Unreel Fly Fishing

I recently had the great pleasure of volunteering my services at an outdoor-focused summer camp for local teens.  Along with some fellow Trout Unlimited members we spent the morning introducing a dozen local youngsters to the fun of fly fishing.  I, of course, used tenkara.  The two young ladies I was with had a great morning catching an interesting mix of warm water species plus one Brown trout and one Rainbow…pretty good for two first time fly fishers!   Whether you are an expert, or a beginner, there are few better ways to ensure the future of our sport than to take the time to fish with a youngster.  It’s good fun and good karma.

A wonderful day up in Brook Trout country on Friday got me to thinking about why Brookie fishing is such a fun and calming challenge.  There are lots of technical things you could cite as crucial but to me it really boils down to a something of a dichotomy:  In order to succeed you have to be as mentally present as you can, while at the same time being as physically not present as you can.  It sounds weird but it means you have to be absolutely focused on nothing but the stream, the fly, the fish.   As the situation becomes everything to you,  you strive to become nothing to the situation.  Ideally, you want everything to be as though you weren’t even there; no sound, no shadow, nothing.  I don’t know, but it seems like there must be something healthy about  an activity that rewards you for maximizing the importance of everything around you and minimizing the significance of your presence in it.  I can’t be sure…but I know it makes you smile.

That’s uphill, upstream and away from the “things of man.”  You know summer has truly begun in Asheville when the kids get out of school,  the fireflies start blinking and the out of state license plates outnumber the in-state.  That’s my signal to head for Brook Trout country.  We did just that on Saturday and it was wonderful.  Check out the pictures above and below and you’ll see why I love my job!

Yesterday we headed up into wild Brook Trout water for the first time this spring.  Flows were a little high but the  Mountain Laurel was blooming, the butterflies were everywhere and the fish were happy to take any well presented fly.  I was with a skilled tenkara veteran and we actually fished with the same fly all day.  It fooled this beauty while we were laying flat on our stomachs on a truck sized boulder and casting down 10′ into a pool.  We were really gettin’ our tenkara on.  My muscles are a little sore this morning from all the hiking, climbing and four point scrambling but it sure was nice to get back in the wild.