Whats your story?

[jbird]

In light of the thread Bill started about this sites rating/ranking, I thought it might be fun to share our testimony to this sport. I really enjoy Bills strolls down memmory lane.
Anybody wanna play? When and where did flyfishing konk you on the head and take you captive? 8)

Jay

[Ed Wahl]

I'll bite. It was on my first backpacking trip into the Rubicon River Canyon. Also my first good close up look at the Sierras. Talk about a life changing experience. Anyway, back to the fishing. My brother and I camped at the confluence of the South Fork and Main stem of the Rube. I was told by the guy at the bait and tackle to use salmon eggs. So I bait up the ole ultralite spinning rod with a Pautzkes egg and drop it into a run where I can see a bunch of fish(trout, but what did I know) and it was promptly ignored. Drifted, planted on the bottom with a weight, it didn't matter, this wasn't going to work. So I figured I had to give them something they were used to eating. Being from the midwest and growing up fishing with bait, I knew I could turn over some rocks and get some crawdads. Well, no crawdads but what I did find blew me away. I found out later they were stonefly nymphs, at the time I just considered them fish candy. Man they worked well, but very hard to deliver them, that's the exact moment I knew I had to learn to fly fish. I met a guy on the lower American later that summer who was fly fishing. I'm pretty sure I made a pest of myself but he was enjoying turning other people onto the sport. He helpe me pick out a fly rod and reel and I've been trying to figure this crap out ever since :D. Oh yeah, we've been fishing and hunting buddies ever since. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Ed

[bonneville54]

I'll bite #2

However, in my case it's a story of inheritance. No....It wasn't about on inheriting the tradition and lore of flyfishing in my family. I married into this activity, yet realized very quickly that if I was going to make any effort to perserve my wife's inheritance, I'd better learn to flyfish.

So....25 years ago. Me and a guide on the Bow River. My father in law and his son are in another boat, happily making their way down the Bow, casting and catching and I was busily making wind knots and snapping off flies, much to the guides chagrin. In fact, I disliked his attitude so much (I'd never cast a fly rod before), I asked him to beach the driftboat because I was done and I was about ready to punch him.

"Goddamn it", I said, "if you have any integrity, teach me something!

Well, he did...we went over to a quiet channel nearby. He explained the basic's and we spent some time casting to spots in the water. Soon we were back in the boat and he pointed to some fishy water, I gulped, threw the fly and......bam! The biggest trout I'd ever seen hit that fly (EHC) and somehow I set it. I was yelling, he was yelling. I fell down almost breaking the rod.....he netted it and while I hooked my first trout on a fly that day, it was really me who was hooked.

Funny thing, that guide and I kept in touch untill he passed away two years ago, finding a few other things in common besides trout on a fly.

From a potential black eye to good friends to a lifelong hobby. Not bad.

BTW, the inheritance is safe....my father-in-law is 85 and fishes every chance he gets.

[caltagm]

I'll bite #3 -
All during my childhood my father and I would fish together. Family vacations would consistently be two weeks in the Sierras. Dad and I would occassionally visit the small urban lakes in Orange County and spent a few mornings on the Seal Beach pier soaking sardine pieces, drinking hot chocolate and imagining what it would be like to catch something. When I was about 12, Dad got the idea for us to try fly fishing. He signed us up for casting lessons with a group in Long Beach. I don't remember their name but they had a small clubhouse and a large pond for casting. The next summer we spent our standard two weeks in the Sierras at Mono Village at the top of Upper Twin Lake outside of Bridgeport. I'd never actually fly fished but I had fly casted a bit. I walked up Robinson Creek lugging this neaderthal, nine-foot fiberglass rod with foam grips and, armed with no fly fishing knowledge whatsoever, I tossed my only fly into the water. I could see the little tangle of thread and feather at the end of my line as it drifted down the pool just under the surface. The second time I tossed it out there (I was disappointed that I couldn't "cast" because of the brush), I was amazed to see a small brown sprint out from under a log and take the fly! He was small and I was so excited that I set the hook way too hard (a throwback to my bait-fishing days) and launched the poor little guy ten feet upstream. Once I let him go, I sat on the gravel bar in complete amazement at being able to see the fish dart out and take the fly like that. It was incredible to me that, with such basic equipment, you could participate so authentically in the common life of a fish. At 12 years old, I found that it's one thing to catch a hatchery trout on Zeke's floating bait while sitting in a lawn chair. And it's something completely different and boundlessly more rewarding to accurately imitate nature to the point of interacting with it on it's own level.

