Fly Fishing Instructional
by Stephen B.
Imagine a peaceful stream teeming with slowly rising native brown trout, the fish slowly becoming visible as their light brown sides are illuminated by the dappled light streaming down from between the leaf of an old oak tree. This is a fisherman's dream, but not any common fisherman can fool those clever brown trout. There are few places nowadays that haven't been infected with farmed trout, these fish are born in hatcheries and then stocked in streams so that just about anyone can catch them. When I was young, I used to enjoy catching these fish but now that have grown both mentally and physically, these easy to fool fish became too easy to catch and I looked for more of a challenge. That is how I was introduced to the most rewarding type of fishing, fly fishing.
When I was first getting into the hobby, I soon realized how easy it could be to spend way more money than you need to on things that don't help you at all. That is ultimately why I decided to write this paper so that the average person with little or no knowledge about fly fishing could involve themselves in this extremely rewarding hobby. My first section is going to be what you need. The very essence of the sport, no more no less. Then in my second section I will talk about how to read a stream and determine exactly when and what type of fly to use. In my final section I will share some of my personal experiences and how to learn from the mistakes I made when I first began.
The sport of fly fishing is not very cheap to get into. However, there are some things that you absolutely need. One crucial piece of information is what you plan on fishing for and where you will be fishing. This is important because rods come in many varieties of lengths and weights. For simplicity I will focus mostly on fly-fishing for trout because that is what is mostly fished for in Chester County and the surrounding area. My rod for small streams is a 7 foot 6 inch, 4 weight. Seven feet may seem like a very large rod but in this sport that's relatively short. The length really is based on how far you need to cast. The rod is also very light and whips back and forth using this motion to propel the heavy floating line with a thin tapered monofilament line on the end holding a very light fly. A longer rod can produce more speed when casted and can shoot out the line further. The reason that you can cast such a light fly is all in the line which is usually a thick but tapered line that has a thin monofilament line attached to the end. This thin clear monofilament is all that goes below the surface and the rest floats on top of the water. This is why any rod you would buy needs to be the appropriate length for the stream you want to fish in.