Welcome back to another fly fishing adventure with myself and in today’s video … my preacher and new friend, Nathaniel Melton. It is always a good thing to be able to help out a new fly person and in this case, Nathaniel is not only an avid fisherman and outdoorsman … but a good athlete, as well, and that seems to help with the learning curve.
After about 15 minutes of fly casting instruction and just a few more minutes of familiarizing him with my float boat we pushed off downstream for about 2 miles of beautiful water here in God’s Country, northwest Wisconsin.
Nathaniel was a quick learner and almost immediately started to figure out how to cast better and a little further; that was the good news … not so good was the ability to actually set the hook on a wily smallmouth. This is the forgotten skill and one in which I spend time with newbies …. attempting to get them ready for that first time, when a nice fish explodes on your popper. Seems like no matter who it is it almost always winds up a train-wreck and so it was with the preacher.
Time and experience are truly the only way to get and become more efficient at both casting and landing. There is just no real way to shortcut the procedure and as I told Nathaniel after 45 years of fly fishing my brain is sometimes and in fact usually, on auto-pilot. Truth is I am often a few seconds into the retrieve of a fish before I process how it all went down.
We couldn’t have had a more peaceful and pleasure filled day; short of Nathaniel actually landing a fish and that will, indeed, come with more time on the water. What I did notice and wasn’t surprised about was how often he took the time to look around and enjoy the wondrous environs that we were partaking in …. something not everyone seems to be able to do.
I hope you enjoy the video and hope you too can introduce a new fly person to our sport. If you have questions or comments you can leave those below or you can reach me at flyfishingwithjefff@gmail.com and I will do my best to get back to you with my best reply.
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