Fly-fishing ineptitude

Why the sport is called 'fishing' and not 'catching'

I am always trying to improve my fly angling skills, which is one reason why I often seek out the support of a fly-fishing guide.  They are very good at making suggestions on how I could do things better, often remarking on my poor line mending skills and lazy casting technique.  I certainly do not need to work on my realization that every day of fishing for trout will be an adventure, and many will involve moments of monumental incompetence. So, a few challenging moments on the water recently that five years ago would have provoked a major sense of humor failure produced only a shrug and / or a laugh instead.

the Gibbon River is a very technical water where the fish are easily spooked

One memorable moment that could have resulted in a meltdown was during an afternoon fishing at Gibbon Meadows in Yellowstone National Park.  A group of us were fishing a very technical and challenging stretch of the Gibbon River southwest of Norris Junction.  Despite my attempts at a stealthy approach, I was regularly spooking fish.  When I did spot a trout too preoccupied with feeding on the surface to notice me, I was so excited that I forgot to check for obstacles to my back cast and hung up on the only tree within 100 feet of me.

While I tied on another section of tippet and searched for a replacement fly, the fish continued to feed on the surface. I was hot and tired from a fruitless day of fishing and anxiously fumbled with both tippet and fly, so much so that when I was ready to cast, I forgot about my old nemesis and again caught the tree behind me on my back cast.  I am lucky my fly rod did not get snapped over my knee after that second hang up.

juncos bordering the Middle Ñirehuao made for challenging casts to spooky browns

Another challenging obstacle was represented by the juncos (or tall clumps of reeds) that bordered the spring creeks I recently fished in Chilean Patagonia.  Here again the fish were easily spooked and no amount of time spent creeping up to the cover of these juncos was time well spent if you landed your fly in this dense cover.  Inevitably, I spent half my time spooking fish while foraging in this pesky vegetation to retrieve my flies.

So, after the umpteenth episode of spooking a large brown from the embankment above, I made a change in approach. Spotting a soft, grassy section of bank at stream level slightly downstream of where a fish had originally been feeding, I lowered myself down and waited, crouched low in hope the fish may return to its feeding spot. I began blind casting a large PMX pattern in measured increments upstream of my position and on the fourth cast, about 25 feet upstream, the fish came back and pounced on the fly. After that, I was done wrangling with the juncos and my prospects for catching improved by exclusively targeting rises from a low position alongside the stream.

now which fly for the PhD pool?

On a float trip to the South Holston River in Tennessee, I reclaimed that profound ineptitude.  We were guided to a spot that I will call the ‘PhD pool’ because of the degree of difficulty associated with not just hooking up but also landing the monster trout that hold there.  The approach to fishing the pool was very specific – the boat was anchored 20 yards upstream of the fish and off the current, where we would alternate turns casting across the current to allow the wool strike indicator and fly to drift down into the pods of fish.  It was an agonizingly slow drift and required intense focus to detect the slightest of bump or take.  After two drifts, angler 1 would acquiesce to angler 2 and have the guide reassess the fly selection.

We did this for a little more than two hours before I finally had a strong take and the fish pulled out line instantly. Just then I learned from the guide that I needed to spool the excess line to control the fish – what? That would have been good guidance to begin with, because I had about two feet of line at my feet from feeding out to the ‘PhD pool’. I lost that fish due to my inability to put the line on the spool, but was ready (or so I thought) when the next strong strike came about 15 minutes later. At that point, I was very tired from the intensely focused fishing and when the fish runs, I wind up spooling the line in the wrong direction (letting out line) and lose that fish as well. I feel like an idiot! I very much deserved to wear the “I suck at fly fishing hat” over dinner in the lodge that evening.

That's why its called fishing and not catching!