Pages

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Perspectives on Beginning to Fly-Fish: Essential #1 - Understanding Limitations

Understanding limitations is a very important essential in fly-fishing and life in general.   The most common limitations to a fly-fisherman are gear limitations, time limitations, and location limitations.

Today I will talk about:

Intro to Gear Limitations:  What matters?

Limitations on gear can be very discouraging. The biggest, the best, and the newest gear is expensive and often inaccessible to the average beginners skills and pocketbook.  Therefore, I have learned to find value  in fly-fisherman that can cast any rod and line skillfully enough to catch fish on whatever body of water they are presented with.  However, the secret that most people do not talk about is that catching a fish often has more to do with the size of your tippet than the size of your rod, the distance of your cast, or the money you spent on all of the above!

Fun Suggestion for Beginners:  No matter what your gear you have access to, go out and spend one hour in a wide open park and just cast for fun.  Listen and observe. Pay attention to your body movements and the effect on the rod and line.  If you walk away after an hour and know even one type of movement that tangles your line, consider it a victory!


Fun Suggestion for "Experts":  Just in case you haven't done this in a long time, go and find the most inexpensive, and overall worst rod you can find - the more cracks, dead-spots, missing snake guides, etc... the better.  Put on whatever line weight you wish, or maybe just a piece of rope, and cast it for an hour.  The results are fantastic. I enjoy doing this every once and a while to keep myself humble, keep gear in perspective, and to gain a more intimate feel for the art of fly-fishing.


Just like in music, it is not the instrument that plays the music. It is the soul that an artist can bring out of any instrument that makes the music what it is.


'till next time...

AK

No comments:

Post a Comment