It would of driven me nuts.


Lathrup Village? Is that the town that placed steel posts in the middle of the public streets, right on the border with Southfield I guess, to stop folks from cutting through the neighborhood? I dated a girl who grew up over that way and we visited her parents a couple times and I guess these posts have been hit from time-to-time as people screamed down the street and didn't know the posts were there? I always wondered about the liability issue here in this case, but hey! I'm in insurance.

She was just an inch or so shorter than I was (she was 6') with "a balcony you could do Shakespeare from..." It was a wonderful few years there of infantile distraction...:) I didn't get as much fishing in back in the 80's as I should of...

Spence

"Soup!!! It would of driven me nuts."

Spence, you just covered everything "from soup to nuts"...

Jonathon

Ya'll are hilarious. "a balcony you could read Shakespere from"? I can only imagine what that looked like. Lathrup Village is between 12 mile,11 mile Evergreen and Southfield Roads. I did fish for bluegill behind the Civic Center. I took a long (20 or so years) hiatus from flyfishing. I always equated flyfishing to mountain streams. Please don't take this the wrong way. It's just based on some of the fondest memories of my childhood. Kinda like the soup and the "balcony" you speak of.

Hey man, flyfishing is where you find it. Sunfish are, in my mind, a most worthy quarry. In Texas, sunfish became my "trout" as they fed eagerly on dry flies and were very colorful (put a spawning male longear or redbreast or spottie next to a brook trout and see who's more colorful). Smallmouth bass will take dry flies with gusto and fight just as hard as any trout. You just have to find the opportunities...Come late March, I'll be paying that hometown lake in Troy a visit because it will be ice-out there well before local waters up in Oscoda, and the black crappie move into the shallows (maybe a pre-spawn yellow perch or two as well) and will take chartreuse Woolly Buggers or silver/grey KBFs before Winter is even done...If you're ever back in the area, I'll show you how...

Jonathon