Fly fishing is more than a method to catch fish. It is a way of life.
Regrettably, that is sometimes construed as elitist and exclusive by its practitioners and non-practitioners alike. It is merely a highly advanced form of fishing that emphasizes process over product. Almost every other form of fishing emphasizes obtaining the heaviest daily legal limit. Fly fishing is all about the journey.
Limits are irrelevant in fly fishing because fly fishermen usually release what they catch. They don't weigh their fish, but many fly fishermen have a method to quickly measure their fish before releasing. That is the nearest they get to possessiveness.
Twenty fly fishermen can give 20 definitions of what they believe fly fishing to be. I define it as a method of fishing that aligns the mind, body, quarry and environment. When immersed, you are one with yourself, and one with a stream and everything in it.
A fly fisherman can do everything wrong and catch fish. You can do everything right and not catch fish. When you do everything right and catch fish, the effect is rapturous.
Early in the journey, a fly fisherman cannot wait to get to the water and start casting. At that stage you are not a fly fisherman, but a fisherman that uses fly fishing equipment. This becomes evident when you realize that in your haste to fish, you are unprepared.
Preparation starts at the truck. You start stripping away distractions as you pull on your waders and adjust your wading shoes. Assembling my rig is also ritualistic. My rods are all four-piece units. I carefully assemble each stage, staring down the backbone to make sure every eyelet aligns perfectly.
I love the way the drag on the reel clicks as I strip line to prepare for fishing. Its gentle hum is the soundtrack of a big trout or smallmouth bass on the line. I run my thumb and index finger down the line searching for nicks and abrasions. I also feel for suppleness. Untreated fly line can get dry and stiff over time, which reduces castability. I inspect my leader in similar fashion.
Once to the water, I pause. I watch the current for speed, but I also listen. Subtle differences in pitch and volume can tell more than eyesight about how hard and fast current flows. If you fish a tailwater frequently, you recognize its song at every stage of hydropower generation. The Little Red River, for example, sounds one way with the generators idle at Greers Ferry Dam. It sounds different with one generator running, and different still with two generators running. If you are far downstream when hydropower current arrives, you will hear the current quicken long before you see it.
Rusty Pruitt, an accomplished fly fisherman, usually sits by the river and watches. He looks for bugs hovering above the water, and he looks for any insects that might emerge from the water. He also looks for fish rising. These impulses tell him what kind of fly a trout will most likely bite at that particular time. It is also a meditative exercise that enables Pruitt to clear his head and fall under the river's spell.
While observing the river, I take a little journey through my fly box. This is partly to examine my selection of trout attractors, but it is also a meditative exercise. The rainbow of colors, the bristly touch of elk hair, and the sheen of flashabou and chenille stimulate the imagination to all of the aquatic possibilities. A skeptic might look at a wooly bugger or a streamer as a fanciful facsimile of something only a really stupid fish would eat. The fisherman's challenge is to make it look irresistible to a fish.
At this point, the art of fly fishing comes into play. It's a two-part play that involves both sides of the brain. One act coordinates the eyes with all of the muscles involved with casting a fly. If you do it right, it's a full-body workout.
The second phase is all mental. It's all about gathering and processing every sign the water gives you. You're reading the water.
I begin my first cast by pulling a small amount of line through the guides and letting the current straighten the line and leader. The whole time I'm looking at the water and noticing every little vee, break and eddy.
Primarily I'm looking for deep seams and creases in the stream bed. The water in these creases is a little cooler, but creases also funnel food. Facing upstream, trout and bass hover at the bottoms of the creases and devour bugs, baitfish and crustaceans that blunder past.
You can spot a seam because the water is a little flatter and darker than the shallower water to the sides. I'm also looking for breaks in the seams that betray the presence of rocks. Rocks in a seam or pocket are gold because they allow fish to hide and expend less energy than they do in full current. Working upstream, I cast to every feature multiple times until I have presented my fly at every drift angle possible.
Meanwhile, the physical act of casting is almost like a martial art. When my fly reaches the end of its drift, I lift my rod and haul back on my fly line. You will feel a peak of tension as the fly nears the surface. That is the exact point when you begin the back cast to lift the fly from the water.
With practice, you will also learn to recognize the peak tension that occurs at the apex of the backcast. It sends a burst of signals that tell the brain to begin the fore cast. For me, it's like throwing a football or a baseball. I step forward with my left leg and thrust my right shoulder forward. At the 2 o'clock position, I snap and lock my wrist as I let go of the hauled line. This catapults the fly outward and unfurls the leader. When done correctly, the fly will settle onto the water with merely a dimple.
If you fish perpendicular to the current, you will work constantly to mend your line. Mending is a method to keep your line even with your fly. If your line is downstream from your fly, current will catch your line and speed the fly's drift. If your line is upstream of the fly, it will slow the drift. Neither is desirable. You want the line and fly to drift at the same speed as the current.
The mending process usually means pulling your fly out of one seam and into another. Sometimes a fish takes a fly on a dead drift. Other times it strikes on the haul, when a fly looks like an emerger heading to the surface. A day of this kind of fishing is mentally and physically exhausting, but when a perfect process aligns with a perfect presentation at a time when fish are feeding, the experience is truly spiritual.