I have to make a confession or two. I catch a lot of fish and a lot of folks have assumed I was fly fishing. Well the truth is I don't know much about fly fishing. One of my best friends and hard core fly fisherman calls my spin fishing "sin fishing". I fish with a lot of guys that love to fly fish, and with the exception of only a couple of times, I usually out fish them. However, on a recent trip to southern Utah my partner absolutely destroyed me while fishing for trout on Minnersville Reservoir. I only landed two trout while he was yarding them out with his fly rod. He offered to let my try his fly rod out, but I didn't have a clue how to cast it, and didn't feel like embarrassing myself that day. However, I did decide that I needed to get more serious about learning to fly fish. So the very next day after I got home from Utah, I took an Orvis beginners fly fishing class. Mostly what I wanted to learn, and did learn, was how to cast. I figured the fly selection and reading the water I already had a pretty good handle on, but not so much the casting. By the end of the class I was doing pretty good though. I wanted to go try my hand at fly fishing that very afternoon, but Mother Nature decided to rain heavily on my parade. I decided to stay home and dry, which was a good thing, as we got a LOT of rain that evening. However, the next day (yesterday) was a new day, and I decided to run up the mountain, after working in the yard all day.

On my third cast I was lucky enough to land this chunky little rainbow using an elk hair caddis.


I fished for another half hour without a bite. So I decided to change locations and try another area that I knew held some big brown trout. I'd rather fish for them any day, anydangway. Upon arrival I missed a really nice fish with my first cast, and it stirred up the area. I proceed to fish for another half hour, but not a single fish rose. Then all of the sudden a few fish started to surface again. One of the fish looked exceptional, and I have to admit, I got a little too excited. I had a hard time concentrating on my form as I was casting and kept screwing up. This resulted in me spending a lot of time untangling my line, cursing my lack of casting ability, and thoroughly entertaining my wife. I looked like a hyper 5 year old on Christmas morning because I wanted that fish so bad. FINALLY, everything came together and I landed a perfect cast, with a just right presentation. About 30 seconds after my fly rested on the water, my heart nearly jumped through my throat when I saw the fish take it. The battle was fantastic and I worried he would come off at any second. It's been a while since I was this excited over a fish. My reward was my first brown trout on a fly rod, and I got to say I'm more than a little happy about it. It's one of the biggest brown's I've caught on any gear, let alone a fly rod. So sometimes lady-luck even smiles on guys like me despite me doing just about everything wrong...in this case patience and persistence did pay off.