I picked up a fly rod for the first time about 3 months ago. I want to make sure everyone knows that before reading any further. I want to make sure I don’t mislead anyone into thinking I am an expert at fly fishing, or even fishing in general. I am not an expert at either. If you are looking for expert tips and the secret sauce to the next hot fly, you will not find it here. This story is about my journey to becoming a fly fisherman.
I do love to fish and have been a fisherman ever since I can remember. My first experience fishing consisted of piling into a Sportspal canoe with my dad and brother and heading out into Tamarack Lake for bluegill. The bluegill were huge and easy to catch. This was in the 1970’s. I also loved the trips we took to Stoney Lake in Ontario Canada for Walleye. That was always the highlight of the summer when I was a kid. I picked up trout fishing as I got a little older and it was also something I really enjoyed but this fishing was with spinning gear. Fly fishing at the time seemed very hard and complicated compared to spinning gear.
It wasn’t until I was 52 years young that I picked up my first fly rod this past June. My wife and I travelled to the Orvis Store in Pittsburgh and attended the FF101 class they were holding one Sunday morning. I ended the class by using the coupons they gave me and purchased a Clearwater 5 weight rod, a Clearwater reel loaded with line, and a sling pack loaded with other goodies. I was ready to go. I then attended the FF201 class which consisted of fishing in a pond near the store for panfish. I did manage to catch a few that day but was by no means competent in any way.
Armed with this new equipment and new skill sets I bought some white Clouser minnow streamers and headed to French Creek to try my hand at catching smallmouths. To my surprise, I was able to catch a few and had a blast in the process. Those eager bronze backs were hungry, and very forgiving of my lousy casting abilities. It wasn’t quite as difficult as I imagined. Now I was hooked (pun intended). However, right or wrong, I felt I couldn’t consider myself a real fly fisherman until I landed a trout. This, to me, was the ultimate experience and one I was looking forward to with great anticipation. However, the local streams were too warm to trout fish and there were, in fact, very few streams in Pennsylvania that are fishable for trout in July and August. So, I would wait.
It wasn’t until October that things lined up to allow me the opportunity to catch a trout on my new fly rod. I had helped the PA Fish and Boat Commission stock Oil Creek and the water temps were coming down and this was the perfect time to try my hand at trout. It was several days before I got a chance to travel back up to Oil Creek State Park and give it a try. When I arrived at the park it was cool and overcast and crowded. I decided that my best approach would be to seek some help from someone who was more experienced than me. I struck up a friendly conversation with a gentleman who was leaving hoping he would take pity on me if I plead total ignorance. Luckily, I was wearing my Penn State Alumni hat and even though he was from Pittsburgh, liked my hat and agreed to give me some advice. Not only did he give me some advice, but he also gave me 3 flies out of his box.
After walking away, it occurred to me that in all my years of fishing with spinning gear I cannot remember one time when someone opened up their tackle box and handed me a crank bait or spinner bait or worm harness or any lure for that matter. It was then that I realized that fly fishing was truly a gentlemen’s sport (gentlewomen, gentleperson implied). How else could you explain someone just giving another fisherman his keys to the stream. Fly fishing was different and just by holding a fly rod in my hands I felt a larger responsibility to respecting the fish, the stream, and the resource.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of other fisherman already in the stream and all the spots we stocked were filled. Since this was my first time fishing Oil Creek, and I had all day, I decided to travel downstream toward the railroad bridge and see if I could wait out the crowd. This would also give me some time to practice my casting with no one around to witness the carnage. Watching a skilled fly caster make his line dance in the air with crisp arcs and curves and then lay the fly on the water with barely a ripple is a thing of beauty and truly poetry in motion. I can do none of that. I cast with the same awkwardness as a baby giraffe taking its first steps. A Hell-Fire missile shot from an MQ-9 Reaper would make less of a racket hitting the water than my fly. Smallmouth in French Creek were one thing, trout are entirely different.
As I worked my way down stream the water was very shallow, and the holes were few and far between. After traveling about a half mile, I found a hole that looked fishable. I worked the hole from the down stream end and cast up into it as well as my abilities allowed. I was throwing a white woolly bugger with an orange scud dropper. I managed to catch some small suckers and a smallmouth but no trout. However, the osprey and eagles were having much better luck as I watched them fighting in the air above me over one of the fat stocked rainbows. The osprey had it in its talons but dropped it on the stream bank right next to me. It was osprey one, me zero.
I worked my way further down stream to where I could see the railroad bridge and tried fishing some fast riffles, but I had no luck. The highlight of the trip down stream occurred when the Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad’s fall foliage train travelled across the bridge. With its whistle blowing you felt like you were stepping back in time 100 years. After the train went by, I decided to work my way back upstream to the Petroleum Center Bridge and see if the crowds had dispersed enough to let me in one of the holes where I knew that first trout was waiting.
Trying to look as professional as possible, at least as professional as one could look stuffed into their son’s too small for me neoprene chest waders. I waded into a spot amongst a couple of fishermen, making sure I gave them plenty of room. I am pretty sure I was the only one on the stream that looked like a green stuffed sausage, but I didn’t care, I was determined to catch a trout so I could call myself a true fly fisherman. I promptly, and very professionally I might add, lost my two Clouser minnows and my last white wooly bugger in a span of about 15 minutes to brush on the stream bank as I watched fisherman pulling rainbows out of the stream above me. To say I was frustrated would be an understatement. But I refused to quit.
I opened my fly box and stared at what was left and decided to go with a brown wooly bugger. I tied it on and began casting, albeit very carefully now, into the riffles. I kept working the riffles farther across and downstream, and then it happened. Out of no where a rainbow hit the wooly bugger and I had the fish of a lifetime on the end of my line. O.K. it was a stocked rainbow from Pennsylvania’s Corry hatchery, but to me it was a trophy. After fighting him for a minute I was able to land him in my net. Finally, I was a true fly fisherman.
There were two gentlemen above me who gave approving thumbs up. I told them that they just witnessed me catching my first trout on a fly rod and I immediately made new friends. They worked their way down to me and took a couple of photos and then we struck up a conversation. The one was a very experienced fly fisherman who gave me some tips and he also opened his fly box and handed me a couple of his flies. The other gentleman was one of the owners of Bent Run Brewing Company in Warren, PA. They are opening a new location in Warren and after meeting him on the stream I will be making a trip to visit him. I cannot thank him and his fellow fisherman enough for the flies, their knowledge, and photography.
I continued fishing the riffles and caught 4 more trout. The last one I caught on one of the flies I was given. I can now say without hesitation that I am a fly fisherman. Yea they were just stocked trout I was catching but I still proved to myself I can catch fish. Now I can continue to work on my craft and see if at some point I can give some clueless newbie who was brave enough to give it a try a couple of my flies. If you have always wanted to fly fish but were afraid to try I would set that fear aside and go for it, and if you see some clumsy fly fisherman stuffed into green neoprene chest waders stop and say hi, it may just be me.
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