I'm from, grew up, and still live just outside New Orleans in Southeast
Louisiana. Like most everyone, I have been fishing since I was 3 if you call cane-poling with worms fishing.
I still do it from time to time on a friend's farm pond with my kids. Its actually kind of fun.
I didn't start fly fishing until I was about 10 or 11 which would be around 1973.
I started doing it as an additional way of catching bass when they weren't eating plastic worms.
The person who started me fly fishing doesn't have a name or face but he did have a graceful loop and an old used
car. Let's see if I can keep that explanation short.
Back in '73 I was bass fishing this borrow pit pond in the woods where
we (my father and two younger brothers)
were on a camping/hunting trip (a weekend ritual during the squirrel
& deer season). Nothing was eating our plastic
worm offerings when a middle aged man pulled up to the pond in an old
used car.
He brought his rod to the rear of the pond where I hadn't tread before
because that end of the pond was always weeded up.
He stepped into the water which I hadn't even considered doing with all
those weeds; hell, some deep water creature could have come
up from the depths of those weeds and grabbed a kid by the leg and he'd be gone forever.
But what this stranger did next was even more fascinating.
He started throwing this thick looking white line back and forth with great control in a rhythmic and graceful way
that was mesmerizing. I think I had heard of and maybe even seen fly fishing on the Kurt Gowdy show or something
like that because I remember knowing it was fly fishing, but I had never seen a fly fisherman in person!
This was very cool! And the thing that got my interest peaked even more was when he started catching fish.
Which was a superhuman feat on that day, at least to a 10 year old. Although we went over and spoke with the stranger, I don't
recall his name.
Sometime in the following weeks, my dad was nice enough to support my new interest and purchased a
yellowish-orange fiberglass fly rod for me. Now, twenty something years later, I rarely use spinning gear.
I often daydream about fly designs while in church and tie flies on
breaks at work.
I cast wads of colored yarn at dry leaves on the front lawn from time
to time and look at every body of water I pass on the highway wondering
if
there are fish there and what fly I would use if I could be fishing for
them.
The later of which often gets my passengers talking so as to distract
me from the roadside back to the roadway.
I support my tying
and flyfishing with my part-time word-of-mouth tying buisiness. With a
wife and four children, the first of which was born in 1992, my free time is not
very common. I do get out and chase redfish as often as I can, usually
government holidays, the occasional vacation day and when I can get a kitchen
pass for Sat.
I'd really like to meet that stranger of 1973 again and hear whether he is still wading in farm ponds and see if he
would be interested in chasing some redfish with me and his magical bass wand.
I want to say thanks to all the folks who have shared their fly fishing and tying experiences and knowledge with me
and continue to do so and I only hope that I can help another fly fisher in ways that I have been helped.
