Do you remember when you started fly fishing? Jim Butler has just joined our ranks and shares his experiences as a newcomer.
I am very fortunate in my job in that I have the opportunity to try out many sports and activities at a greatly reduced price and with some very experienced and highly qualified people; this is all part of life as a serviceman and is considered an integral part of personal development and character building.
As a lad I spent many an hour coarse fishing for bream, barbel, tench, dace and perch on the banks of the River Thames near to my home in Kingston, Surrey. Once I had joined the forces my coarse fishing ‘career’ petered out as my early Armed Forces career saw me moving around the country and being busy with work. I eventually settled on the Devon coast and took up sea fishing, a sport that I enjoyed but did find to be a bit ‘agricultural’ (apologies to any sea fishermen out there, this isn’t meant to be derogatory!) and so this also petered out over time. I had often wondered about fly fishing but always considered this discipline to be a little elitist and possibly out of my league.
Practicing casting
Anyway, last year I was scouring the MOD online announcements page and came across an article about fly fishing, specifically advertising coaching days with the Royal Navy and Royal Marine Angling Association. I sent an email off enquiring about this and was allocated a day of fishing from a boat at Rutland Water with one of the Association’s coaches. The day came and I had a fantastic time (although the weather could have been better), catching a decent sized rainbow to take home and learning how to cast, along with some info about flies and techniques etc. – I was instantly hooked!
Since that first day on Rutland I have managed to get out on the water a couple more times, but this has been limited to stillwater. I have also managed to accumulate a range of equipment, some of which has been kindly donated by members of the RNRMAA and the Devon Rivers and Fly Fishing forums. To say that I have been bowled over by the generosity of people who hardly know me but are encouraging and genuinely want to see me get on is a huge understatement – I am eternally grateful.
Friendly advice from brothers of the angle
I am now looking forward to a day of river fishing tuition so that I can take advantage of, and get the most out of, the many fantastic waterways in the Devon area, along with getting to grips with the challenges of reading the water, matching the hatch, the many different casting styles I’ll need and the art of stalking fish.
I have to admit to finding myself looking at various waterways and wondering how they would fish and what the possibility of casting a fly would be, I may well be an addict already.
As an aside to the fishing, I was also given the opportunity to purchase a used tying kit from a colleague which, in its first month of use, has been well used and has provided me with another related hobby with which to occupy my time (and my wallet!). I am enjoying tying flies a lot more than I though I would and I am looking forward to catching my first wild brown trout or grayling on a fly that I have tied (I am told there is no feeling to beat it). Someone recently gave me the advice that I’ll know when I am totally hooked on fly tying when, rather than stopping to pick up road-kill I actively engage in trying to produce it in the first place, and I can now appreciate exactly what he meant.
So far in my brief fly fishing career I have met many great people, been subject to some overwhelming generosity and have been offered some great advice from many quarters. I hope that I can build upon what I have learnt so far and, in time, be as helpful to newcomers as these people have been to me – I thank you all, wish you all tight lines and hope to someday share a bank, boat or beer with you.