Things I wish I knew - Beginners guide to Fly Fishing

hey everyone it's chris here from bower trout fitters i've been fishing for a couple decades now but i'm self-taught and i learned a lot of stuff the hard way and one of the problems with being self-taught is you pick up some bad habits and they can be really tough to kick over the years as you're trying to become a better caster and fly angler so today i want to tell you guys some of the things that i wish i knew as a beginner fly fisher that would really help me increase my learning curve and avoid a lot of those bad habits and we're going to start off with my first tip this is a very important one i've got my rod here but it is not strung up and there's no fly on there and that's because i really think that's the best way to approach the river i don't like the idea of having your rod already strung up with a fly in mind before you get to the water first off it really kind of pushes you to start fishing right away and you're not going to be paying attention to the rhythm of the water the flows the kind of water that you're fishing and what bugs are on there and i think it's really a good idea to stop relax take a breath take in the water look for rising fish look for fish in certain holes and then plan your attack accordingly it'll reinforce good skills it'll make you a better angler now the next thing i wish i knew before starting fly fishing goes hand in hand with what we just talked about and that's about getting down to the water too quickly so there's gonna be a lot of fish right here next to the bank they love the structure and the quick drop off and a lot of the times what beginners do is they get right to the water and already where i'm standing i was too close i've spooked any fish that are here and there will be tons of fish that are waiting just off the bank some really nice fish we've already seen a bunch today but another thing i see a lot of people do when they first start especially when they get waders is they think okay all the good fishing is out there not here and so they just crash right into the water and again this is really bad i've spooked the fish i've kicked fish out of the lane and now the only fish i might have a chance at are ones way out there in fact the best approach is to start fishing the bank from well on shore make sure you've worked it and then gradually work your way out to the water now the next thing i wish i knew before starting fly fishing was just some basic line control what i mean by line control is this fly fishing's a two-handed sport so if i'm right-handed casting with my right hand i'm going to most likely use my left hand for my line management that means stripping line off the reel to get more distance more line out on the water bringing in slack as i'm fishing and it's very important that you control all of this excess line properly now the first thing we're going to do before we start fishing every session check the drag on your reel if it's turned off and loose all the way and you pull line it's going to over spool and you're going to get this bird's nest forming here and that's a real pain and if you're doing that on your first cast and a fish rises you don't want to be messing around with that we like to set our drag just tight enough so that when i strip line it's not going to over spool on me like it just did at the same time for trout we don't need our drag set down hard this is really just to keep line from dumping out onto the riverbank now no matter what as you're bringing line in or stripping line out it is going to dangle at your feet and this is a tricky problem you're going to deal with this rest of your life fly fishing but if you just take a little bit of extra care to look down at the ground make sure that you're not dropping your line into a bunch of twigs or around rocks it'll save you a lot of headache i mean a fly line does get wrapped around twigs and rocks a really bad habit is just to yank as hard as you can trying to dislodge it and you could very well snap or damage your fly line doing that be patient undo it carefully and then keep fishing the other thing i would say is watch your feet i mean it's easy to reposition ourselves and take a few steps and you could very easily then be stepping on your fly line and this is also very bad for your fly line so be careful and the biggest bad habit that i personally had to break once you've stopped at an area and you're going to move don't leave all this line hanging out and decide to go for a walk because these loops are going to catch on to everything branches trees your fly is going to hook on something always reel up your line take that extra time and then put your fly away properly before you move to the next session the next thing that i wish i knew right off the bat this is a tip that actually a lot of people have been in the game a long time still don't pay attention to you need to have sharp hooks now that might seem like a redundant thing to say but it's amazing how many people let their hooks get dull and keep fishing them you're going to lose fish you're going to lose good hook sets every time that a fly gets hooked on a rock or stuck in a branch behind you or even if you've just been fishing it for a while it's been sitting in your box for a long time it can start to dull especially if you're dragging across rocks and stuff like that so the first tip i'd say is this if