I'm probably getting a bit over-philosophical here but I can still remember that excitement and I try to re-create it every chance I get.

Mike

[Rick J]

I was born and raised overseas with not much access to freshwater fishing but my dad got my brother and me hooked early on any kind of fishing and hunting. We would come back to the US every 4 years or so for a few months and we had a great uncle who lived on Vancouver Island that we visited - we fished every chance we could and would dabble with fly rods periodically.

When I cam to the US for College at Humboldt State I would fish again where I could and began carrying a fly rod along with my conventional gear. My brother was in Utah at the time and during summers I would hang with him and we would fish various waters - one lake in particular - Strawberry Resrervoir was wonderful with flies and that is probably when I really got hooked.

Back in California I would play around on the Klamath with spinners and the occasional fly - then I met Larry Simpson at Time Flies in Arcata and built my first fly rod in 1975. At the same time I met Brett Jensen who was married to my wife's sister and he got me into fly tying and we had some great adventures chasing steelies on the Klamath - now I rarely carried conventional gear and was prettty much hooked on flyfishing. It has been downhill ever since - Bob Kelly, an instructor at HSU, got me instructing flyfishing classes at Humbolt State and was the one who said if you want to take up a cheap hobby - take up cocain :).

Recently, I have started playing with two handers and this has opened up a whole new world to try to master

[jbird]

My mom is a die hard fisherperson. She raised me since my dad died when I was 6mo. old. We spent every free minute on various peirs in orange county. and also north florida for a few years. I have always been hipnotized by water, and what may lurk below. I left Newport beach out of high school for northern latitudes, ended up in Bend Oregon.
I met a friend who was a fly fishing guide in Idaho for a few months each year and he asked me if I'd like to try flyfishing. We made plans to go on a saturday. He asked me over the night before for a beer. I was puzzled at the equipment he was setting up at the table. He said, " I need to tie a few flies for tomorrow" I was blown away as I didnt even know you could do that. After watching him for an hour, he put me in the pilots seat and coached me thru a fly. Thats right, I tied a fly before I ever touched a flyrod. :lol:

The next day he took me to the Crooked river outside Prineville. He wasnt one to teach, he simply fished and I watched. I stumbled and fell often on the slick rocks, lost a half dozen flies, but never cursed once. I was lovin every minute of it. Watching my friend Brent catch trout after trout kept my enthusiasm pulsing.

Then it happened. I caught one! A 12" crooked river cuttbow. An hour later I got another one (of coarse Brent had landed 40+ fish that day) and I had decided I had found my true love. (Flyfishing, not Brent :D )

That week I bought a flytying kit and learned to tie the only two flies I needed for the Crooked.
I went back every single weekend that summer. That was 1987. By the end of the summer I was actually catching fish, lots of them, in my rubber chest waders and jimi hendrix t shirt. My skin was raddish red. I got the strangest looks from "orvis catalog models" that would be methodicaly drifting a dry fly through nymph water without a take all day, they mustve thought I was on acid :lol:

I love remembering those days, I still remember the exquisite feeling of discovery those first couple years. Actually makes me a little envious of the new guys to the sport...I know how you feel :)

Thanks guys for sharing your story. I thought this was a topic that would be able to avoid an argument :?

Lets hear somemore!

Jay

[nrthcsteel]

OK Jay you got another biter. Id say I was ten years old or so. There was a local lake stocked with trout quite a few times a year. Usually it was the good old bobber and nightcrawler method. One evening my dad and I were fishing from shore and the mosquitos were hatching like crazy. In the last hour of light the lake came alive with trout rising everywhere. Needless to say nightcrawlers werent doing much good. " I know how were gonna get em!" Said my dad. So we drove home and he went to the closet and reached deep back in the corner and pulled out a tube with a "fenwick" logo on it. And he pulled out one of the coolest rods I had ever seen. A dark rusty reddish color with a small cork grip above a beautiful copper reel seat. "Wheres the reel go, how do you cast it with that reel below the grip like that?" Question after question that my dad patiently ansewered as best he could. Then he reached high on a shelf and pulled out a shoe box that had an old vice, an old bobbin, some hooks, some feathers, some peacock herl and a bunch of my moms sewing thread. "were gonna catch fish with bird feathers!!" I said, he laughed and he tied some peacock herl bodied flies with a black hackle. the next evening after he got home from work we loaded the old row boat up that we would troll around with in the bay for silvers in the fall time. we rowed out on the lake and he showed me as best he could how to cast or at least try to cast. Soon the mosquitos started hatching and the trout began to rise. Then as my fly landed ever so NOT gracefully on the water a trout came flying out of the water smacking the fly hard. I pulled back but nothing there. "To late, he spit it out" my Dad said. Soon I hooked one and the old fiberglass fenwick began to bend and the pfleuger medalist started spinning away, I was HOOKED! I spent probably every day the next two weeks tying up a dozen peacock herl flys for my dad and I. I eagerly awaited him coming home from work and couldnt wait to get out on the lake. And to my dads credit he took me every day, even though he was probably tired from a long days work and could have used a beer or two or propped his feet up and watched the game on monday night. So Yeah those trout on that little lake got me hooked on fly fishing for sure but if it wasnt for my dad I may have never known the feeling of being hooked at all. Thanks dad. Kevin

