Time to Fish

Well, I learned to false cast to feed out the line, then I learned how to attach a fly with an improved cinch knot, and how to tie on tippet using a triple surgeons loop. Finally it was time to go fishing.

Steve's choice was the Weber river, at the "Blue Ribbon" section on a stretch near Wanship. At that time I had no idea that Wanship existed, even though I have lived in Utah all my life. It was as if I had been transported to another world. We put on the waders, and got in the water! Way in, the place Steve wanted to fish required a precarious wade along the inside of a freeway bridge where the water came up above my waste. I am basically a coward, and just don't wade in water where I feel the slightest risk. That was my first trip, and the first and only time I waded in above waste deep water in an unknown section of a river.

Of course it wasn't unknown to Steve, and we made it under the bridge to a much more shallow section bordered by deep runs that Steve wanted to fish. He rigged me up with one of his favorite flies, which he called a "Crane Fly Larvae" because the guy who showed HIM how to tie it called it that. Now I know that it wasn't even close to being a Crane fly larvae (it was tied on a 16 hook) and probably represented the small cased Caddis which clung to the rocks by the millions.

His other "ugly" fly was what he called a "Butt Head Hare's ear, because it was simply a Hare's ears body, with a large, dark Thorax made from the Ear of the hare's mask, the little fuzzy black hairs that Steve would pull out in a tuft and spin to make a thorax with a thread head. This fly is still one of my favorites, but I have added a bead. I have caught hundreds, if not thousands of fish on the bead head version of this fly, it is still the first fly I tie on.

But on this day neither of us caught a fish. Luckily, I was to learn that getting skunked on the Weber River was actually a very rare event, but that was what happened on my first day of fly fishing with Steve.