you do have trouble with your fly getting stuck on something and you have to coerce it out of the river bottom or out of a tree make sure that you check that hook make sure there's still a hook on there first off and then always sharpen it get yourself a hook sharpener just a few quick wipes make sure it's nice and sharp and that fly is ready to go again okay so we moved to the other side of the river here i'm gonna do some casting i got a rod that you can easily see in a line that shows up first tip actually always wear glasses when you're casting especially as a beginner for obvious reasons uh we want you to save your eyesight so one thing i wish that somebody really taught me when i was starting out is to not false cast too much and false casting is where rather than actually casting the fly in the water we're just going back and forth back cast forecast back cast forecast and you see so many people that will just sit on the river here doing this back and forth endlessly and that's really a bad habit now i get it as a beginner you're trying to learn how to feel the rod load you're trying to learn how to cast i absolutely get it i've been there but when it actually comes to fishing you want to avoid false casting as much as possible here's a couple reasons why first off you're going to tire yourself out and you're just going to exhaust your wrist and and that's no fun at the end of the day another thing too is the more you false cast honestly the more potential there is for something to go wrong okay if i'm false casting a lot i might mess up a cast or i might put it into the bushes just like i did there and of course that's going to wreck your fun as well the only time that we have a really false cast once we're experienced anglers is if we're trying to get more line out and actually get more line aerialized to do a longer cast or in some cases if we're trying to just dry off a fly quickly maybe we've treated it or trying to get some of the water off and a few quick back and forth false casts can help facilitate that but otherwise try to just do one nice clean back cast one nice forecast and keep that fly on the water you'll catch more fish the more your fly is on the water okay here's another thing i really wish i knew when i first got into fly fishing especially fly casting and that's the concept of shooting line i'm going to teach you guys what that is now when i was starting out teaching myself i just assumed that if i want to do a 20-foot cast i would have to have 20 feet of fly line out of the rod tip and i would just have to keep all of that in the air and then cast it down on the water and at short distances it works okay but i was getting really bad presentations with my fly the other problem is this what if i want to push the limits and start casting 40 or 50 feet well then i was trying to keep 50 feet of fly line in the air casting it the whole time my rod's getting overloaded i'm dropping things into the bushes i'm getting tired and frustrated that's not what you want to do what you want to do is shoot line and that means to have some excess line below the reel as slack so if i'm casting 30 feet i could have 25 feet of fly line out of the rod tip and then i could have this extra line below and when i cast i simply let the cast go and the momentum of the fly line takes up that slack i get my distance but more importantly i get a much better presentation if you've got 30 foot casts and i've got 30 feet of fly line and i cast that whole thing with no slack it's automatically going to reach the end of the sh of the cast there's more forward momentum to go and there's no slack to give and so it's going to all pop back towards you and bring that fly back you're going to get a bad puddle and a bad presentation so really having that extra slack and casting and shooting it means that the energy gradually tapers off turns the fly over nicely and gives me a nice delicate presentation all right everybody i hope you guys thoroughly enjoyed that got a lot out of the video i just want to give you these tips to help you maybe dodge some of those pitfalls that you'll experience early on as you start fly fishing and avoid some of those bad habits that can form that can be really hard to break later on and hopefully this makes your time on the water more enjoyable and less frustrating the last tip i want to leave you with is this if you really want to know if fly fishing is for you and if you can handle it over the years just start now with a big bowl of yarn make a whole big mess of it tangle it up step on it wrap it around things and then spend a few hours undoing it and getting it back to a nice even ball of yarn and if that doesn't drive you crazy and insane well fly fishing might be something you're going to really enjoy down the line otherwise please do like and subscribe to the channel we'd really appreciate that and do leave any questions and comments below i'd be happy to help you out with any questions you specifically have and answer those for you otherwise if you need any gear or any other advice check out borrower trophies.com thank you guys so much for joining us see you soon

Channel: Bow River Troutfitters

Views: 16,485

Rating: 4.9589324 out of 5

Keywords: fly fishing, bow river, educational, diy, how to, beginner, guide, learn, teaching, teach, alberta, trout, rod

Id: hHN-iZpBTa4

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021