OK, I'm hooked!

OK, I got a little behind in my schedule and am just now trying out my FF
equip and skills, it having been much too windy before now. This first ever
effort was kind of funny, but not at all disheartening.

My first problem was setting up the rod and line. It took me two tries
before I wised up to the pointlessness of trying to thread the 4X tapered
leader "up" through the eyes of the pole. I'd read of this bizarre ritual
and its near impossibility of acheiving, on the web. I swore
I would never be so inept as to have a leader fall back through the eyes
before I finished this simple task. After failing twice to even reach the 3
eye, I changed stratagies and hiked the rod up on a large boulder with the
tip facing down. Voila! I beamed with pride until I realized I'd actually
missed the first ferrule. Grrr....

I then moved onto rigging a fly. I used a .006" mono tippet off my tapered
tippet with a loop-to-loop and uni'd to a small/cheap yellow cork popper
with a couple sad feathers attached. I didn't figure to actually catching
anything. I just wanted to be able to see it out there and I figured a cork
popper would stay on top of the water. It did, for the most part.

As to be expected, my first casts with my 8-1/2' 5wt were sloppy and ragged,
but haveing read extensively and watching my back cast, I didn't kill
myself. I kept at it whipping and flogging like the rank amateur I am.
Just for fun, I left the hook in the popper so as to keep me on my toes,
knowing that sucker could nail me good if I didn't take care. At first, I
couldn't figure out quite how to coordinate my left and right hand and how
to strip and feed line to the loop I was flogging back and forth, but I got
better in time.

Every time I got some line out on the water, it was pretty pitiful. I
seemed to be piling up the leader/tippet right in front of the line. I
realized I was not getting a tight loop and was letting the rod tip go too
low when casting out. All that reading was not going to waste. I kept at
it and my loop got a bit tighter and I started casting out with my rod tip a
bit higher.

When I did get some line/leader straight out in front of me, I'd watch the
drift of the popper and its relation to my line. At this point I'd try a
few mends here and there. Hmmm.... not too bad. Most were downstream mends
as the fly was drifting faster midcurrent than my fly line. At the end of a
drift, I'd then try a loop cast. Hey, these are handy and not all that
difficult.

After about 15 mins, the wind came up pretty good. It was hard to cast up
stream with my right hand, so I tried casting across my body. Umm.. not
good. I turned and started casting down stream. Better. I finally got a
loopy knot in my leader/tippet that also entailed my l-t-l's, but it was
small so I continued. I got a few tangles over my rod tip, nothing too bad.

After another 20 mins, I was getting straight out to mid-stream, about 20-30
ft, with nice extension of both flyline and leader/tippet. This was most
satisfying, as I could now really see the current and practice mending. But,
I was still having trouble getting my line back up off the water and right
into a good backcast/loop. I'd come up and have to back/forward a couple
times to get my loop straightened out and tight. This pick-up was always
iffy and it was when I'd get tangles.

Finally, I did one really sloppy lift off the water, with a lot of cross
wind, and the resulting tangle put me out of action. I had multiple loop
tangles including one clear up in my flyline. After picking at it for about
5 mins, I realized I needed optical assist on this one and trudged back up
the hill.

So this, my first FF foray, and I loved it. Warm enough to be wearing
shorts and sandals and I got to see a flock of mallards tippy-toe skim
downriver not eight feet in front of me. A glorious day! No wonder you
folks like this FF thing. I didn't catch a fish, but I definitely hooked
something. I'll be back tomorrow.

nb