Fly Fishing Forum - Share The Story

Fly Fishing can be a very complex pastime, full of variety in its participants, in its accoutrements, and in the range of fish that are sought. Anglers include the average person who simply lives to fish, who owns tackle off the rack, and who, I might add, dominates the sport, as well as the stuffy aristocratic member of the private fishing clubs, the one with the fancy clothes and equipment (a type far less common in the fly-fishing circles than the angling stories of past generations might have led us to believe).

Equipment ranges from the absurd to the sublime. An inventive youth can hook panfish with a rubber legged fly on a length of monofilament tied to a stick. I know someone that teaches fisherman to fish small streams by getting them to cover holding water with a bushy fly tied to a leader - without a fly rod or a stick ! Some anglers wouldn't think of setting foot into a trout stream without the latest, the best and the most of everything. There are five-dollar solid-bamboo poles and thousand-dollar split-bamboo rods, and in-between there are a lot of fiberglass and graphite rods. They all catch fish.

Anglers cast flies for freshwater species - trout, bass, and bluegill - and for saltwater species - bonefish, permit, tarpon, marlin and swordfish. Sea - run trout and the anadromous salmonids that spend part of their lives in fresh water and part in salt water -are also quarry for fly rodders especially in Canada and the Northwest United States.

Fly-fisherman angle in small mountain streams, in the calm meanders of spring fed creaks, and in the roaring rivers of the Northwest; in farm pond and in lakes large and small; in shallow, saltwater flats and in the open ocean. Each species of fish and each type of water has its devoted following.

This article is an invitation to fly-fishing, but fly-fishing is a broad topic. So I've chosen to limit my articles to trout, (my favorite) the world they inhabit, and the way to angle for them with fly tackle. These articles are not a technical treatise, nor will they be instructional in nature. It will be my attempt to portray the beauty of the sport and to try and capture the feeling of the sport. My wish is to share this feeling with those who have never felt it, and to celebrate it with those know it well.

Please join me in the fly fishing forum as we travel down this path, I hope you won't be disappointed.

It Doesn't Matter If You Are Just Learning Fly Fishing, This Guide Will Get YouOn The Right Track To A Good Catch.