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rwc101
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Real fly fishermen use poppers and catch limits of gills.
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Interesting article...Covid, fly fishing, and the the outdoors in general
- Thread starter MarvB
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MTLabrador
Well-known member
Pike are a whole lot of fun too.
I’ve caught crappie on a top water fly too. It’s fun.
BirdManMike
Well-known member
Flyfishers are the snowboarders of field sports. Not to deride the entire group of either - just to say the rad ones are extra rad.
I think a lot of flyfisherpeople came into it later in life - 20's+, rather than growing up doing it from a young age - with it being their first foray into field sports. They have a sense of - I dont know - discovery, maybe? Emotional ownership for the sport? Something. Whatever the sense, there is some strange elitism among many that often presents in obnoxious ways with the Catch-and-Release purism being one of those ways. The flyfishing guide culture can be especially obnoxious, also, to paint with a broad brush.
Very similar to the loud and obnoxious bass fishing culture with the glitter boats and nascar-esque jumpsuits.
Both on a completely different spectrum to the equally bad, tho somewhat less obnoxious, dirtbags fishing surf rods and 90oz lead sinkers on the trout stream while crushing beers and leaving the trash plus birds nests of monofilament everywhere.
I think most people are in the middle, of course. Myself included (hopefully). Been fishing since I could walk, fly fishing not long after, and have gone thru every phase - just catch a fish, catch all the fish, catch the biggest fish, to, now, just fish the way I like which is dry flies and sight fishing. If thats not doing, Id rather twitch a rapala on the spinning rod (trebles replaced with singles because I am not an animal) than both watch a bobber and 'chuck meat for slabs of butter (brah)' on the fly rod.
As for the article, fishing guides lamenting a loss of experience due to pressure strikes me as funny.
I think a lot of flyfisherpeople came into it later in life - 20's+, rather than growing up doing it from a young age - with it being their first foray into field sports. They have a sense of - I dont know - discovery, maybe? Emotional ownership for the sport? Something. Whatever the sense, there is some strange elitism among many that often presents in obnoxious ways with the Catch-and-Release purism being one of those ways. The flyfishing guide culture can be especially obnoxious, also, to paint with a broad brush.
Very similar to the loud and obnoxious bass fishing culture with the glitter boats and nascar-esque jumpsuits.
Both on a completely different spectrum to the equally bad, tho somewhat less obnoxious, dirtbags fishing surf rods and 90oz lead sinkers on the trout stream while crushing beers and leaving the trash plus birds nests of monofilament everywhere.
I think most people are in the middle, of course. Myself included (hopefully). Been fishing since I could walk, fly fishing not long after, and have gone thru every phase - just catch a fish, catch all the fish, catch the biggest fish, to, now, just fish the way I like which is dry flies and sight fishing. If thats not doing, Id rather twitch a rapala on the spinning rod (trebles replaced with singles because I am not an animal) than both watch a bobber and 'chuck meat for slabs of butter (brah)' on the fly rod.
As for the article, fishing guides lamenting a loss of experience due to pressure strikes me as funny.
BirdManMike
Well-known member
Some of mine still are trekking miles up a mountain to catch nothing because nothing is doing that day.
devon deer
Well-known member
Great post, I couldn't agree more.
Just like you I have seen it all (well a lot anyway!) but taken as whole fisherman are a great bunch, just the minority can ruin it, thankfully on rare occasions.
2 stories, I had 2 chaps book me for 5 days, an Australian and a Brit, the Aussie was great fun, really laid back and was a natural, caught plenty of fish, the Brit (bear in mind I am a Brit!) was up himself, very arrogant know it all, got more and more stressed as the week progressed, in the end he threw his rod at me, under protest (which he ignored) I did a quick roll cast, and blow me a cracking wild brownie too the dry fly!
End of the week they took me and the wife out for a meal, he recounted the story of me catching 'his' fish, my wife said 'a lesson to you, NEVER loan your fly rod to my husband', she said to me after the meal she had worked him out in less than 5 minutes!
But this is one of my happiest experiences.
I taught an elderly doctor and his son to fly fish, a few years later his son rang me, his father had suffered a stroke, but he was determined to get him fishing again.
So I 'welded' myself to his side throughout the time we spent on the river, he was very unstable and his speech was affected.
But, when he caught his first fish he was elated, and actually started to weep, it almost brought a tear to my eye, and I have a great photo somewhere of them together holding the little, but very important wild brown trout.
As to Covid, I mentioned it before, last year was a disaster for me, this year looks even worse, but the upside is I can still fish for my own pleasure .
Cheers
Richard
(fly fisherman, fly fishing instructor, fly fishing guide
)
Salmonchaser
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Poppers work on Rainbows and Arctic Char......shush.
Irrelevant
Well-known member
only in Alaska.
Bambistew
Well-known member
because like all fish... they have a fish sized brain and are not that hard to catch.
Sometimes I wonder about the size of a flyfisherman's brain.
Salmonchaser
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I’m on the water something like 120 days straight every summer. IF you can call it summer in Bristol Bay. For 20 years Ive worn long Johns and rain gear about 75 of those days. One year it rained 65 days in a row. Every morning while drinking my coffee looking out the window at the river I reflect on how high my SAT scores were. Hell I was nominated to the Air Force Academy. Test scores said I should have been a Doctor. Those tests are such bull Shit, I’m a fishing guide.
