Blind leading the blind...

So I had told a co-worker of mine - also a friend - that I had planned on fishing today. He has been expressing an interest in learning to fly fish, or at least trying it out to see if he'd be interested in pursuing it at all.

We met up this morning at around 8:30 and I explained the fly rods and a few flies we were going to use today. I rigged up both rods and we set out to go exploring on some private land I have access to. There is a good amount of a small creek that runs through this property that is full of every kind of sunfish including bass and black crappie, as well as pike. It looks an awful lot like trout water but its too muddy, I think, to support salmonids. There is a large waterfall in the middle that separates some very warm water at the top with some cooler, more secluded water at the bottom.


We started at the top of the falls where it is more open so he could get the feel for casting and I could show him how to drift. I'd start him on a pheasant tail nymph so that it'd be easier for him to cast at the beginning. I was using a bead head mohair leech of another friend's design (tied slightly different than the photo I linked to).

He picked up casting rather quickly, though being an occasional spin fisherman he kept reverting back to trying to cast like you cast a spin rod. I just kept reminding him to stop the rod high and wait to feel the weight of the line before he moved forward and stopped high. He got it.

I had a few nibbles at the top but no hookups. I'm fairly certain they were nibbles - where we were is mainly a sandy bottom without much vegetation so you can tell when you hit the stray grass and when its a fish.


We decided to hike down to below the falls, but of course I managed to leave the camera in the truck, so no photos. He became more confident and drifted his nymph very nicely through some great pocket water, even spotting a good place to try before I did. Of course, there are a lot of rocks there (which is probably why there are so many bass), so he lost his first fly to a snag. He felt bad - but its part of the game, and I wasn't angry, so this time I decided to try a black weighted woolly bugger hoping to entice those crappies to bite in the cold. I walked downstream a bit and was scouting more water when I hear some profanity - he had a hit and missed the strike.

After a few more minutes he came up to where I was and I moved down to where he was with my leech still on and hooked up - for about 5 seconds and just long enough to get a glimpse of the speckled side of a crappie before the he spit the hook and took off down river and out of the little pool we had been fishing. Damn.


We kept moving down stream, stopping whenever a spot looked good and we had good access to the water - no more bites, but we saw a smallish pike move into some shallow water and tail for a few seconds, probably chasing crayfish or something. I quickly tied on my biggest clouser, which happened to be all white, and cast to the area. I tried fast, slow, erratic, smooth, jerky, jigging retrieves but to no avail. I need to tie up some orange and brown clousers, I think.

No more action after that really, but it was great to be outdoors for 5 hours with a friend enjoying life.

So many people have helped me along the way by giving incredible amounts of time and energy, never mind materials, to my fly fishing endeavour that when someone asked me to show them some stuff it really made me excited. I've been trying to think of a way to pay back the people who have helped me in the past 6 or 7 months and I think that passing their generosity on to the next person is one damn good way to start.