Welcome, and why I got hooked (the pun is on purpose)
Hi. I'm Gilbert. I'll be the guy up the canyon with you for the next few weeks, standing in cold water asking you if you can feel the difference between your rod tip going up and your rod tip going way, way up.
Before we get into any gear or any casting, I want to tell you how this whole thing started for me, because I think it matters for what we're doing in this class.
I came to fly fishing late. I was not an outdoor kid growing up, more of a piano-lessons-and-paper-route kid. About twelve years ago a neighbor talked me into going up the Provo with him. I fished for three hours. I caught nothing. Zero fish. I mean it, not one.
And I drove home grinning like an idiot.
Tricia, my wife, asked how it went and I told her, "I didn't catch anything and I want to go back tomorrow." She just looked at me. She'd married a guy who found his new thing and it happened to be standing in a river not catching fish.
Here's the thing. That afternoon wasn't really about fish. It was the quiet, and the moving water, and having a real reason to be standing in a river instead of just standing there feeling weird about it. I've thought about that a lot since, and it's why I named this whole course the way I did. We're not "just" here to catch trout. We're here to have a good, calm reason to be outside with our hands doing something. If you catch fish along the way, bless you, that's a nice bonus.
What we're actually doing in this class
Practical version: over the next several weeks you're going to learn to read water, tie one knot really well, cast well enough to get a fly where you want it, and handle a fish gently if you're lucky enough to catch one. That's it. That's the whole list. I'm not going to load you up with forty techniques on day one.
I feel like a lot of beginner classes try to make you an expert by week two and it backfires. You leave overwhelmed and you don't go back to the river on your own. My goal is the opposite. I want you leaving each week having actually done something with your hands, feeling like you could go try it again without me standing there.
A little advance honesty
I should tell you now, before you get any ideas about me, that I am not a pro. I got hooked on this (yes, I use that pun on purpose, every time, I think it's funny and I'm not going to stop) and then I read everything I could get my hands on and practiced in my own backyard until Tricia asked me, politely but firmly, to quit whipping the fence with my line.
I still can't cast a fly across a whole river with any real distance. If that's your goal, I'm the wrong teacher, and I'll tell you that cheerfully right now so nobody's disappointed in week four. What I can do is help you put a fly where a fish is actually sitting, at a normal, reasonable range. And here's my honest opinion on that: reading the water matters more than your gear ever will. I have watched a guy with a nine-hundred-dollar rod cast beautifully into water that hasn't held a fish in years, while a beginner with a forty-dollar setup who knows where trout like to hold out-fishes him all afternoon. I will say this until you believe me. We'll spend real time on it.
One thing I need to tell you about hooks
Early on, maybe my fifth or sixth trip out, I hooked my own ear. Not a fish. My ear. It was a barbless hook, thank goodness, so it came out easy enough, but I still had to explain the little mark to people at church the next morning, which was its own kind of humbling.
So here's a rule with no wiggle room in this class: every hook gets its barb pinched down, every time, no exceptions. It's easier on any fish you catch and it is dramatically easier on your ear, your neighbor's jacket, and my ear, because apparently I need the reminder more than most. We'll do this together the first day so you see exactly how it's done. It takes about four seconds with a pair of pliers.
Why I keep doing this
I like people, and I like the river, and somewhere along the way I got decent at helping nervous beginners relax enough to actually enjoy standing in moving water. That's really the whole résumé. I'm retired now, I've got time, and driving up the canyon on a weekday morning still feels like getting away with something.
You don't need to be the quiet, meditative, at-one-with-nature type to do this well, either. That's a myth people carry in with them and it makes them tense. Talk, laugh, mess up your cast, ask a dumb question, there's no such thing. The fish genuinely do not care whether you're having a good time, so you may as well have one.
Before next time: just think about whether you own any old shoes you don't mind getting wet. We'll talk waders later, but for now, bank fishing in old sneakers is plenty to start with.