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Irrelevant
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My nomination for best post of the year.
Salmonchaser
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I’m humbled, thank you
I grew up in the Midwest chasing whatever fish I could, however I could, whenever I could. Which mostly meant bluegill on the fly rod, unless I could make it out to the stocked trout waters in Missouri. Spent countless days dreaming that those sunfish were big rainbows, and largemouth were big browns. Had a couple trips where I managed to get my first brookie & cutthroat, but I was mostly restricted to local warmwater. I've caught bluegill, green sunnies, hybrids, redear, longear, rock bass, largemouth, smallmouth, spots, black & white crappie, channel cats, blue cats, bullheads, carp, grasscarp, buffalo, silver carp, white bass, pickerel, redhorse, white suckers, mooneye, shad, shiners and a variety of other minnows on fly gear, in every month of the year, by the end of high school.
Fast forward to college, and I had 4-5 trout streams within an hour, most of them wild blue-lines in the national forest. I might have gone a bit crazy with chasing trout on a fly rod. Turned my nose up at bait. Scheduled classes to have afternoons to fish more. Read Norman Maclean and worshiped Gary Borger & Tom Rosenbauer, giggled at Kelly Galloup's fly pattern names. Entered tying contests, bought magazines, and dreamed of fishing out west. The thought of killing a wild trout was a heresy worthy of being burned at the stake. Fishing with bait and eating trout were for the local meth-heads, and far below me. I threw a Winston, and was the embodiment of snobbery in trout fishing. Even when drinking PBR by the case because it was cheapest (and not even my friends would drink it on me). I'm telling you this, because I want you to understand that I was that aspiring elitist trout-bum (without the trust fund, though). I wanted to abandon college, move west and start guiding for trout.
Now I'm in Montana. I fish a worm & bobber through iconic runs. I throw big rapalas on braid. A 14" trout fits perfectly in my cast iron skillet with butter and blackened seasoning if you cut off the head & tail. Fresh trout skewered on a stick over a campfire might be a better breakfast than biscuits and gravy (could be this blizzard-induced nostalgia for summer). I'm even considering eating some golden trout next summer, so I don't have to pack as much food up the mountain. I still prefer to throw flies (love that topwater bite), but I'll occasionally post photos of dead trout on fly-fishing sites just to irritate my past self. And I couldn't care less what my former self would think of me now, or anybody else for that matter.
The snobbery of fly fishing is pointless. So long as you pick up your mess and follow the regs & common courtesy, I don't really care what you do. I'm just glad to see people getting outside instead of fighting on facebook or glued to a gaming console.
Fast forward to college, and I had 4-5 trout streams within an hour, most of them wild blue-lines in the national forest. I might have gone a bit crazy with chasing trout on a fly rod. Turned my nose up at bait. Scheduled classes to have afternoons to fish more. Read Norman Maclean and worshiped Gary Borger & Tom Rosenbauer, giggled at Kelly Galloup's fly pattern names. Entered tying contests, bought magazines, and dreamed of fishing out west. The thought of killing a wild trout was a heresy worthy of being burned at the stake. Fishing with bait and eating trout were for the local meth-heads, and far below me. I threw a Winston, and was the embodiment of snobbery in trout fishing. Even when drinking PBR by the case because it was cheapest (and not even my friends would drink it on me). I'm telling you this, because I want you to understand that I was that aspiring elitist trout-bum (without the trust fund, though). I wanted to abandon college, move west and start guiding for trout.
Now I'm in Montana. I fish a worm & bobber through iconic runs. I throw big rapalas on braid. A 14" trout fits perfectly in my cast iron skillet with butter and blackened seasoning if you cut off the head & tail. Fresh trout skewered on a stick over a campfire might be a better breakfast than biscuits and gravy (could be this blizzard-induced nostalgia for summer). I'm even considering eating some golden trout next summer, so I don't have to pack as much food up the mountain. I still prefer to throw flies (love that topwater bite), but I'll occasionally post photos of dead trout on fly-fishing sites just to irritate my past self. And I couldn't care less what my former self would think of me now, or anybody else for that matter.
The snobbery of fly fishing is pointless. So long as you pick up your mess and follow the regs & common courtesy, I don't really care what you do. I'm just glad to see people getting outside instead of fighting on facebook or glued to a gaming console.
devon deer
Well-known member
Apparently they also have a 15 second memory, something I am accused of having on a regular basis by my other halfbecause like all fish... they have a fish sized brain and are not that hard to catch.
BirdManMike
Well-known member
Whenever I think I'm hot shit for fly fishing, I make a concerted effort to remind myself I'm fooling a fish the brain the size of wood tick. Same thing when I kill a bunch of ducks.because like all fish... they have a fish sized brain and are not that hard to catch.
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longbow51
Guest
Well, this thread has come a long way, from Covid and overcrowding of resources, from fishing with nymphs as an anathema, and now we're fishing with worms and frying up trout. Frankly I could care less whether you fish Winston, Sage, or Cabela's cheapie; nymph, dry, or worms, just learn how to do it yourself.
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