A little thrown off with trying to figure out the whole fly-fishing thing?
No worries.
I enjoy getting emails about gear, stream locations, and host of questions. So I am committing to a series of posts that might help look at this whole getting started with fly-fishing thing. It took me a few years to understand a good part of the fly-fishing experience back in the day. Then like life you soon realize more of what you don’t know than what you really understand anyway.
I started fly-fishing while in college and tending bar in Indiana, Pa. I think they were one in the same or at least it felt like a double major. Greg, another numnuts like myself and someone I met at during my studies with my second major, took me up to First Fork in Potter County for a weekend in August. We decided to go fly-fishing for trout! Yippee won’t that be cool.
My first little bit of advice is don’t start fly-fishing for trout in August. I caught 24 fallfish that were no bigger than five inches. Greg said he saw a trout at the bottom of a deep pool in the stream. Personally I think was hallucinating from the August heat. It looked like a stick and was the closest we actually got to any trout that weekend. Naturally after this wonderful experience I was gripped with the sport. Who wouldn’t?
Early on I spent a lot of time devouring Pennsylvania Fly Fishing books from Landis, Meck and Sajna. I had plenty of time as I certainly wasn’t reading any of my college books as I was part of a special five year and four summer program that didn’t require much reading or English for that matter as you can tell by my posts. I tried to explain to my parents it was a new progressive Bachelor of Arts Program in Geography with an internship at a bar. My mother has two Masters, I am sure she wasn’t buying any of my nonsense and was probably just happy I wasn’t in jail.
Further reading had me digging into the Pennsylvania Angler, even the old ones my dad had stacked in the basement right next to every National Geographic that had ever been published since 1888. You know the ones that were going to be worth a lot of money some day. The Pennsylvania Angler articles covered a lot of ground including stream locations, bugs and trout habits. It was the only way you could figure much of this stuff out before the Interwebs.
So going forward I will try and make a blog post out every week covering many aspects of getting started in fly-fishing. We will look at rods, reels, gear, streams, trout, bugs or whatever else you may need to get up to speed this spring. When we are finished tearing through your wallet like a drunken sailor on leave, just kidding I’ll avoid of much as that as possible, we will look at all the best values and practical ways to get started.
I will usually toss out a few ideas on stuff you can try yourself before the next post to keep you moving through process. We are going to get started next week by going old school and finding some books that are some must haves maybe keep a few dead tree publishers around a little bit longer.
If you have topics you want covered or questions please feel free to continue emailing me at: dkile@paflyfish.com
No worries.
I enjoy getting emails about gear, stream locations, and host of questions. So I am committing to a series of posts that might help look at this whole getting started with fly-fishing thing. It took me a few years to understand a good part of the fly-fishing experience back in the day. Then like life you soon realize more of what you don’t know than what you really understand anyway.
I started fly-fishing while in college and tending bar in Indiana, Pa. I think they were one in the same or at least it felt like a double major. Greg, another numnuts like myself and someone I met at during my studies with my second major, took me up to First Fork in Potter County for a weekend in August. We decided to go fly-fishing for trout! Yippee won’t that be cool.
My first little bit of advice is don’t start fly-fishing for trout in August. I caught 24 fallfish that were no bigger than five inches. Greg said he saw a trout at the bottom of a deep pool in the stream. Personally I think was hallucinating from the August heat. It looked like a stick and was the closest we actually got to any trout that weekend. Naturally after this wonderful experience I was gripped with the sport. Who wouldn’t?
Further reading had me digging into the Pennsylvania Angler, even the old ones my dad had stacked in the basement right next to every National Geographic that had ever been published since 1888. You know the ones that were going to be worth a lot of money some day. The Pennsylvania Angler articles covered a lot of ground including stream locations, bugs and trout habits. It was the only way you could figure much of this stuff out before the Interwebs.
So going forward I will try and make a blog post out every week covering many aspects of getting started in fly-fishing. We will look at rods, reels, gear, streams, trout, bugs or whatever else you may need to get up to speed this spring. When we are finished tearing through your wallet like a drunken sailor on leave, just kidding I’ll avoid of much as that as possible, we will look at all the best values and practical ways to get started.
I will usually toss out a few ideas on stuff you can try yourself before the next post to keep you moving through process. We are going to get started next week by going old school and finding some books that are some must haves maybe keep a few dead tree publishers around a little bit longer.
If you have topics you want covered or questions please feel free to continue emailing me at: dkile@paflyfish.com
