Fly Fishing Basics

Fly fishing basics are of critical importance. After all, it’s been said with some accuracy, that fly fishing is the most technique-intensive outdoor sport going.

On one hand, that’s true. There is no other aspect of outdoor recreation that provides so many opportunities for fussing. Beyond the simple fly fishing basics, you can, if you wish, spend hours learning specialty casts; and various presentations; and when to use a nymph rather than a dry fly. Volumes have been written about leader construction, and fly fishing knots, and the differences between adding weight to the fly or to the line. Learning to properly use high-density sinking lines can be a chore that, literally, takes years.

That’s one of the joys of fly fishing. You can delve as deeply or as shallowly into the sport as you wish.

When most people think “fly fishing,” trout and salmon automatically come to mind. And for good reason. There is a tradition of using artificial baits made of feathers and fur for those species going back more than 2,000 years. The earliest sport fishing reference we have obviously describes using a feathered lure for trout. And for 600 years we’ve developed a body of literature that links fly fishing with English trout traditions.

On one hand, that tradition is unfortunate, because it turns off a lot of fisherman who don't spend time learning fly fishing basics. There was, up until the 1960’s, a definite snobbery associated with fly fishing. And a lot of frustration, as well.

For years after learning the sport I tried believing what I read. I’d hit the water and patiently wait until a major hatch came off---which, literally, never happened---so I could match it with an appropriate dry fly, cast upstream of course.. Instead of mayflies I had caddis. And, instead of feeding on the surface, our trout spent most of their time eating nymphs and other subsurface food.

What all the writers ignored was the simple fact that our conditions and those found in England are very different. They fished the Catskill rivers, and pretended they were English chalk streams. Meanwhile, unknown to the fly fishing press, other traditions were growing, such as the tight-line nymphing techniques of the Smoky Mountains.

As I’ve often said that if the center of communications in America had been Knoxville instead of New York, we’d have a totally different outlook...and fly fishing basics would be more accessible.

Things started changing for the good in the 1960s. First off, the concept of fly fishing broadened. More and more people discovered that the long rod and feather light lures could be used for much more than trout and salmon. Smallmouth, of course, were a logical target. They live in the same water as trout (albeit favoring it slightly warmer), eat the same sorts of things, and strike a fly readily.

But it was the widespread discovery of warm-water and flat-water fly fishing that really gave the sport a spur. Largemouth bass, pickerel, stripers, perch, even musky became targets for the long rod. And from my point of view, if battling a hand-sized bluegill on a three-weight outfit isn’t the most fun in the angling world, it runs whatever is a very close second.

Following on the heels of the warm-water trend was that of salt-water fly fishing. Actually, the two sports sort of grew concurrently, and, together, constitute the largest segment of fly fishing by far.

In short order fly fishing anglers were chasing every sort of fish, from diminutive green sunfish to giant marlin. Any fish that can be caught on an artificial bait, it seems, can be taken on a flyrod.

At the same time this was going on there was a revolution in fly tying. Indeed, the very definition of “fly” was undergoing a sea change of mythic proportions. The organics of feathers and furs were being supplemented, and eventually replaced, with man-made materials. New fly styles were constantly being introduced. Some displayed a definite evolution from early designs while others sprang full born from the mind of the tyer.

Perhaps the most interesting trend in fly design is what they are tied to represent. Used to be fly fishing basics had as its goal tying fly fishing flies to create either a realistic or impressionistic version of a fish’s natural food. That’s still a large part of the fly fisherman’s repertory. But in addition, many fly fishing flies today are tied to represent hardbaits.

We’re not talking about scaled down and hard to cast versions of plugs, and spinners. Those have always been with us. Instead, we’re looking at fly fishing flies which use both natural materials and today’s synthetics to tie a fly that simulates, say, a crankbait, or a spinnerbait, or a plastic worm.

I’d like to acknowledge Nick Lyons, who foreshadowed that movement. In one of his columns, Nick talked about heading to Flaming Gorge for some of the giant trout that live there. Seems one of his friends had developed a new streamer that simulated the number one forage base in that reservoir, “which, as everybody knows,” Nick remarked wryly, “is a #5 Rapala.”

Nick, of course, was being ironic. But I can’t help wondering what he’d think if he looked in a modern fly fishing basser’s flybox and saw the array of flies which push that idea to the limit.