don't start golfing.  One less person on my personal honey holes.

-Acquire Grandpa's, Dad's, garage sale or otherwise old beat up fly rod, reel and line. Must be missing at least one guide or some other component that would actually make it work properly. Old automatic reels do qualify. Duct tape or masking tape will make an impression.
-Research popular local fly fishing waters and carefully choose a spot to enter the water within view of other fly anglers with the most and coolest gear. Make it appear that you are following spacial etiquette and giving them enough room to fish.
- Wear jeans and Chuck Taylor's, wade confidently.
-Fly box should be aluminum with clips and be bent so it does not close properly. Contents should be entirely old wet flies in size 10 or larger with rusted hooks. Flies must appear to be half eaten by some sort of decomposition beetles, still evident within your fly box.
-Commence whipping and slapping the water with 20 feet of line. The best leader will be a 4 ft piece of 20lb. Tie fly on with a bunch of overhand knots, it won't come off. Use your teeth as a clipper and take a while to gnaw at each not.
-Never leave your fly on the water for more than 5 seconds 2 seconds and be frantic, enjoy the whipping action of the fly fishing rod and line.
-If no one comes to your aid, find a new spot with new anglers. Start whipping again.

By this point one of the other anglers will have helped you or hurt you, this is a chance you must take. Most likely if you have followed these instructions, and are earnest in your quest, everyone in the stream will feel sorry for you and either given you some of their equipment or taken your contact information so they can send you some. Most serious fly anglers these days have way more stuff than they need and could part with some of it anyhow. The  sentimental trigger you will pull will work to your advantage because most of us learned to fly fish with poor equipment and worse technique.

The answer to the question of How do I learn to fly fish?
Is have a desire, put two feet in the water and commence whipping. The journey will be what you make of it.

onemorecast wrote on Aug 6^th, 2010 at 11:50am:


Great additions!