How Did You Get Started Flyfishing?

[ness]

ness..what happened to Danielle? was she ok? who was the guy with the big nose? you went for popcorn and then you never finished your story.its been two weeks and im still wondering about the guy with the big nose that pulled your wifes hair.

Sorry to leave you guys hanging. I got dragged into this latest Hoffa thing. I wish I had a nickel for every dying mafioso who got his last kicks out of sending the g-men out to another field or barn with a hope of finding that dude. I can't get into details, but I will say he's still around -- never was whacked. I still see him every Wednesday at the club, where we play Gin Rummy. He can still sock away the Old Fashioneds like nobody's business. The Gandolfini funeral would be a decent place to be if you wanted to talk to Jimmy, who now goes by Tito.

Anyhoo -- Chip and George pulled me aside and said they wanted to run an idea past me. George's father had just passed away, and George had inherited a warehouse full of 30 tons of silicone gel, the result of his dad's failed attempt to corner the breast augmentation market. Senior had left a mountain of debt, and creditors were chomping at the bit for anything they could convert into cash. Chip's dad, Chuckie, had been swindled out of the Orvis fortune buying a nonexistent wicker creel factory in the Philippines. Both were in desperate financial shape.

The two had been marketing majors at Chicago University, and had been befriended by a biology professor by the name of Roger Q. Mayfly. The summer after their sophomore year was a haze of alcohol, pot and hallucinogenic mushrooms, with 'Proff' supplying the goods for the week-long camping 'trips'. Late one night, Mayfly mentioned an idea for a book based on his childhood in New Jersey -- growing up with an alcoholic, absentee, bus-driver dad and a heroin-addicted prostitute mother. Anxious to use his newly acquired marketing skills, and fueled by a righteous buzz, Chip suggested changing the premise of the story to something more -- well -- something more likely to move some silicone and old outdated fly fishing equipment. They called me to ask my opinion, and I told them of a novella I was ghost writing for my friend Norman McClean at the university. Thus a River Runs Through It was born.

Sorry, I'm gonna have to finish this later.

[ScottK]

OK, I'll be the first to admit it...

I've been fishing off and on most of my life, but never got interested in fly fishing for some reason. Just looked totally different(and I of course didn't understand a thing about it) so I went about my merry way with spincast and spinning gear.

Then I saw The Movie.

And I thought, "I've really gotta try that".

Yeah, Brad Pitt started it for me.

[ness]

I'm glad you enjoyed the movie. Bob took some artistic license in his interpretation of my book, but it worked well I thought.

[ScottK]

I wish I would have read your book before seeing the movie.

The book's always better....

[moguy1973]

My mom and I started fishing Bennett Springs when I was probably 13 or 14 and we used regular fishing rods and reels, nothing ultra light or even trout worthy. Then we found out about Montauk and started using ultra light spinning gear. I started fly fishing when the bait areas didn't offer enough fishing opportunities like the fly area did. I actually first used a fly rod when using a float and fly on spinning gear didn't work very well. I learned using a VCR tape that I bought and practiced in the backyard with a 7' Shakespeare fly rod I bought at Kmart for cheap and that's what I actually used for many years until my mom bought me a nicer set up when I was in college.

I really want to try for smallies with the fly rod, but I'm not sure how well that would work with the 8'6" 8wt I have out of my kayak.

[Al Agnew]

Ness and his cabal blackmailed me into picking up the long rod...I think they also may have given me some kind of drug which made me buy all that expensive equipment.

[ness]

Cabal -- had to look that one up

[Greasy B]

Ray Bergman

George M. LaBranche.

Ernest Schwiebert

[Al Agnew]

Dad had an old fiberglass fly rod when I was a kid, and I took it out a few times on the river, but never really got turned on by using it. Fast forward to sometime in the late 1980s. I was doing an art show in Michigan, and a few of the artists were going to Barothy's Lodge on the Pere Marquette River to fish for king salmon, and invited me and Mary along. They had extra waders and extra fly rods, so we took them up on it. After that trip I went to Bass Pro and bought their cheapest combo 7-8 wt. outfits for Mary and myself. Used them the next year when we did the same art show and went to the Pere Marquette afterwards. Then they changed the date of the art show to a month later, and we tried it then for steelhead afterward, with little success. The rods basically didn't get used anymore after that.

Fast forward again to 1996. I ran into a guy who was the second in command of the construction company a friend of mine owned, at a party. We struck up a conversation and it quickly came out that we both loved to fish, but he was strictly a fly fisherman and strictly for trout. He'd grown up on a Pennsylvania trout stream and had made his living for a while tying flies after moving to Colorado, before coming to Missouri to work at his present job. We talked for a long time at the party, but didn't talk again until about 6 months later, when he called me and asked me if I wanted to go to Montana fly fishing with him and another guy. I said sure.

Which meant that I had to buy a trout size fly rod. I bought a Sage 4 wt. My new-found friend tied up a bunch of flies for me before the trip. The Yellowstone was flooded that July in the first of two record flood years, but we fished Sixteenmile Creek, the lower Madison, Armstrong's Spring Creek, the West Boulder, and two private lakes. I had a ball. That started a tradition of annual trips to the Yellowstone (it was flooded again a week later in July in the second of the two big flood years), meeting new fly fishing friends from the Rolla area where my buddy lived, our guide those first years becoming a close friend as well, buying a ton of gear and tackle and rods and waders, fly fishing in a bunch of other places from Connecticut to Alaska, and finally buying our house on the Yellowstone.

[BadKarma]

Much like fishinwrench, I was 6 years old and my parents let me stay a summer at my grandma and grandpas. grandpa was a huge Flyfisherman and Bass was his passion. I begged to tag along and he noticed that I didn't run around and play, but would watch him intently all day. I was fascinated with how he casted that tiny fly. By the end of that summer he had me fishing right along side him and I begged my parents for a flyrod for Xmas.

dad always said I was worthless ever since.