On the Yellowstone River, Mont.
On my first day fly-fishing, I hooked six – seven if you count the cast that lodged in my lip.
There’s nothing like the taste of cold steel to jolt you back to reality.
I couldn’t wait to try the West’s most romanticized outdoor sport. But that was before I understood The Rules of Fly- Fishing.
Rule 1. Expensive rental equipment makes everyone look like a pro. Cuddling a $600 graphite rod, my imagination wrote checks my hand-eye coordination couldn’t cash.
Now, it is true I was a legendary salt water fisherman in the Chesapeake Bay. But that was because while trolling for rockfish (the Southern name for striped bass), I once caught a real rock.
Like all great anglers, I practiced catch and release.
For my first several hours on the Yellowstone, I merely practiced …
Rule 2. If you were raised on a rod and reel, duck!
Fishing guide Jeff Heenan tried his best to explain the fundamentals of fly-casting to me. A short, sharp pull draws 25 to 30 feet of feather-light line over your head. A short, gentle push flows it out to its full length and to lie gently on the water.
My fishing buddy, Steve Grobel, who lives in Virginia but was raised in Glasgow, Mont., remembered his youth. It was like riding a bike.
My muscle memory programmed me to draw the rod backward slowly and sling the line forward with all my might.
More often than not, my line recoiled from the cast and ended up on the river’s surface 3 feet in front of me.
But that was only if I was quick enough to dodge the fly floating at my face as I drew back the rod.
If not, I got to pick razor-sharp fishing flies out of my lip and learn …
Rule 3. Hooking yourself is a heckuva lot easier than hooking a rainbow trout.
Jeff knew his business. He took us to a deserted stretch of river. We got dozens of strikes. I managed to set the hook in only six. And I got only four of those out of the water.
Jeff, meanwhile, told the story of a legally blind woman in her 70s who’d landed a monster brown trout that nearly dragged her out of the boat.
As the day progressed, there was no escaping the ugly truth: I figured to improve by leaps and bounds.
Knowing his gratuity depended on it, Jeff spun my progress as best he could.
“You’re getting better,” he said, “by centimeters.”
I was once again a victim of “white man’s disease.” As a kid on the basketball court, this meant my slow-twitch muscles couldn’t elevate me to the rim. On the river, as a middle-aged man, it meant I jerked the rod too late to set the hook.
I caught baby rainbows too young to distinguish a real grasshopper from a fake.
They were beautifully colored but too small to eat, even if I’d wanted to. But I wanted to catch and release.
That way I could indulge in …
Rule 4. Talk about the one that got away.
It hit in the deep spot of a slow-moving straightaway near the north bank of the river. Steve had landed an 18-inch rainbow in rushing rapids a mile upstream as I untangled my latest mangled cast.
My manhood was on the line.
The fish, unfortunately, wasn’t.
Fly fishing is like rubbing your belly and patting your head simultaneously. You set the hook by holding the line fast and jerking the rod. But with a fish of any size you must immediately feed line or the fish tears itself off the hook.
I caught a flash of something big barely breaking the surface. Then, before I could let the line run, the fish broke free and disappeared into the depths.
I was left with two witnesses, but no trout, which brings me to the last and most important Rule of Fly-Fishing.
Rule 5. Make no big plans.
I saw myself as Brad Pitt in “A River Runs Through It.”
I looked like Chevy Chase in “Funny Farm.”
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com. David Harsanyi’s column will return soon.
