[T.E.Shuler]

Let's rekindle some fond memories, some may be distant memories, and for some it may be more recent memories, but one thing is for certain, they are all fond memories.

So... Who or what, got you started fly fishing?

I got my start when I was about 6 years old. I grew up with fly fishing all around me. I would go with my grandpa and watch him catch trout on a small creek near his home with a bamboo rod. We went often enough that I knew what he was doing, and remember some of the things he would show me and talk about. He passed away when I was almost five. He had a heart attack while we were on the stream, but he was able to get me back home before it took him. I also spent many days watching my Dad fly fish on Deep Creek and the Nantahala. Dad and his freinds would go on these amazing camping trips in the Smokies for days at a time and I wanted to go, but was too young. They would go fly fish and camp in places like Hazel Creek, Noland Creek, and Forney Creek. Places like today, you and I would love to head off to and forget the rest of the world. Anyway. I wanted to learn and kept hounding my dad about it. So for my 6th birthday I was surprised with my own rod, reel, and all "equipment"

I spent hours on end learning how to cast with my dad by my side until I finally got a good enough handle on it to hit Deep Creek. On my first outing I caught a Rainbow in the Indian Creek trib. of Deep Creek, and have been hooked ever since.
I spent many days fishig with my dad. And when I say many days I do mean a bunch. If it wasn't raining, we were on Deep Creek or Noland Creek. Or if Dad had to work late I would be out in the yard casting.

Now I have a couple little ones of my own, and this year for my son's 5th birthday he asked for a fly rod. It surprised me and excited me too. So the cycle begins once again!


So let's hear your strories of how you got started.

[Riparian]

Kind older gentelman taught me to fish, or rather allowed me to tag along and observe while he caught fish and I tangled lines, lost flies, and didnt catch fish (untill I learned to observe first and fish second). Wanted to fly fish because I was stressed at work, quit that job, now I fly fish for work.

[pbourcq]

I have had what i can describe as undiagnosed ADD since i was a kid. I remember trout fishing when i was 7 or 8. It was the only thing i could actually concentrate on for more than 5 seconds. Every year i would ask for fishing stuff for christmas because we were poor and it was my only shot lol.

Around my 13th or so birthday I got a cabelas fly rod. My grandma knew i fished obsessively in any weather and bought it for me. I went and fished everyday in the creek by my house. My neighbor hooked me up with some leaders and flies and a few days later I hooked a little rainbow. I remember realizing that things had changed.

I looked for people to help me learn but nobody was around or willing. When i finally got serious about competiting my fishing was solid but my casting was horrid. AFter 1.5 years of hard work its pretty good.

Ive got a weird style but I guess nobody ever showed me the "right way" growing up.

5 years ago my tool box with all my rods and gear was stolen. It took me 6-7 months to get stocked back up. The first day i went fishing (gsmnp) i remember feeling like i had met an old girlfriend or something......I drive an Suv now.....and i lock it.

4 year ago I worked at a restaurant. Some exchange students came from the czech republic. They went fishing with me several times a week and introduced me to lake fishing, euro nymphing, and all kinds of european techniques and flies. I then realized that the skillset i had developed lent itself well to comp fishing.......entered the pisgah fly masters and was hooked.

I bend over backwards to help new fly fisherman. I know what its like to so badly want to learn about fly fishing but to be forced to do it yourself. Those days werent so long ago.

[kyflytyer]

I was raised by my grandparents and my grandfather used to take me bait fishing every few days. I continued bait fishing through high school and college and even today. I got into fly fishing in a kind of round-about way.

About 15 years ago, I was in a bad auto accident and was laid up for about 6 months while my legs healed. I was going stir-crazy and my wife ordered me a fly tying kit from Cabela's to help pass the time. Even though I didn't fly fish, I had expressed an interest in tying to her after we saw a demonstration at a sporting goods show. I began tying as soon as my kit arrived and immediately began to suplement it with higher quality tools, more materials, books, videos, and an upgraded vise. I tied every kind of fly imaginable: bass, saltwater, dry flies, nymphs, even fully dressed salmon flies.

After I recouperated, I continued to tie and to bait fish. Several years later, my wife came into the den and looked at my jumbled tying area and all the shoe boxes full of flies I had tied over the years and said that if I continued to tie flies, I should learn how to fish them. It didn't take much to convince me because I had wanted to learn ever since I started tying.

A few weeks after our conversation, I went to Knoxville and bought a complete outfit with everything I would need to become the world's greatest fly fisherman. I then took lesons in the Smokies and have been fly fishing ever since. I'm slowly moving up the list towards my goal of being the world's best fly fisherman. I started out last on the list and now I'm second to last.

[pbourcq]

wanna sell those shoe boxes of flies?

[Robspe7370]

My introduction to fishing was inevitable.I come from a long line of salt of the earth fisherman.My first trip was to a pier in Virginia Beach in a stroller. I have a bamboo rod that belonged to my great grandfather. I have a postcard my grandfather sent on the day of my birth while he was fishing for cutts in Yellowstone.And I fish to this day because the most vivid and meaningful memories from my childhood are of my dad and I wading in clear water, between boulders and Mountain Laurel.

[dannyv]

This is a great thread and the stories are wonderful.

I had what could only be described as the luckiest of introductions. I got hooked up with a summer job at a sportfishing lodge on the Kenai river in Alaska. I went there with a girlfriend and left without one. I did however carry away the love for fishing and rivers. I was a dinner server but with the midnight alaskan summer sun I had endless hours to fish after work. It was there fishing from docked rafts as the never-ending sun set that I knew this would be a part of my life forever. It was a quick slide into obsession and now two years later I can not imagine my life without it.

[wilhelm]

Curt Gowdy, The American Sportsman

wilhelm

[JOHNKIES]

I cannot recall a time when I did not fish. It was just a family activity like Sunday dinner. Fly fishing came a bit later. One of my frat brothers in Colorado was a consumate trout angler and fly tier. He had built a special stand with a text book on the top, and his vise just below. He would tie flies while he studied. Not sure how he managed both. So of course me being a fisherman, I started going with him to some of the local water around Fort Collins and he showed me the ways of the long rod.

I guess his text books worked out okay ....... he recently retired as the head of Colorado's cold water fisheries.

[Scud]

I had bait fished and fished with lures ever since I was five. In my early thirties I took a vacation to the Smokys and used my spinning gear to try and catch those wild trout with no luck. I found a pool on the Little River where a trout of about 14 inches would follow my spinner, but never take it. This went on for two days. A fellow came along on the second day, and I showed him the trout following the spinner. He said what I needed to catch that fish was a fly rod. He said he might come back with his fly rod and give it a try. The next day I went back to try for that trout again. The trout was not there. You can figure out the rest of my story. Scud