The Orvis Guide to Beginning Fly Fishing Page 2
Along the banks of a river, you can sometimes find friendly anglers willing to answer your questions, no matter how basic.
The most unreliable but sometimes the most satisfying way to learn more about fly fishing is by finding an impromptu mentor on the banks of a trout stream or on a lonely beach at dawn. But you have to be careful about whom you ask for advice.Avoid groups of three or four people fishing close together—they are probably fishing pals taking a trip together and you may feel like the new kid in school trying to sit down at the lunch table with the football team. I would also avoid the lone angler with a tense, crouched posture staring intently at the water. This guy has just traveled for hours to do battle with a trout and does not want to be distracted with small talk.
Look for the lone angler standing on the bank with relaxed posture who seems to be in no hurry to get into the water. He’s already been on the river for a week, or is retired and fishes there every day, and may be very generous with advice and helpful hints. Approach him slowly and away from the water so you don’t spook any fish that may be close to the bank, offer a pleasant greeting, and read his tone of voice and body language. If he offers some advice, listen, and once he starts fishing, ask if you can watch what he does. Just stay on the bank and don’t wade into his pool, as there is nothing that betrays your lack of knowledge more than crowding a fellow fly fisher.
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The best way to practice your casting
THERE IS NO FLY-FISHING CIRCUMSTANCE WHERE CASTING poorly will offer an advantage. I recently hosted a week-long bonefishing trip to the Bahamas where one angler went fishless until the very last day. Despite being a good sport about it, I could sense his frustration welling up and I knew he was not having a good time. Although the weather was cooperative and not windy, he was still not able to place a fly with any accuracy because he had not taken the time to practice his casting before the trip. On his last morning on the islands, I woke him up at dawn and made him practice, without the distraction of feeding fish or the pressure of a guide watching over his shoulder, on the lawn in front of his hotel room. After an hour of practice he was placing his fly wherever he wanted at forty feet. That day he caught and released three bonefish, and when I caught up with him at the dock after fishing I was worried his smile would pop his jaw out of its socket.
You must feel comfortable with that fly rod in your hand before you spend time, money, and emotional capital on a fishing trip. And there is no substitute for practice. Find a place where you have fifty feet behind and in front of you, with perhaps twenty feet of clearance on each side. This can be your lawn, a park, a rooftop, parking lot, alley, or a deserted gym. Water is essential for practicing casts like the roll cast or spey cast, but for the overhead cast, which you’ll use 90 percent of the time, dry-land casting is fine.Try to practice when no one is around so you won’t be distracted and won’t have to answer platitudes about how many you’ve caught.
You can practice casting wherever you have enough room. No water required.
Use the same line you’ll be fishing with. Most of the time this will be a floating line, but if you plan to use a sinking line, practice with one because you’ll need to adjust your timing for the denser character of the line. Never cast without a leader. Fly lines are designed to be cast with a leader on the end, which slows the casting loop at the end and offers air resistance that adds the finishing touch to your cast. Finally, tie to the end a piece of brightly colored yarn that mimics the size and air resistance of the flies you’ll be using. If you have old flies, cut the point off one and use that instead. Place an object thirty or forty feet away. Now work on your accuracy. The ability to hit a six-inch target at forty feet about 20 percent of the time means you’re ready to go fishing, as long as the other 80 percent of your casts are not far off.
Avoid the temptation to cast the entire fly line. Few fish are caught at seventy feet, even in the ocean, and casting the whole line is like eating before you learn to chew. If you will be fishing in the ocean or a on very wide river, back up and stretch out your casts to fifty or sixty feet, but remember that accuracy still counts at that distance. If you can’t hit the target, you are better off wading closer to the fish or asking your guide to move the boat closer.
Try to practice casting in the wind. The chances of fishing on a totally windless day are slim, so be prepared. Practice with the wind in your face, when you’ll ease up on your back cast and put more speed into your forward cast. Then turn around and cast with the wind, which is not as easy as it sounds.Wind behind you pushes your back cast down, which can spoil your casting loops or fire a fly into your ear on the way forward. Then play with crosswinds. For a right-hander, a left-to-right wind is safe and easy because the wind pushes the fly away from you, and all you have to do is aim upwind to make your fly land on target. A right-to-left wind is another story for a right-hander.You should avoid this dangerous wind, which pushes line into your body, if possible. If you can’t avoid a crosswind, practice casting across the front of your body or actually turn around and cast behind yourself, dumping your “back cast,” then turn around to face your target after the line hits the water.
Don’t kill yourself with practice.You are much better off casting thirty minutes a day for three days than spending an hour and a half in a single session, because once your arm gets tired the practice ends up being a workout instead of a tune-up. Fly casting at this distance requires very little strength—it’s almost all timing—so if your arm gets tired, you’ve been doing it too long or you are gripping the rod too hard. (In fact, a loose grip on the rod actually improves your casting because it dampens vibrations and smoothes out your cast.)
