Welcome back to another blog post from the Educated Angler.  If you haven’t, go check out the previous posts on dry flies, streamers and emergers!  

Because this blog is intended for folks new to fly fishing, I think it’s good to reflect on some situations that I remember well from my first years of fly fishing when I wasn’t sure what I was doing.  I love thinking back to those first couple of years on the water and laughing about the way things that I did on the water. Just because I guide folks now it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a time when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing!  

I started out being self taught, and it took me several years and a TON of time on the water to become a proficient fly fisherman.  I’m still learning SO much, and that’s the greatest thing about this sport… you never have it mastered, and you’ll often have a bad day of fishing that humbles you to remind you about that fact.  I think that if I had access to places like maineflyfish.com when I started out, my learning curve would have been much, much shorter.

I love sharing my stories about my first days on the water.  Take a read and see if you can relate!

The first time I ever held a fly rod was on the West Branch of the Penobscot River when I was 18 years old.  My uncle gave me the gift of a weekend at Frost Pond Camps, and we spent our weekend fishing with spinning gear at Big Eddy.  We waded out into the river with no shirt on and no waders, just a rolled up pair of jeans and not a care in the world.  Hell, I didn’t even know what waders were at that point.  We caught a couple of chubs and small salmon on spinning gear, and unbeknownst to me, my uncle pulled out a fly rod and started whipping it around.  He had no idea what he was doing, but I said nothing and just watched him for over an hour.  Long story short, he caught a nice salmon on a streamer fly and two bald eagles flew overhead… I was extremely curious about how he did that.  I casted the rod, had no luck, but my curiosity was through the roof.  I watched fly fishermen for the rest of the weekend while I used spin gear, and I told myself that I was going to make it a point to learn to fly fish.

Fast forward to the next spring, I stood in the Pleasant River with a newbie rod/reel package from Beans and I had no idea how to cast.  I just peeled off as much line as I could, let it all float downstream and reeled it back upstream.  I had on a size 14 Blue-winged Olive and I was just ripping it back upstream, like you would with a spin rod.  

I remember two very distinct things about that day and look back and laugh.  First, I had a standard tapered 9 foot leader that I had cut back several times, and I was probably down to about 6 feet when I was tying on this dry fly.  I kept thinking to myself, do I need to buy another leader because this thing is getting too fat? As you can probably figure out, I had no idea what tippet was.  The second thing that I remember was all of these “whitish brown” bugs flying all over the place.  They were everywhere, and I thought they were just moths out in the daytime.  Little did I know that these were caddis laying their eggs in the stream.  Needless to say, I somehow managed to catch a stocked 10” brownie on that BWO that I was reeling in upstream during this crazy caddis hatch.  There’s not a book in the world that would tell you how it’s done, but sometimes, shit luck is all you need.  Indeed, that was my first trout on a fly rod.

The first trout that I ever caught

Speed up to that summer, my dad and I visited the Rangeley Region for the first time.  We had heard about this cool place called Upper Dam.  We’re both the type of people that love driving down logging roads and “seeing where it leads”, so naturally we had to go check this place out.  We fished with streamers and could each only cast about 15-20 feet.  It was the middle of the day and we were not catching fish.  We had absolutely no idea what we were doing!  There was an older father and son duo across the stream, and they were hooking up left and right.  All I could see where these big fluffy pink things attached to their line and I thought “What the hell kind of fly is that?”  

As the sun started to set, we kind of crept closer to these guys because I wanted to pick their brains on the long walk back to the truck.  I did just that, and I said (like we all say) “guys I have to know what it is that you were doing.”  They said that they were nymphing and they tried their best to explain it to a couple of schmucks on the long walk back.  We thanked them, but honestly had no idea what they were talking about.

That next week, I ventured up to LL Bean at 10 p.m. because I knew it wouldn’t be busy.  There was a very tall, German guy working the fishing department and I said, “What do you know about nymphing?”  Well, he spent a good hour explaining it to me, showing me the set up, and he drew a great diagram on a piece of bright orange paper.  I held onto that paper for many years, and I’m so mad that I’m not able to find it.  I’m sure it’s long gone….

After that, I ended up hiring a guide and that took a lot of the learning curve out of the equation for me.  I do remember that in camp that night he kept trying to show me how to tie a blood knot, and I just could not do it.  A couple of years later, I mastered the knot and I can actually tie that quicker than a double surgeon’s knot now.

The point of this blog post is that it’s GOOD to get out there and try things on your own.  Don’t get discouraged, and don’t shy away from asking others for help.  Just keep reading, keep talking and most importantly, keep fishing! It won’t all come to you overnight, but I can say that 13 years later I feel extremely confident in my ability to fish dries, streamers, nymphs, emergers, and fish different bodies of water, as well as teach others how to do these things.  I do have good days on the water, but there are still times that I have bad days (no fish), and that’s OK.  If you’re in the beginning, grinding out stages, take a lot of pictures and write down your stories.  It’s humbling, hilarious and rewarding to look back at those times and see how far you’ve come!

Aaron Broaddus