Like I've said a 1000 times, being successful at fishing is not a skill, its knowledge. The more you know about whatever species you are targeting, the more successful you will be.
Like I said Friday, I had never caught a rainbow trout on a fly rod, and I knew absolutely nothing about them, so I spent months researching everything I could about it. Even the casting of a fly rod isn't a skill, once you gain the knowledge of the movements and practice those movements, it becomes muscle memory and its as natural as breathing.
When I took my first step into that river on Friday afternoon, I was 100% confident that I knew as much as anyone else there. After I caught my first trout on my first cast, I turned to my wife and told her by Sunday I would be putting on clinics, and I was right.
I only got to fish for about a hour on Friday afternoon, and of course it poured down rain all night and all day Saturday and the river looked like chocolate milk by Saturday afternoon. I got down to the river before daylight Sunday and it had cleared up nice and trout were hitting to surface everywhere. I tied on a grasshopper imitation with a zebra midge about 18" below it and started catching fish. By around 8am they stopped hitting the surface and I stopped getting bites. I knew the trout were around because I would see them flash by in the water, but I didn't know what they were eating. I just started looking around and noticed some small minnows or fry swimming around and the trout would rise up off the bottom and nail them. I quickly pulled out my fly box and found a little wolly buggar streamer about the same size and color as the little minnows I saw. I tied it on and just hung it in the water a second at the end of my rod to see how it looked in the water and a trout came up and inhaled it. After that it was on like Donkey Kong. As soon as I could unhook a fish and cast back out, I would have another one on. It did'nt take long to draw a crowd and everyone was cheering for me. I even caught a big male with a elongated hooked jaw getting read to spawn. Before I knew it ,it was 10am and I had to leave because our check out was at 11. Before I walked out of the river bed , I hollered and the guys who were fishing down stream of me and told them to come get in my spot because I had to leave. I gave them a couple of the wolly buggars I was using and told them where to cast and how to work it.. As I walked up the hill back to the cabin, I heard a loud hoot and turned around to see one of them hooked up. In a way, it hurt me to leave such a epic bite, but I had a big smile on my face knowing that not only did the knowledge I gained make me successful, but passing on that knowledge made others successful as well.
The moral of the story is, if you want to do something, then do it, and don't let anything stand in your way. And if you have knowledge to pass on to others, then pass it on, because helping others be successful makes you that much bigger of a success.
Like I said Friday, I had never caught a rainbow trout on a fly rod, and I knew absolutely nothing about them, so I spent months researching everything I could about it. Even the casting of a fly rod isn't a skill, once you gain the knowledge of the movements and practice those movements, it becomes muscle memory and its as natural as breathing.
When I took my first step into that river on Friday afternoon, I was 100% confident that I knew as much as anyone else there. After I caught my first trout on my first cast, I turned to my wife and told her by Sunday I would be putting on clinics, and I was right.
I only got to fish for about a hour on Friday afternoon, and of course it poured down rain all night and all day Saturday and the river looked like chocolate milk by Saturday afternoon. I got down to the river before daylight Sunday and it had cleared up nice and trout were hitting to surface everywhere. I tied on a grasshopper imitation with a zebra midge about 18" below it and started catching fish. By around 8am they stopped hitting the surface and I stopped getting bites. I knew the trout were around because I would see them flash by in the water, but I didn't know what they were eating. I just started looking around and noticed some small minnows or fry swimming around and the trout would rise up off the bottom and nail them. I quickly pulled out my fly box and found a little wolly buggar streamer about the same size and color as the little minnows I saw. I tied it on and just hung it in the water a second at the end of my rod to see how it looked in the water and a trout came up and inhaled it. After that it was on like Donkey Kong. As soon as I could unhook a fish and cast back out, I would have another one on. It did'nt take long to draw a crowd and everyone was cheering for me. I even caught a big male with a elongated hooked jaw getting read to spawn. Before I knew it ,it was 10am and I had to leave because our check out was at 11. Before I walked out of the river bed , I hollered and the guys who were fishing down stream of me and told them to come get in my spot because I had to leave. I gave them a couple of the wolly buggars I was using and told them where to cast and how to work it.. As I walked up the hill back to the cabin, I heard a loud hoot and turned around to see one of them hooked up. In a way, it hurt me to leave such a epic bite, but I had a big smile on my face knowing that not only did the knowledge I gained make me successful, but passing on that knowledge made others successful as well.
The moral of the story is, if you want to do something, then do it, and don't let anything stand in your way. And if you have knowledge to pass on to others, then pass it on, because helping others be successful makes you that much bigger of a success.
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