I am an avid reader of outdoor material. Whether it’s Mother Earth News or the likes of Steven Rinella and Hank Shaw, I enjoy them all. I also enjoy both the print and online versions of Field and Stream. They have great content online, especially their blogs. I am absolutely hooked on The Wild Chef. Up until recently I only read a few of the blogs because I wasn’t necessarily interested in all of the topics. But as trout season rolled around I decided to give FlyTalk a shot.
As I have said before, I grew up fishing for trout using a spinning rod, powerbait and spinners. About two years ago my wife bought me an L.L. Bean fly outfit. With the rod and reel I also received a certificate for a fly casting class. I hadn’t really given fly fishing much thought up until that gift. But then I went and attended the lesson and I really started to understand why people love to fly fish. The next spring I decided to give it a shot and even managed (don’t ask me how) to land two brown trout on Elk Hair Caddis’.
My foray in to fly fishing quickly bottomed out though. While I had learned how to cast, I really hadn’t learned how to fish. I had no concept of what looked good to a trout or how to pay attention to the hatch and try to match it. It literally was blind luck that I caught those two brown trout. By July I was frustrated that I couldn’t get a fish to bite anything I was sending at it. Then it was time for my yearly trip, with my three oldest boys, to Boy Scout summer camp. We were headed to Mt Airy, NC and I decided I would just take my fly rod along with me, just in case I got bored. It turned out to be the thing that kept me in fly fishing. Nearly every day I would go down to the lake and spot bream in the shallow water and cast out a brown cricket or a grasshopper and WHAM, I’d catch fish after fish until my arm tired. It got to be so easy that I needed a challenge, so I cut some fresh bamboo and made a sort of tankara rod out of it, by tying 10lb test line to the tip and casting out a small hook baited with whatever tasty morsel I could find in the woods. It was one of the best fishing experiences I have had.
Fast forward to a few months ago, and I have become completely “hooked” on FlyTalk. Not only does the blog teach me more about fly fishing in general it teaches me about trout fishing period. I often wondered why stocked trout feed the way they do, and then I got the chance to see a “fish eye” view of some hatchery fish feeding in one of the runs. Absolutely amazing!
Then one morning I saw a picture of the oddest looking fish with the caption about a name the fish contest. I read the rules and decided I would give it a shot, even though I had no clue what it was, where it was caught or what fly it was caught on. I did a little internet research and found an article where the blogger, Kirk Deeter, had posted a little bit of info on just what the fish was and where he caught it. It was an arapaima from a fishing trip he took in Guyana. I knew that in order to win the prize, a sweet pair of Costa Del Mar sunglasses, I had to dig a little deeper. After about an hour of searching, using various words and phrases, I came across another blog by a couple named “The Adventures of Andrea and Salvador”. This was the info I was looking for. It gave me the specific location of where Deeter had fished, but the last piece of evidence was still missing. What kind of fly did he use to catch the arapaima? For that it truly was just an educated guess. I didn’t even get it correct. But guess what, I still won anyway!
So now here I sit, after having gotten an email yesterday that my package had shipped, waiting for my Costa sunglasses to arrive. I can’t wait to try them out. Stay tuned for a future blog about the glasses themselves and about all the great work Costa is doing in Guyana.
