Flyrod o'clock

Moving to the Platte Valley requires adjustment.

As you make friends here, you will find one of those adjustments will be learning to fly fish.

This does not, as you might expect from the name, involve very small fishing poles with rotting bits of meat as bait for flying nuisances.

It’s much worse than that.

The west, in general, is chock full of “ideal fly fishing spots” and we have an abundance of them along the entire length of Platte Valley waterways.

You see, Wyoming is host to some of America’s premier free-stone rivers. These rivers are the fly fisherman’s natural habitat.

The Fly Fisherman

Fly fishermen (and fly fisherwomen) emerge, butterfly-like, from their familiar workaday selves every spring when they don vests made solely from pockets, fish-print shirts, expensive polarized glasses and neoprene waders.

I learned about fly fishing nuttiness even before I made it out west.

In my very first fresh-out-of-college job I had a boss who took annual trips to Gunnison, Colo. to get his fix.

The week before one of these trips, he would stand around waving an invisible rod while making bizarre buzzing “zzzzzzzz” sounds.

I later discovered this was an emulation of what a reel on a fly fishing pole makes as it releases line, and not just something aimed to annoy me.

Learning to fly fish

While learning the art of fly fishing you will encounter what I like to call “flyrod o’clock”.

That is a situation in which you will be advised to move your rod through the air from an invisible “10 o’clock” over your shoulder to the “2 o’clock” position slightly in front of you while your instructor shouts “10!” and then “2!”

There have been a plethora of classes offered around town, but you can also get videos that will help you learn this mystical craft. It is, however, hard to practice with a nine-foot rod in your living room. Things break.

You will have to learn all about the local bugs the local fish eat. You need to know what time of year these bugs greet the world (called a “hatch”), what time of day the fish feed on them, and how to convincingly tie bits of string and beads onto a hook in such a manner as to confuse a fish into thinking your hook is actually one of these bugs.

One of the things you will learn is that nymphs are not as much fun as the name might imply. You will come to know when stoneflies, caddis, nymphs, midges and many other colorfully-named insects are hatching so you can use the proper insect dummy to fool those wily fish.

Fly tying

This does NOT have anything to do with insect bondage.

Now that you are familiar with what insects are currently (Ha!) feeding the trout population, you may want to become a near-professor-level entomologist and learn how to create your very own bug stand-ins. This will require a large-scale purchase of sewing materials, feathers, mini-vices, magnifying glasses and the like.

You never knew you could have so much fun disguising hooks as fish food!

This is what fly fishermen do with their winters and off-time. They stock up on flies and gear for the spring and fall.

There is a schism between bait fishermen and fly fishermen already. Fly fishermen think they are better than bait fishermen because they need cooler gear while all a bait fisherman needs are poles, worms and beer.

A divide that exists solely within the ranks of fly fishermen is the debate between “dry” and “wet” flies. Dry fliers pretend they are better than wet fliers. I have personally been buffeted by the haughtiness in the phrase “I only use dry flies” as it dripped from a particularly aristocratic fly fisherman’s mouth.

I may elaborate on fly tying and selection at some later date but all you really need to know is that dry flies float and wet flies sink and they really both have their uses.

Rods

You can get a decent rod for anywhere from relatively cheap to ludicrously expensive. The come in materials ranging from bamboo to carbon fiber and are available in any number of lengths and weights.

Matching weights to your intended prey is fairly important but, if you are interested, I will leave all that research up to you—have fun!

Reels

See Rods.

Jumping in

A lot of fishermen like to put on waterproof pants.

This usually has nothing to do with any bowel or bladder condition.

These waterproof pants are called “waders” and allow fly fishermen to stroll into frigid waters and remain there at least semi-comfortably while they seek their prey.

Wade fishermen usually have their favorite places picked out and will return to at least fairly near the same place for the duration of a fishing trip.

Why not? The fish are still there.

Guides

If you want to float fish either on a river or lake and you don’t know the area and haven’t brought a boat you will need to hire a mythical being called a” guide”. These near-deities know EVERYTHING about fly fishing, the river, and the most expensive booze you should buy for them after a guided trip.

Sorry, I can’t let that one slide. Guides, in reality, only THINK they know everything about fly fishing and the river. They do, however, know the most toppest-notch hootch you should buy them after a trip though.

I made the mistake of buying one of my guide friends a drink one night and was, let’s say, slightly taken aback when I went to pay my tab and discovered that single drink cost more than the three drinks I had purchased for myself in the course of the evening.

Here’s where I do my normal backpedaling,

Not all guides are know-it-all types with egos to match. A great deal of them are down-to-earth types. These ‘regular’ guides know the group I am talking about though.

You can normally identify off-duty guides by their “reverse-raccoon” suntans. Guides spend the larger part of their time outdoors wearing sunglasses and sandals. A consequence of this is that the area around their eyes, a strip going back to their ears, and everywhere their sandals cover is white in comparison to the rest of their bodies.

In conclusion, and I know you have heard variations on this one: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fly fish and he will be stuck in a Cabela’s catalog all winter and in a stream all the rest of the time.