Your First....

[DShock]

John,
I only have a selective memory, not a photographic one. I depend heavily on these: http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/DCIm...otes%20LRG.jpg
Doug

[logan1193]

Hmmm...first fish..only a few years ago for me. It was my second day fly fishing a small stream that connects with the Margaree. I remember hooking several small brookies on a mickey finn. It's still one of my favourite streamers today!

[Lew]

Hi, Lew. I live about a mile and a half east of where the Burgess enters the Snake and I've always wondered how it would fish today but have never tried it.Best wishes,
Dennis

I don't know if I could even find the place now Dennis, but I suspect it isn't the hottest spot on the river to fish. Dad didn't know too much about where to go back then. My cousin used to fish below the Grant Dam about that time, and he's caught some monster trout out of there. I haven't been there in many years either.

[black_co]

First fish is easy. I was about 6 I think. I had an uncle that was finishing up his conservation degree and was working summers in a state park in the panhandle of Idaho. My parents and I went up there to visit one summer for vacation. We were camped in front of a lake, I remember the lake being glass smooth and seeing the snow capped mountain reflected off the surface of the lake. I was using a 4 ft square spring steel rod with an old zebco reel. My bait was cubes of cheese. My first fish was a Rainbow out of that lake. It seemed huge to me at the age of 6, it was probably a 10 or 12 inch fish. Dad cleaned it and we grilled it that night for supper. I've been fishing ever since.

Second Rainbow as 2 summers ago. My wife and I went on our annual anniversary vacation to Eureka Springs AR. We decided to take a day and go fishing before we headed home. We went to the Beaver Lake Tailwaters. We caught and released several 10 to 14 inch rainbow that day. We were using worms and spinning gear. I decided that day that I wanted to learn to fly fish, after watching several people doing it.

First fish on a fly was last summer at Roaring River State Park. Again on our annual anniversary vacation. This time Beaver Lake Tailwaters was flooded from a day and a half of torrential downpours. I was using a Cabela's brand fly rod that I picked up in their bargain cave and a Redington reel that was on clearance. The fly was a weighted egg pattern.

Black_co

[dal]

There have been days I've caught fish on the Henry's (above Ashton Dam, Ora Bridge, Fun Farm). First fish on the Henry's was at Harriman above Vernon Bridge about 9 years ago. But more often than not, I don't do too well there so I move on up to Fall River, where I seem to do ok. I saw some of your pictures this Fall from the Henry's (Braided Channel) and I think I've figured out where that is but I'd love to take you up on your offer sometime. By the way, our address in Salt Lake up until 1956 was 2168 Lambourne and our phone number was Ingersol 7-1247

Dennis

[Steve Molcsan]

Tim and Doug and Dennis -

If my short term memory were as good as your long term memory, I'd know what this thread is about !!

Tim - about the time you were moving to SLC, my family was moving to 1144 Dolores Way in Sacto CA !! The phone number was JU5-6707. The JU was for Juniper.

Now what is this thead about again ??

Oh yeah, Dennis, you reported being skunked on the Henry's Fork. When you are ready to give it another go, send me a PM and I'll give you a place to try. If I can remember where it is.

John

Hey John,

Just remember you are suppose to cc me on all your honey hole secrets you doal out...

[Jed]

My first was 55 years ago give or take so I don't remember it. But it was at a pond at a place my family went to every year. I was using beatles or dough balls made from wonder bread. It was on a casting rod with a red/white bobber. It was a pan fish or a trout. It was hugh, or at least thats what my mother told me

First fish on a fly was a trout, about 1970. Probably in a beaver pond in Underhill Center. We used to ask if we wanted to go into town to buy some meat or if we were in a hurry to run to the beaver pond and catsh come trout. They were plentiful and easy to catch. An addiction was born.

jed

[DShock]

My first Sea Run Cutthroat on a fly was caught on the Suislaw River (Oregon Coast)
My first West Slope Cutthroat on a fly, was at the Middle Fork of the Salmon River (Idaho)
My first Yellowstone Cutthroat on a fly, was at the Yellowstone River in the Park.
My first Grayling on a fly, was at the Gibbon River in the Park.
My first Brown trout on a fly, was at the Madison River in the Park.
My first Brook Trout on a fly, was at Little Cultus Lake (Central OR)
My first Land Locked Atlantic Salmon on a fly, was at East Lake (Central OR)
My first Cuttbow on a fly, was at Henry's Lake (Idaho)
My first Steelhead on a fly, was at the Clackamas River (OR)
Doug

[Mike Ormsby]

I caught my first wild trout not far from these waters I now feel most at home on. It was a big enough brown trout that a six year old would make his father turn around the family car and return back to his grandparents' home to retrieve his fish, which had been left cleaned and wrapped in their refrigerator, just waiting to be eaten by a proud fisherman at home. This fish had been largely forgotten until the family was about half way home (a considerable distance as the drive home was over a hour long).

I got my first real taste of trout fishing (not to mention of that trout once we did get home) in the Hockley Valley close to the home in Orangeville where my mother's parents lived. I learned to fish there, using a kid's rod and reel outfit with a worm on a hook, accompanying my grandfather as we cruised the backroads from likely fishing spot to likely fishing spot. One such spot was on a stream, passing under a rural bridge, that seemed to hold multitudes of fish -- all of which were trout to a starry-eyed kid, especially when he watched his grandfather mentor catch such pretty fish on a bunch of feathers and fur on a hook.

I graduated to an adult rod and reel after we lost my junior package bouncing down the sideroad with a trunkload of manure bound for my grandmother's gardens in town. When my grandfather and I got to one of our favourite fishing holes, we discovered that my prized rod and reel was missing. Apparently it had been bounced out of the open trunk of my grandfather's car as it was jarred by the many ruts of the gravel roads we travelled on. The trunk had been left open to accomodate the baskets of manure for my grandmother's garden. Needless to say, my grandfather went up and down those roads fruitlessly searching for that rod and reel, desperately trying to appease a teary child, while cursing to himself (or so he thought), "Because of that 'blank-blank' manure, we've lost that 'blank-blank' fishing rod". Imagine the stunned look (not to mention surprise) on my grandmother's face when her rosy cheeked grandson pronounced, "Because of your 'blank-blank' manure, I lost my "blank-blank' fishing pole". She recovered her composure enough to "discuss" this matter in more detail with my grandfather. Shortly afterwards, I got my new rod and reel. And was forever sworn to remember from then on that whatever was said or seen on a fishing trip should be our little secret. Well at least if I had to "swear" to anything, it wasn't to ever be about manure again to my grandmother.

As I grew older, I came to broaden my fishing horizons. Not that much further afield from my first real trout fishing experience. And I started to fish using the bunch of feathers and fur on a hook that I saw my grandfather use years before. I became a fly fisherman.

P.S. You'll excuse me for including this here -- it's an excerpt from an entry I posted on my blog here on FAOL -- but I thought it was appropriate to this thread -- and perhaps worth repeating

[Grubb]

I don't remember my first fish on a fly but I remember the stream and the feeling, the feeling stuck with me, I also do remember loosing alot of flys in bushes, trees, the grass in the cow pasture behind me, etc... lol