Casting practice is a chore, but you should resist the plan that you’ll straighten out the kinks once you hit the water. Even world-champion casters practice regularly, and if you’re not totally confident in your ability, a few hours of practice will exponentially increase the success of your next fishing trip.
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The two knots you must be able to tie on the water
THERE ARE SCORES OF FLY-FISHING KNOTS, AND AT FIRST the number of knots you’ll see can be confusing. Most of these can be done at home, with lots of light and plenty of time to practice; for instance, tying a nail knot to a fly line to attach a leader or tying an Albright knot to attach your backing can be done before a fishing trip. But once you’re on the water, you will change flies or lose them, so you’ll need to be practiced at tying a fly to the tippet.You’ll also need to tie two pieces of tippet material together when lengthening your leader or adding a lighter piece of material if you choose to step down to a much smaller fly. For nearly every situation except fishing for big-game species like sailfish or tarpon, the only knots you’ll need are a clinch knot and a surgeon’s knot.
The clinch knot is used to tie two pieces of monofilament leader or tippet material together. It works with nylon or fluorocarbon equally well. If you’ve done any spin fishing or bait casting, you probably already know this knot. There is a variation of this knot called the improved clinch knot, but it’s neither improved nor necessary—the basic one works just as well and is easier to tie and to tighten.
The surgeon’s knot connects two pieces of monofilament. Like the clinch knot, it is equally strong with nylon or fluorocarbon, and it also works perfectly to connect these two unlike materials together. In contrast to the hard-to-tie barrel or blood knot, it works with materials of widely different diameters. For instance, whereas a barrel knot connecting 5X to 2X material (a difference of 0.003 inch) will break easily, a surgeon’s knot connecting the same two materials will retain nearly 95 percent of the strength of the lighter material.
Clinch Knot
Surgeon’s Knot
There are scores of knots that perform the same tasks as these two, but these are the ones I use on the water, and the only time they’ve failed me is when I forgot to wet my knots (a bit of saliva as lubricant helps them tighten firmly) or when I neglected to test a knot
before presenting a fly to a fish.
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Exactly how much fly-fishing gear do you need to get started in trout fishing?
A VERY COMMON AND NATURAL REACTION FROM PEOPLE who want to begin fly fishing is, “There is so much stuff ! What do I need to just get started?” One of the allures of fly fishing is that it can be so complex and many people enjoy the accumulation of new gear. But it does not need to be that way. My advice is to start small and then just add to your tackle collection when you really find a need for something new.
Here’s an example of how simple it can be. I live on a small trout stream. The other day when I got home from work, I realized my wife Robin had locked me out and I didn’t have a house key. Now, I always keep a rod and reel rigged and ready to go, hanging on a couple of nails behind the house. Still in my street shoes and office clothing (granted, the Orvis dress code is pretty casual, but it’s still not what I would consider fishing attire), I grabbed my rod and reel, with a small streamer fly already attached to the leader, and walked down to the river.
I have one pool on my property where I can cast without getting into the river. I made about three casts, hooked and released a ten-inch brown trout, and walked back to the house. It was pure luck. If I had lost that fly in the trees I would have been dead in the water (excuse the pun). If I needed to get into the water to get a better angle on a cast, I would have ruined my shoes—plus, the water was cold.
So here is bare minimum:
A fly rod
A floating fly line to cast the fly (you’ll want a floating line 95 percent of the time for trout fishing)
A fly reel to hold the line
You don’t need a lot to go fly fishing—a rod, reel, line, leader, a box of flies, and maybe a pair of waders and a waist pack to carry a few things.
A leader to present the fly, to smooth out the cast, and to keep the heavy fly line away from the fish
A fly
Whether you fish a pond or a stream, eventually you’ll want to get into the water. The fish might be farther than you can cast, or you might not get enough back cast room by standing on shore. In a lake the answer is a canoe, kayak, rowboat, or float tube. In a stream, the answer is a pair of waders, or at least a pair of wading shoes and shorts if the weather is warm enough.
What happens when you lose a fly, or the fish won’t eat the one fly you have? You can carry a bunch of flies in a pocket, but I don’t recommend it. You can be like the famous fishing writer Nick Lyons and carry extra flies in an old Sucrets tin. Or you can buy a fly box or two and keep your flies neat and secure.
Leaders break and get too short after a lot of fly changes, so you’ll eventually want to replace the terminal end of your leader, known as the tippet. Smart anglers carry at least three different sizes of tippet material on spools because flies much larger or smaller than the one you’re using now might require a different size tippet.
Some of us use our teeth to cut leader material, but as you get older the enamel wears away and you just can’t get a nice clean, close cut with those old choppers. Plus, your dentist will wag his finger at you. So a pair of fisherman’s snips will make your knots neater and save your teeth for corn on the cob after you retire.
