Why Fly Fish?

Getting started in fly fishing may be the most exciting--and challenging--thing you will ever do... well, almost. Why exciting? Because it involves hunting--in this case for fish--in the most beautiful spots in the world, the lakes and streams of the earth. More importantly, fly fishing is the most self-involved sport of all. You prepare yourself, through fly casting, fly tying, reading, practicing, observing, fishing, exploring, and learning through realtime online peer-bonding, and travel--all done as a lifelong adventure quest to capture those most beautiful of creatures, the fish of the world. And when you have caught them, you release them.

Does this make sense? Absolutely, but only to fly fishers. The rest of the world considers us a bit nutty. "Why," they say, "would anyone put so much effort into such an obsessive behavior?" Relax, guys. Is this fly fishing a sport after all? It is a sport, in a sense the king of sports because it requires that sporting behavior follow the most demanding code of conduct.

What are the tenets of this code? Some fly fishers insist that their fishing be done exclusively with dry flies fished only over rising fish. This is the crowning, exclusionary challenge, requiring in some cases (on closed club waters) that one not cast his fly for hours, until he glimpses that first rising trout. These practitioners are called "purists." God love 'um, for they teach us all to be good, if not practical. Virtually all of us now use barbless hooks as a canon of good behavior, for we want to hurt the fish we hook less than we did when using barbed hooks. And we can release fish more easily and without touching them.

We share the waters with others, queuing up and waiting our turn to fish. We share the often arcane and secret knowledge and lore of our sport.

We demand that waters be open to the fishing public; we demand that the fishing regulations be designed for the preservation and restoration of wild fish; we demand that wild-fish habitats be preserved, restored, and protected from further destruction by man; we support Trout Unlimited in its programs to research the science of wild-fish (especially trout) survival needs and in its lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill for legislation that assures wild-fish futures.