Learn to Fly Fish

My family used to take vacations to the mountains every summer to camp and fish. We would have good days and bad days fishing. Some days, the fish just wouldn't bite. I never could learn why, but one day things changed for me.

We had spent all day trying to catch trout on salmon eggs, worms, and various other commercial trout baits, but we couldn't do anything to get a bite. A guy with a fly rod walked past and proceeded to catch a trout on his second cast. As a kid watching, it seemed like magic. He then went on to catch several more trout where we had just been fishing. Obviously, we were missing something. Watching that fly fisherman that day planted a seed in me.

Well, I decided that I needed to learn how to fly fish. I received a fly rod and reel that Christmas, and proceeded to sling flies around my back yard. I didn't have any instruction, and I was just "flying blind", no pun intended. There were no fly shops around, and I didn't know anyone that fly fished.

I tied a little monofilament fishing line to my fly line as a leader, which didn't work very well, and tried to cast flies. Needless to say, it didn't work very well, but I persisted. You couldn't even buy flies where I grew up. So, I decided I needed to tie my own.

I got a fly tying kit, and started trying to tie flies. My first attempts were very poor, but I did manage to catch a few panfish on them. I never did catch any trout on a fly until much later in life. After that, I just used my flyrod to deliver worms on a little dry fly hook. It worked fairly well, but I lost interest because it wasn't really fly fishing.

Years later, I decided to try again. This time, supplies and resources were much more available. You could actually buy flies at our local department stores. I did finally catch trout on these. It was a blast. There really were not any bad times of the day to fish. It almost seemed like I could always catch a fish, once I learned what they were eating.

I really haven't had a bad day fly fishing since then, but I wanted to try tying my own flies again. This time I got some good materials, and some more good instruction, and again I was reminded how much good instruction matters. I actually caught trout on flies that I had tied. I can't tell you how cool that was. It sort of became an obsession. This time around, I had the internet. There is so much information available on the internet.

Things have come a long way in fly fishing. We have new materials, and the sources of instruction are absolutely staggering. I've included some of them on this website below. If you like fishing, and you don't know how, you really need go ahead and learn to fly fish. You have a lot of resources, and good equipment is relatively inexpensive. Just do it.

I've been using E-books and web-based instruction lately for a lot of things. Some of them allow you to use videos, and when learning to cast with a flyrod, videos help. Especially if you can't find a local instructor. Watching someone do it makes a huge difference. I've listed several below with links. Fly Fishing from Scratch has videos and an ebook. It's a nice product. Long Lost Fly Fishing Secrets is an Ebook version of some older fly fishing classics. Check them out. I'll be adding more later.