If you fish with dry flies, unless you only use flies made from closed-cell foam, you’ll need a silicone-based fly floatant to keep them floating. For releasing fish and for crimping the barbs down on flies, a pair of forceps helps. You can fish nymphs without a strike indicator and split shot, but you’ll eventually want to get them.
About the only truly dangerous aspects of fly fishing are falling in a fast current and getting a hook stuck in your eye. Polarized glasses can ease your fears with both—they’ll cut glare from the water and let you see submerged holes and rocks, and they’ll keep an errant hook from sticking in the most vulnerable part of your anatomy (any other place is painful, but more embarrassing than anything else). A hat also protects your head from hooks and keeps glare out of your eyes.Your standard baseball cap works as well as anything.
You can keep all this stuff in a pocket, but eventually you’ll either need to buy a shirt with lots of pockets or wear something else to carry your gear. The traditional garb is a fishing vest with pockets, but the popularity of fishing vests is being challenged by new lightweight chest packs.
So to the very basic list mentioned earlier you’ll probably want to add:
Waders
Wading shoes
A fly box or two full of basic trout flies
A few spools of tippet material
Fly fisherman’s snips
Fly floatant
Split shot
Strike indicators
Forceps
Polarized sunglasses and a hat
Vest
Of course, as you progress in fly fishing you’ll discover lots of other neat gadgets for making your time on the water more fun, but with the gear listed above I could happily fish all year. At least in my backyard.
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What to get after the essentials
ALTHOUGH YOU CAN FISH WITH JUST THE BASIC STUFF FOR the rest of your life, eventually you’ll discover some gadgets and gear to make your time on the water easier and more fun. Some anglers decry the proliferation of gadgets that can hang from a fishing vest, but others enjoy trying new widgets and feel they’re part of the allure of fly fishing. Just don’t rush into the acquisition of gear too quickly. Wait until you’ve got a few trips under your belt. Keep a mental or written list of problems you have, and then look for solutions in your local fly shop, tackle catalog, or hardware store.
Here are some suggestions of things that aren’t essential, but that I find to be truly useful on the water:
A rain jacket. If you primarily fish in waders, get one of the “shorty” styles that won’t hang in the water when you are wading. If you fish from a boat or from shore, you can get away with a longer style.
Fingerless or thin neoprene gloves for cold-weather fishing, and thin sun gloves for tropical and high-mountain fishing in warm weather. Skin cancer is a real threat to fly fishers, and gloves are as essential as a hat if you’re sensitive to ultraviolet rays.
Knot tying tools. If you have trouble with knots, many clever tools have been invented to make knot tying easier.
A diamond file for sharpening hooks. It’s a lot more convenient and economical to sharpen a hook than to throw away a three-dollar fly.
A net. Fish are easier to land, photograph, and release with a net. You can land many fish with your hands, but you’ll lose more at the final moment. The amount of time spent battling with a fish will be cut in half when you carry a net.
A net retainer with a quick-release mechanism to keep the net out of the way until you need it.
After you acquire the essential gadgets, think about a rain jacket, wading stuff, a few tools, a net, and a pair of fingerless gloves if you plan to fish in cold weather.
A wading staff if you fish big rivers. Having a third leg makes a big difference. Many wading staffs collapse and stay out of the way until you need them.
Sunscreen and insect repellent. Why be miserable?
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Planning your first fishing trip
I WOULD NOT SPEND A LOT OF TIME OR MONEY ON YOUR very first fly-fishing trip. You’ll make mistakes, you’ll realize your casting limitations, and you’ll have plenty of questions that you may have to research after your trip. It doesn’t make sense to waste a week of your valuable time and thousands of dollars for a trip to New Zealand, or even a day of time and a hundred miles on your car, when you can find a place for your first trip much closer to home.
My first suggestion would be to find the closest pond or lake. There are few ponds in the lower forty-eight states that don’t have a population of sunfish or other panfish. These feisty little guys strike eagerly, they aren’t spooky, and fly selection is not critical as long as you fish a fly that’s small enough to fit into their diminutive mouths. They also tend to hang clo
se to shore so you won’t have to worry about long casts or dealing with waders or a boat.You’ll fine-tune your casting and will learn how to strike fish, how to strip in line to bring them to hand, and how to release them. Don’t forget to bring a pair of forceps, as these fish often swallow a fly with such abandon that it gets lodged beyond where you can reach with your fingers. If the pond has small largemouth or smallmouth bass, so much the better. They are slightly harder to catch, but bass under ten inches are more eager than their adult relatives.
A patient guide will help you enjoy your first big fly-fishing trip.
You can also find panfish or large minnows like fallfish and creek chubs in streams close to home. These streams may be ignored by most anglers because they don’t have any trout or other gamefish, but you’re just out there to practice—and besides, it helps if you don’t have to worry about who is watching your technique. In addition, the current in these streams will teach you about manipulating your fly in moving water, something that most of us forget about when practicing in the backyard or on casting ponds.
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