I have a book called Simplified Fly Fishing by S.R. Slaymaker. It was written in 1969, but it's still the best beginner's guide I've ever seen. The subtitle on the cover says, "It gets you on the water and fishing with flies in half an hour." Everything a beginner needs to know is in the eleven pages of chapter one.
The Curtis Creek Manifesto is another great little animated book for beginners.Originally Posted by deathb4disco
When you can arrange your affairs to go fishing, forget all the signs, homilies, advice and folklore. JUST GO.
That is pretty funny Steve for sure.
What I learned is that for beginners to do a roll cast, I need to emphasize that they "punch" the wall to get the line to lift off of the water.
I taught one of my pastors who's bucket list included fly fishing to cast in one day and then we went fishing where he caught his first trout. Basic fly fishing is not that hard.
Fly fishing has levels of difficulty. If I can use an analogy, it is a lot like learning to fly an airplane. Taking off and landing a single engine prop plane in good weather is not that difficult. But ramp that up to multiple engines, then commercial jet engines, then jet fighters, then jet fighters on an air craft carriers at night, and you have something akin to comparing basic fly fishing to highly technical fly fishing.
In my view, it is not really fair to compare the discussions about the technical fly fishing as prototypical of basic fly fishing. In my view we are not making fly fishing more difficult at all. What we are doing is exploring all the skill levels of fly fishing, from the simplest to the highly technical.
Regards,
Silver
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"..........Szent-Gyorgy
For what it's worth, I agree with Warren completely. My first fly fishing trip was with Jack on the Duck river a few years ago. I caught my first trout on a nymph. I have tried dry flies some and I really enjoy trying to cast and present the fly correctly. However, I have still not caught many fish on a dry fly and if I had started with that I'm sure my interest would not have lasted very long. Great article Warren, thanks for sharing.
Jason
"If we lie to the government, it's called a felony, when they lie to us, it's called politics." Bill Murray
It's all about funnels.
When you're talking about attracting new people to fly fishing or introducing new anglers to the sport in general, the KISS principle is extremely valuable. The simpler and easier you (the teacher, salesperson, guide, spokesperson) can make it, the bigger the end of the funnel gets. The bigger that end of the funnel is, the more people it will hold. Once folks enter the funnel they can find how deeply into the cone they want to descend for themselves. We don't need to make that decision for them. We only need to make the knowledge and training and equipment accessible to everyone.
If you flip the funnel upside down by making it seem difficult, expensive, and time consuming catch fish on a fly, then you won't find many people in the funnel. How many people are looking for the most difficult, time consuming, and expensive way to relax and have fun? Exactly. LOL But folks with a propensity for things like Jason Borger's discourses on the physics of fly casting and those cute graphics from the Sage Casting Analyzer will find their way to the pointy end of the funnel once they're in it. And we will "catch" more of them with a bigger wide end on our funnel.
The Jason Borgers and Rajeff brothers of the sport are great for narrowing and lengthening the spout on the fly fishing funnel, which makes it more useful as a funnel too. After all, the purpose of a funnel is to put stuff from a big source into a container with a small opening. These types push the technical envelope of the sport, improving tackle, techniques, etc. in a similar way to how auto racing translates into improvements to your pickup truck or mini-van. Guys like Silver or I come in really handy when you are trying to expand your fly fishing capabilities and run into a "hiccup" you can't figure out how to get rid of that is keeping you from doing what you want to do. Our technical knowledge and ability to dissect and rebuild fly fishing skills should enable us to work with you to solve your problem.
But whether you're a Borger, a Silver, or a WarrenP, when you're staring at that beginner holding a fly rod for the very first time, you have to lay down somewhere between 99% and 90% of everything you know about fly fishing and leave it for another day. You gotta change your mindset from what you want to teach and put yourself in their waders and ask yourself (with the benefit of all your hindsight) what you really wish you had been taught on day one. You know how much you can absorb and retain in a day. Nobody else is gonna be a whole lot different.
And above all, we need to get back in touch with this concept: nobody takes up fly fishing to tie knots, tie flies, wear waders, cast, etc. Everyone who takes up fly fishing...everyone...does so to catch a fish on a fly rod. Our #2 goal (after keep them safe) with a newcomer should be to help them do exactly that: catch a fish on a fly. Get them "hooked" on fly fishing first. Then they might get hooked on tying, casting, rod-building, or whatever. They may become the next Rajeff, Borger, or Kreh. They may be a WarrenP. Maybe they'll be another Silver. But nobody will ever know if they never catch that first fish. You can take that to the bank.
Yes, we make it too hard.
Though I do love all the technical ins and outs of flies, leaders, lines, rods, reels, waders,vests, charts, graphs, and boats, it has to be overwhelming for a beginner.
Bear742
I think in order to come close to answering the initial question, someone has to answer the question of:
Who are the 'WE' in the question? Is it the fly fishermen(women)? The guides? The magazine/book publishers? The authors of books/magazine articles? The equipment/supply manufacturers? The fly fishing schools? The destination fly shops? The big box stores? The catalogs? The internet sites? Did I leave any potential influences out?
Personally, I try to keep it simple.
Allan
If you can afford $375.00 - $450.00 bucks a day for a guided float trip you can be a "Fly Fisher"! Your guide will tie all the knots, select the leaders and tippet as well as the fly. All you have to do is "Fling it out there"! This became evident on a recent float down the the Clark Fork by Kaboom1 and I during our month long trip. We were about 2 - 3 hours into it when our guide admitted that it was not often that he had clients that could "Cast past the oars!!" (he guides 80 days a year)! Sad statment for flyfishing.
Float trips are not my cup of tea but if you can afford them it sure makes Fly Fishing easy!! Absoultly no guesswork involved!!
It also helps if you wear a bright yellow full length raincoat and do the 2 handed "Fly Fling" over gin clear water! Another story!
Jason (hungNtree) was what all new flyfishers should be, a good listener! I for sure had more fun then him on that first outing for trout on the Duck. But we fished it the way I knew he would catch trout, dry fly's are for another day.
I think that we forget how simple fishing need be. Most fish are caught within 30 feet of the fisherman. That equals a little bit more than a rod length, a leader length and the same amount of line. I teach people the roll cast then use the forward part of a roll cast in reverse for the back cast then put it together for a full cast. Takes no more than 20 minutes to get someone able to cast 30 to 40 feet. Using nymphs usually works well as they don't need a clean presentation and most fish will consider a nymph. I love the pond with a million blue gills. They are great first fish and not real fussy.
Learn to Fly Fish in 24 Hours by Bob Sousa is a good book with simple step by step instructions.
jed
The last outfitter float I witnessed out West was really embarrassing. I was fishing with another very experienced angler and our guide was very good. He was loving it. But we were part of a 6 boat party and 4 boats had inexperienced anglers in them. Those guides put balloons on extremely long, heavily weighted leaders with multiple nymphs and heavy rods and had them just lower them over the side of the drift boat. On this 3-day "fly fishing trip," NO attempt was ever made to teach these "anglers" to cast. In fact, ZERO education took place at all. So...yeah...that was pretty easy.
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