Stories about that magic day.

I like these stories posts (scariest moment, etc.). So how about stories about those magical fly fishing moments, like hitting a perfect hatch or watching your children catch their first fish?

I tend to get the "shoulda been here last week", so these are few and far between but here goes:

Went on a 9-day trip to Yellowstone a few years back. Never fished there before. Got a guide for the Yellowstone R. but that was sort of a bust. Then fished Soda Butte and Slough 1st meadow for a day with marginal results. So we decided to hike up to the 2nd meadow of Slough the next afternoon, and hit a perfect BWO hatch. 18-20" cutts rising uniformly and we had the perfect weapon--the #16 sparkle dun.

It was heaven. Beautiful scenery, willing (large and wild) fish, slightly overcast skies, and absolutely no other people in sight. This was our last real day there and my oldest brother left the day before to get back to a meeting. DOH!

[Alberto]

This is a story involving my friend Gus. Gus loves the outdoors, is big hiker and backpacker. For a while he had asked me to take him fly fishing but our schedules never matched up.

This past winter he took advantage of a sale at Cabela's and bought himself a 9', 5wt, Redington Red.Start rod. I told him not to buy anything else. With the help of several FAOLers who donated extras, I was able to get Gus a reel, fly line, fly boxes with flies, vest, nippers, hemostats, and a net. For his birthday (in March) I gave him all this stuff plus the Orvis Fly Fishing guide and let him borrow my copy of the Joan Wulff casting DVD. For the next three weeks I got daily e-mails from Gus, all of them with fly fishing questions. I'm always amazed by the willingness to help out that the FAOL community has, Gus thanks everybody who got involved.

Finally we were able to set aside a day for fishing. We went to the Nissitisset river in MA. I let him borrow my extra pair of waders and into the river we went.

We started the day on a very shallow riffle, I just wanted to see him cast and get used to mending in the current. He had done a GOOD job practicing what he learned in the Joan Wulff DVD. We made our way to the first pool I wanted to fish with him. Just below the head of the pool there is a downed tree that is just below the water surface. I told him to make a cast just upstream of the tree, make a quick mend, and let his olive Muddler drift downstream. He nailed the cast on his first try, mended, and no sooner had the Muddler drifted by the tree, a fsh came up and nailed the fly. It was awesome! I was more excited than he was. He played the fish and landed a 14" rainbow. He caught another fish at the pool tailout, a 12" rainbow. The rest of the afternoon went fishless but it really did not matter to either one of us. What a great day.

Needless to say, he is big-time hooked now and can't wait to go again. Now we just need to find some time.

-Alberto

[This message has been edited by Alberto (edited 18 May 2005).]

[This message has been edited by Alberto (edited 18 May 2005).]

[Rich Ward]

This is fun and though there are a number of days that come to mind, this is one of my fondest. Oct. 1991, I was doing a show in Lewiston ID. and my dad drove over from Missoula to help me and fish. We went out after we set up the show and fish one of his favorites. I had walked back to the truck for a fly box I had forgot and was standing above my dad as he rolled out his spey cast. he was fishing a purple bommer on top. As I watched his fly skate and hold as he mended the line, a HUGE steelhead came up and inhailed his fly, after about 30 min. I taped and released for him, A 42" Hen!! before release I took 2 photos of it side up in the water and had a mount made for Christmas. in 45 years of Steelheading it is the largest I ever wittnessed to hand. He has the fish over his tying bench. he is 83 and sill fishes over 100 days a year. in fact he and my son will fish with me on the Big Hole this weekend if it is fishable.


Rich

[purebs]

Some of you may have read this already.
Last summer my son, who I fished with often, went to marine boot camp. I was missing him alot, especially on his birthday wich is the Fourth of July, so I went out to a local state park to do some fishing.Just as the sun was going down I had a hard hit. It was a large Snook for sure! As I was fighting him the fireworks display at the beach started. I was out on the darkened beach alone fighting that fish while the fireworks were going off all over! When i got it in I saw that it was the biggest I have ever caught, 42", all I could think of was that I wished my son was there with me on his birthday.
Bill

this is a great thread....
while I am kinda new to fishing for anything with a fly rod (noodle rodder for 20 yrs for steelhead/salmon)...I started taking my kids "stray" friends ( single parents, broken homes) fishing with me I have broken, lost more equipment doing this, but the looks on thier faces when all the back yard practice casting comes together and they lay that cast right on the money and hook up... the looks and pleasure I get could not be bought at any price.....every trip always ends on when can we do this again....thank god for kids !!

