Flyfishing

A quick internet search will turn out litterally thousands of flyfishing sites, and most if not all of them can do a better job then I in terms of teaching you the technique and what not, so I will not attempt to teach anybody how to flyfish in this blog. Instead, I would like to share with everyone WHY I flyfish.

Anybody who knows me, knows I have been fishing since the age of 5. Forty years later, I can still remember hooking onto my first ever fish (a yellow perch) in which my dad showed me what to do. Every year after that until my early 20's, I had been hitting multiple species with my spinning rods and having a blast at it. However, in 1989, after several years of coaxing me to try flyfishing, I finally agreed to purchase an inexpensive Berkley flyfishing combo and joined my best friend to his favorite river, where he proceeded to teach me the fly fishing technique.

I was quite an awkward looking fellow at first. I had not caught a single trout that day, yet I persevered and the following week I managed to catch my first ever brook trout on a fly. I can safely say that at that very moment, something in me had changed forever. It was not the trout, but rather me who was hooked!

Every type of fishing is great fun in my book, however there is something special about fly fishing that sets it apart from all other types, something that you just cannot quite put your finger on. Personally, I tend to get into some kind of trance while flyfishing that I don't get with conventional fishing, like I'm actually connected with the river, with my surroundings, and with the fish. 

Several years went by, and about five years ago I decided to take it one step further and began learning to tie my own flies. I had been thinking about it for a very long time, but never did because I thought it would be such a huge undertaking. However, I decided I would simply learn to tie one or two flies at first (the ones I have the most confidence in), and take it from there. All that winter, I tied those two flies, and by spring I was tying them quite well! And when I hooked onto my first trout from a fly I had tied myself, WHOA! It was almost spiritual! It got even better when I hooked onto my biggest trout ever with a homemade fly. But to top it all off, the highlight of my flyfishing life was this past summer when I hooked onto nearly 20 Atlantic salmon on not just a homemade fly, but one I develloped myself. It doesn't get much better than that, folks!

Tight lines!