I can second all the previous responses by my Bros. I too have fished since I was a boy. Ive used every method I could try, from a bamboo cane pole with a big ol' cork bobber and a gob of chicken liver, to spin rigs, downriggers, baitcasters, trolling Jiggin' whatever. I first tried flies on the N. Umpqua fly only area in 1968. It was the first time I ever saw or caught a steelhead. I was using an old zebco spincast rig with an AbuMatic closed face reel. Slingin the fly with a casting bubble and a 9' tapered leader I could barely manage on my 6' rod. (Stiff as a shovel handle, I should add) I had been at it all day, trying to figure it out. I had a size 12 Black Gnat generously soaked in "dry fly oil" floating along there . That fly ducked in around a rock into a little eddy and a 20" steelie grabbed it hard! It was on now ! I was so scared of horsin' him that I let him have his head. He danced and jumped, and nearly made me the first 14 year old ever to die there of a coronary. I won fair and square, and I landed him right there on the rock I'd waded out to. I've been hooked ever since. I got me an old warped cane rod, and learned how to cast with it. I started tying flies and still do. not long after that I caught the first of many on a fly I tied. I still spin fish some, and every summer I drown worms with my nieces, nephews, and now grandkids. I'm never more at peace than on the river, quietly fishing and watching the world. I can do that best swingning a fly rod, and like was said before, the rythym is something big too, It's harder, More rewarding, cleaner, and less technical than other methods, and Zen don't have anything to do with it for me.......................ModocDan