Hi LF,

Enjoyed your article this week. While
spending 20 years in the Navy, I had the
opportunity to flyfish my way around the
world so to speak. I had grown up fishing
the dark tannic stained waters of the South
for gills and bass with poppers. Then a
tour of duty in Germany found me packing up
the family, camping gear, and groceries and
spending our weekends camping on some
lovely mountain lakes and fishing the
tailwaters with whatever flies the nearest
shop would recommend. Luckily for me, the
very first trip resulted in the chance
meeting of the local game keeper who
kept watch on some prime private waters
just below the tailrace I was fishing.
Perhaps he was afraid I might not be able
to read the privacy warnings in German and
might venture into them scaring years off
of the big browns that lived there. Anyway,
he stopped and watched me for a few minutes
the first morning and offered a few
pointers. Especially on reading the waters.
I actually caught and released several small
browns under his tutiledge. Next day I was
back again and there he was, offering me a
small box of flies he'd tied for me the
previous evening. I shared my thermos and
some fresh brochen from the local bakery
with him and he shared some more pointers.
With my few words of German, and his limited
English, we didn't talk a lot, but we
somehow managed to bridge the language
barrier. The next day was to be my last
before returning to work and he asked me to
be early next day. I was, and he took me
beyond the signage into the private waters
and proceeded to put me on fish after fish.
He showed me how to make a stealthy approach
to the fish and study them and how to plan
my presentation. I learned a lot from the
kindly gentleman and cherish the memories of
the time we had.

My basic flyfishing skills were fairly
sound for the fishing I had been exposed to
up to that point. But the trout waters
demanded somewhat different techniques. It
would have been the same story had I been
going bonefishing for the first time. Even
though we might rarely need a certain skill,
it would certainly make sense to accumulate
all of these skills before the need arose
to use them. Just a little time and effort
on our part can make it happen. Oh, and if
we happen to make the aquantance of someone
who has already mastered these skills, the
learning curve can be shortened considerably. Fly fishers are a friendly
lot and many if not most of us will go out
of our way to help someone master the
requisite skills. Warm regards, Jim