[Ed Wahl]

That was an excellent idea for a thread Jay, good show. Ed

[slage]

Northern Minnesota.
Crying after I went home, literally.

Chips-O-hoy by the handful for breakfast.
So many big bluegills many days ended early.
Early evening spent in the cleaning house.
Dinner spent around the fry-daddy with beer soaked sunfish and rolling dice.

aaaa, Grandparents. Still have the old man's fishing hat, still smells like him!!

15 years pass without a mention of fish-

One picture of a good friend, small trout and mountain in the background was all it took. It was one moment of a several few in my life where I knew something before I knew.
This is for me.

End of the summer, party in Tahoe ......eeh, isn't that a flyrod??
Sunday morning, "swinging'' a black ant-something.
Fish-on!!! Maybe 8".
End of (new) story.

[k.hanley]

I had justed finished some rock climbing in Yosemite Valley. Crossing the meadow I saw a guy working the Merced River with a fly outfit. He was catching fish left-n-right.

I laid down in the grass to take a rest and the guy noticed I was watching him. He asked me if I wanted to try fishing. I told him I didn't know how to flyfish. He said no problem he would show me. He demonstrated short line nymphing and then gave me the rod. My first pass with the nymph caught a fish. More importantly, it also cuaght a new flyfisher! I proceeded to fish for about an hour with the guy's rig. Caught plenty of beautiful High Sierra gems. That sealed the deal.

That was back around 1968. :shock:

Went back home to Redwood City bought an Eagle Claw rod and Pflueger reel (6/7 weight). Began to experiment with smelt and perch in the waters around Pete's Harbor. Graduated to rays and striped bass.

My uncle and cousin were flyfishers and gave me my first 9 weight outfit. It was a rig for chasing stripers in SF Bay.
Cheers, Ken

PS: Great thread Jay.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

http://www.kiene.com/aboutus/images/staff-billkiene-kid.jpg

Every summer our parents would take us to Santa Cruz, California for our family vacation. We stayed at Sycamore Grove Camp Ground which was up on the small San Lorenzo River in the coast range ~20 minutes above town.

By noon we would pack up and drive down to the beach for the afternoon. We did a lot of pier fishing and in those days there were lots more fish than now. We were just kids messing around. We did a lot of snorkeling too. Lots of fun.

At about 5:00pm we would drive back up to the camp ground and take a shower, eat and then drive back down to town to the Santa Cruz Board Walk. This was really fun for us in those days.

I really appreciate the fact that my parents took us there so many years.

[Darian]

Hmmmm,.... As I recall, I started using flies for fishing around 1954-55. :? :? My Dad gave me a "Ned Gray" fly tying kit. Sooo,.... I tied flies a short time before I fished with them. My uncle lived in Orangevale on a small farm that had a shaded "crick" that ran thru it. I could jump over it in most places. The field it was in had a young cow that thought it was a Bull. It wanted to play all the time and made it difficult to get to the "crick" without some type of chase. :lol:

The "crick had a bunch of Green Sunnies in it and . 8) 8) I cast my flies on a spinning rod without benefit of a fly line. Just tied 'em on the mono, direct. :? Bow/arrow casts git it done. These sunnies pounced on everything I threw at 'em. :) :) Nothing big but I was hooked from that point on. :D in those days a short fly line (30') was imported from France for use on an open face spinning reel. The theory was to let over half of the line out by false casting and then let the rest go. It would pull out some more line off the spool. I bought one and cast it a few times before I decided it wasn't gonna work very well.