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so much water... so little time to fish it...

[Weasel]

Most of you probably remember my post about my first trout on a Fly Rod rigged with a fly... that I tied. But I have to say my Dad has provided me with many memories. Dad's a little clumbsy... so I've seen a lot of silly mishaps. Once he fell asleep in his lawn chair at the lake and fell forward...into the lake. But I think the best memory will be all the individual memories I have--and am still making-- with him. He's only 58, so I have a long time to make more!

Between Dad and my wife I have a lot... once my wife set a hook so hard she BROKE the swivel seat off my father-in-laws boat!



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Brad
"Work like you don't need the money;
Love like you've never been hurt; and
Dance like no one's watching!"

JC, now that is a magic moment! Only a true sportsman (or sportswoman) could have just observed such a thing... unless you guys really just forgot your reels or something. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Great story.

[FlyingCarp]

My daughters first fish on a fly. After a few very short sessions of yard casting w/ my 9ft 5wt(that I learned from too), my family and I were headed on our first camping trip to a local man-made lake. Her first cast she caught an 8in. crappie. I couldn't get my only fly rod back for the next hour! Good thing my wife called us to make dinner. I didn't catch a crappie the whole four days that we were there!

I see that the original post states "magical fly fishing moments" but I need to mention ALL of the days that my dad took me fishin' as a kid. Even though it wasn't fly fishing, it is the reason why I'm "HOOKED ON FISHIN" and became hooked on(obsessed with) fly fishing.

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Land Em',
Carp

I'm going to cheat a little and throw in a non-flyfishing moment. I took my son and his two sons out fishing. The oldest was 5 and the youngest about to turn 2. I knew that it was inevitable and the 2 year old proved Papa right. We were there for no more than 5 minutes and he fell in. Without missing a beat, the older brother looked at the 2 year old and announced... " Knock it off. You're scaring the fish." Needless to say, Dad and Papa both had a pretty good chuckle on this one.


Mike

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There is no greater fan of flyfishing than the worm.


Patrick McManus

[brookid]

...mine happened this past March. I was fishing a popular spring creek just outside Madison Wisconsin. The weather that week was unseasonably warm and that day it was hovering near 70. I had noticed sporatic bugs coming off...back stones, some caddis, bwo ect. About 1pm fish start breaking the surface, nothing crazy but enough for me to switch over to drys. In the course of the next hour or so I threw everything I could see in the air, on the water and a few attractors for good measure...I was rewarded with nothing but splashy refusals...is it me, is it them? I couldn't figure it out. Finally after missing about the 20th fish I got ****** and slapped a caddis out of the air to get a closer look. I sat on the bank staring at this bug, I had used every size, shape and color caddis in my boxes or so I thought...then it hit me..."you know what this looks like?"...a Hemingway! I tied on a #14, dropped both in the water and as they floated side by side I'll be damned if it wasn't difficult to pick out the natural. I pack up my boxes and head up stream, as i came around a bend I notice quite a few risers working the surface...I target a fish...lay out a cast...good drift...take and hookset! I proceeded to spend the next couple hours putting an *** whooping on a whole bunch of brown trout! I got every riser I threw at. I climbed out of the water that day with a smile on my face and quite possibly the greatest flyfisherman on the planet...

...a side note, I returned to the stream a month later expecting to continue my dominance...and I got my a#@ handed to me...this time not even the Hemingway worked...nothing, zero, ziltch...The scene of my greatest triumph became the place of my greatest faliure...it was a long drive back to Chicago for perhaps the worst flyfisherman on the planet...


Brookid