My first fly rod had the flexibility of a broom handle. I bought that Shakespeare pole in 1967 at the PX as I was headed for the door at Fort Knox and a return to civilian status.
That rod, along with a blue dun dry fly tied by Vince King at his tackle shop on Virginia Avenue in South Cumberland, combined to bring my first trout caught on a fly. That rainbow flopped, bumped, skipped, jumped in and on Waites Run before coming to creel. Waites Run is a diminutive mountain stream that descends the hills of Hardy County, West Virginia, near the town of Wardensville, before dumping into the Cacapon River.
I was a bit astonished, but also proud, at my success. I was becoming a self-taught fly fisherman. My father was an avid trout angler, but he used only a spinning rod.
Speaking of King’s Tackle Shop, people in my age bracket will remember that Virginia Avenue was a separate mercantile district from downtown Cumberland. The Avenue offered a lot of retail options, including hardware, restaurants, theater and furniture.
I bought a lot of fishing gear from Vince, a gentle man and great creator of trout flies.
I used to drive often to the Blackwater River near Davis, West Virginia, to angle for trout. That waterway had several nice runs just made for flyfishing. An angler could wade out far enough to provide plenty of room for the backcast. A highlight of my early fly fishing years was a day on the Blackwater when I caught a limit of trout on flies. That limit included rainbow, brown, brook and golden trout. There should be a name for a grand slam like that. And, get this, the daily bag limit in those days was eight trout, not six.
On that day, and on many others, I fished a lot with streamer flies. Whereas dry flies and wet flies imitate insects, for the most part, streamers impersonate baitfish. Most often, streamers are cast across or downstream and wiggle and waggle as the angler slowly retrieves them against the current. The streamers can also be left to simply hold one spot in the current if the conditions are right.
The result of this style of fishing is a sudden, hard hit as the trout begins to fight. Dry fly fishing requires the angler to be a sight feeder and to set the hook when a strike is detected. With streamers, the fish pretty much sets the hook into its jaw without assistance.
One memorable day on the Blackwater River was about a fly rod, but not about flies. Several anglers, including me, were spin fishing a popular hole and we were not having success. An elderly fisherman with a fly rod and one of those fly reels that was spring loaded and would retrieve the line when a lever was pressed, walked to the bank. He took plenty of time preparing to fish. Eventually he pulled from a can one of the biggest nightcrawlers anyone has ever seen. He impaled the annelid on a hook. The hook was attached to a piece of monofilament with numerous split shot clamped to it. Then, like a cowboy from a Randolph Scott movie, he grabbed the fly line and began twirling it at his side as if it were a lasso.
After building some momentum, he let the hook, line and sinkers fly riverward. Then he sat on the bucket he had carried to the river. He did this eight times, each effort resulting in a trout that he thumped on the head and dropped into a bag which then was placed in the nearby river.
After whacking and sacking trout number 8, he gathered his gear, his trout and his can of worms and slowly walked away.
Whatever works.