Nostalgia & the Allure of Fly Fishing: Remembering Your First Rod

Can you remember your first fly rod? After years of fishing walleye and bass tournaments and having three kids I knew the pace of my fishing was going to come to a screeching halt. There wasn't a weekend that went by and I was off on some pre fishing trip or at home fishing Lake Winnebago fine tuning my tournament approach. Often friends would ask how I got started fishing and my mind alwaysshot back to trout fishing on the Mecan River in Wisconsin when I was eleven.   To this day I can remember the very hole and that first "thump" on my pole. I'll never forget throwing that trout on the bank and looking at the colors and thinking how beautiful it was. It was cold that day and my fingers were froze and my toes were so cold in my rubber boots. I also remember the guides freezing up and how good the sun felt on my face when it finally shined on the river bank.   I trout fished on and off over the next thirty or so years but it was never anything meaningful and it always felt like a race to the stream and back home again. One Christmas a few years back my 8 year old son so proudly gave me a neatly wrapped package that he bought at a school charity event. Every year his school ran a "Elf's are Us" event where the children bought presents for theirmoms and dads and proceeds would go to help cut cost of tuition. So I unwrapped my gif">