About Fly Fishing Addicts
I remember very well my first fly rod hook-up with a salt water striped bass. I can tell you, to quote a phrase known to addicts of all sorts, not just the flyfishing type, that “one was too many, and a thousand never enough”! I was waist deep with waders, standing in the cold spring ocean, at the mouth of an outflowing salt pond, on Cape Cod’s south facing shore.
There were fish here and a half a dozen fly fishermen. I had come equipped with my lightweight spinning tackle, still a saltwater fly virgin. I was watching fish caught and released all around me. I didn’t even want to cast my spinning rod.
The guy beside me released a fish and turned and said to me, “ever get one on a fly?” “No,” I replied, “except in fresh water ponds and rivers, large mouths not saltwater stripers.”
He handed me his rod, showed me the weighted Clouser minnow bait, and schooled me quick on how to let it drift and bounce along the bottom.
It only took a few casts before I felt the fish pick up the bait. And what a feeling! Helped by the current, the spring schoolie bass made a mad dash for open water, but the leverage of the 9 wt graphite rod soon convinced him (or her) otherwise. At my side, careful not to take the sub legal sized fish out of the water, I removed the barbless hook and set the fish loose.
I turned to look at my new fisherman friend and as I handed him his rod back he gave me a big smile. “Congratulations” he said, “You just spent a thousand dollars!” He was referring to what he new to be inevitable…that I was on my way to the tackle shop to get outfitted for saltwater flyfishing.
The dollars matter less than all the fish I have caught since that day. The only thing I am concerned with is when I will catch another one! Start having fun fishing with Pflueger President reels or Okuma Vashon fly reel.
