I started at age 13 with Garcia Conolon 8"fly rod, pflueger knock off fly reel, and S.A Air Cell fly line. Fished the lakes around the San Francisco Bay Area, Stanislaus River, Yuba River and some others I forget. Don't recall whether my first fly caught fish was a bluegill or trout. I fished with my brother and our friends. By age 16 I had given up fly fishing and focused on bass fishing with plastic worms, and hard lures.

I picked up flyfishing again at age 30 with a cheap Berkeley graphite 6wt rod (it did cast ok) that I caught a lot of bluegill, bass, and crappie with before supplemented with Fisher Streamfisher 9ft 5wt. I mostly flyfished alone for a couple of years before connecting with other local fly fishers. Sixteen years 70 plus species later I'm still having fun.