Fly fishing is, for all its eccentricities and accoutrements, a relatively simple sport. Your goal is to put a fly in front of a fish, and make that fly look real. Sure, you can argue that the big streamers we throw for pike or muskie don’t look like anything “real,” and the same goes for some of more popular steelhead flies.
But the majority of fly fishing, whether it’s for trout, bass, carp, or panfish, involves putting a fly in front of a fish and making that fly look like part of nature.
I wish that simple lesson had been pounded into my head years ago. If I could’ve made this my singular focus, I think I’d be a much better fly angler now.
When all you care about is a good drift with a fly that’s a close match to what the fish are probably eating, fly fishing becomes incredibly simple. Does your casting need to be Instagram-perfect? No, it just needs to be good enough to get your fly in the right spot. Do you need Ph.D.-level knowledge of your local aquatic insects? Nope. If you can match the size and shape of real bugs to the fake ones in your box, you’ll do just fine on a majority of rivers.
Of course, I’m not downplaying the importance of good casting, or learning your bugs. But those are the steps you take as you level up. That’s the bridge you cross when you fish the Henry’s Fork for the first time, or any other highly-technical fishery where exact imitations and perfect drifts often aren’t good enough.
If you can let all the noise about different tactics and techniques fall to the wayside, and focus solely on getting a good drift through fishy water, you’ll be lightyears ahead of most other beginners. When I first started, my dad handed me a fly rod, told me to walk downstream, and said, “Don’t get it tangled.”
Five minutes later the line was a rat’s nest, and I spent the rest of the evening trying to untangle it.
Most beginners have it a bit easier than that, but they’re still bombarded with a lot of information that, frankly, doesn’t matter.
The first time I went to fly fish the Green River in Utah, I was 18. I drove my old Camaro out to Dutch John, stopped in a fly shop, and looked at the board of “hot flies.” There were names I didn’t recognize—Yellow Sallies and Chubby’s stand out in my memory—and, predictably, the fly bins weren’t labeled well.
When I asked a well-meaning shop employee for help, he handed me a cup full of flies and told me to “walk upstream from Little Hole a bit and fish ’em.” The flies cost north of $40, so I figured I’d just punched my ticket to big-fish nirvana.
I pulled into Little Hole—an access point on the river—paid my fee, and walked upstream a ways along the well-worn path. Anglers were stacked up five wide and three deep anywhere there was enough room for a backcast, but eventually I found a spot, waded in, and stared at all the fish in the clear water.
One jumped clean out of the water, so I tied on a Chubby because I liked how it looked. I don’t know if there were hoppers out yet or not (I think this was in late June, so a bit early for hopper action), but I plopped that fly in front of the fish for the next three hours.
My casting wasn’t great, and I was self-conscious every time my line slapped the water behind me. Everyone else made graceful, quiet casts. Mine had all the delicacy of a toddler running with a knife.
Predictably, the fish didn’t eat. One angler nearby took pity, and waded over to see if he could help. He had a complex nymph rig tied up, and his flies were tiny. None were in the fly cup I’d paid $40 for.
“You’ve gotta use this fly, and it’s gotta be right down deep, and you’ve gotta use this rig,” the guy said. “It’s the only way to catch fish here, it’s my go-to.”
But hadn’t the fly shop employee told me the “hot flies” were the go-to? And all I needed to do was “fish ’em?”
Looking back, I should’ve been more observant about what bugs were on the water, and tried to match them to something in my box. I should’ve quit worrying so much about how my cast looked, and instead paid attention to whether my fly was where it should be.
In short, I should’ve been laser-focused on putting flies in front of fish and making them look real. If I’d done that, I reckon I would’ve caught a fish or two that day.