My first fly rod was a Southbend, 8' 6"er. Cast a 7 weight, double taper line on it.... It caught a bunch of Bass, Bluegill, Crappie before being shut in the door of a 65' VW Bug. :lol: :lol: :D :D

[Hairstacker]

Like many, I grew up chasing all kinds of fish with conventional gear. Well, one day in the spring of 1981 (give or take a year), my dad and I decided to drive up to Lake Berryessa and toss Kastmasters for planted trout. As it turned out, it was so easy that day it got downright boring. We were catching and releasing fish on virtually every cast. Cast out, reel in a bit, drag in trout. Repeat. After about 30, I lost total interest. Since the age of 11, I had subscribed to all three of the Big 3 outdoor sporting magazines (Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, and Field & Stream) and had read many articles about fly fishing so I knew I would get around to trying it someday. I decided now was the time.

After doing a little studying about fly fishing, I went down to Longs Drugstore in Fairfield to get myself outfitted. All the magazines of that time were recommending 7 wt. rods as the all-around rod choice for a beginner, so I picked out a Garcia 3-star 8'6" fiberglass 7 wt. rod, an Olympic (Pflueger Medalist knockoff) fly reel, a double taper fly line, some leader material, a bottle of floatant, and a little box of #16 Light Cahill dries. I returned home with my loot, tied together a bunch of leader sections to form a 9' 4X tapered leader, nail-knotted it to my new fly line, and headed back to the same lake cove. I tied on one of my new flies and flailed away based on diagrams I had studied in a book. I did my best to get that fly to touch down very lightly on the lake surface, all the while avoiding all the weeds and brush behind me. No small feat. But, lo and behold, after a few dozen casts, a trout actually rose and gently took one of those Light Cahills. I can still remember the full bend of that fiberglass rod. And every few dozen casts, I managed to raise and hook a few others. Been hooked on fly fishing ever since. Oh, and I still have a soft spot for size 16 Light Cahills.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

HS,

I read all those magazines too. They were mostly east coast publications so they had a 'west coast section' stuffed inside some them that was printed on yellow page.

I also read the "Fisherman's Bible" which was a phone book size publication about fishing all over the world.

[Flycanoe]

OK, here's my story.

I started fishing with my Dad in the Sierras when I was growing up and we would mostly use live bait with a spinning rod. But this was not just any bait as we didn't bring it with us ahead of time. We couldn't go fishing until we hunted for and found our bait in or next to the river we planned to fish. So we would walk the river and turn over rocks to collect nymphs or along the shore to collect grasshoppers.

I can tell you first hand there is no more effective method of fishing then using local caught bait. Later on when I was in high school and would go fishing with friends or boy scouts, I would always out fish everyone using this local bait method.

Then when I was like 15, I told my Dad I wanted to also fish dry flies for surface feeding fish. So he got me my first fly rod, but it wasn't a typical fly rod, it was an Eagleclaw spin/fly combo rod that switches setups from spinning reel to fly reel. So now I could fish either method.

Well, the next summer when we went on a big camping trip in the sierras with several families. I caught my first fish on a dry fly and it was the biggest fish I'd ever caught. I don't remember now how big, but it was the biggest fish of the entire trip by anybody in our party.

I still have that rod to this day and my son loves using it for fly fishing small streams in the sierras.

I love fly fishing because I can still use something that closely simulates the live bait that I used to use as a kid without turning over rocks to find it or try to catch it before it hops away. I'm too old to chase hoppers now. :lol:

[Mike Churchill]

Like many others, I grew up chasing trout and panfish with bait and lures. My dad and older brother had flyfished in the Sierras with a couple of friends when we lived in Visalia when I was too small to go. :(

At my request, my parents bought me a fly rod for my 23rd birthday. Took it on my honeymoon in Tahoe that summer but didn't catch anything. (Had hooked the wife on fishing during college.)

Between law school, starting the career and a family, and living in San Diego, my nascent flyfishing career went nowhere fast. :?

In 1999 (age 31), I moved to San Jose and joined the Flycasters club. That April, I went on their annual trip to Pyramid Lake. Spent a day and half standing on a ladder freezing my toes off, but caught my first two cutts and learned to double haul. :)

On the way back over the Sierras, the guy I was carpooling with suggested we hit the lower Yuba for the afternoon. After an hour of fruitlessly throwing dries at non-existent fish, a multi-species hatch started and fish began to rise. :shock:

Caught my first significant fish on a dry: a 16-inch rainbow on a size 16 Adams. :D :D Never looked back. Other than baiting hooks for the kids, I haven't tossed a conventional rod since.

And now two of my daughters have caught fish on a fly and the youngest is a confirmed fishing junkie in training. :evil: