Fly Fishing: …a sport? …a weekend hobby? …an art form?

Call it what you will, it is a pleasurable pastime enjoyed by millions. For some, it can mean a few hours (or a whole day) of reflective introspection. A time to “get away from it all” and just enjoy themselves in quiet solitude. For others, it means two or three buddies, a case of their favorite beverage, and a weekend of joking and solving the world’s problems. For still others, it may seem like their reason for being. When they’re not actually fishing, they are tying flies, reading one of their favorite books on the subject, or in general just studying the science of fly fishing.

But what exactly is fly fishing? Fly fishing is a fishing method traditionally used to catch salmon and trout but can be used for most any fish including carp, bass, pike, and panfish. In fact, many fisherman today try to catch as many different species of fish as they can by fly fishing.

Fly fishing can be done in fresh or salt water. Freshwater fishing is often divided into coldwater (trout, salmon, steelhead), coolwater (pike, perch, walleye) and warmwater (bass, chub, catfish) fishing.

Fly fishing uses artificial flies as well as a fly rod and fly line. The fly line used is heavy enough to send the fly to its target, which is the main difference between it and spinner and bait rods which use weight on the line to cast bait or lures.

Artificial flies very greatly in their color, size, and weight. They are created by tying natural and synthetic materials such as feathers, hair, fur, cotton, rubber, and many others onto a hook. The flies are tied in such a way as to look like local insects and other natural prey which the target fish would find attractive.

As alluded to above, traditional spinner rod and reel fishing rely on a lure’s weight (or even a separate added weight) to pull line from the reel during the motion of a cast. Fly fishing is more of a method of casting the line rather than the lure. A fly is too light to be cast so it simply follows the unfurling of a properly cast fly line which is heavier and tapered and therefore more ideal for its purpose than lines used in other methods of fishing.

The cast used most often in fly fishing is the forward cast. With the forward cast, the fly fisherman whisks the fly into the air, back over the shoulder until the line is nearly straight, then forward, using primarily the forearm. The objective of this motion is to “load” or bend the rod tip with stored energy, then transmit that energy to the line, resulting in the fly line and the attached fly being cast for an appreciable distance.

Casting without landing the fly on the water is known as ‘false casting’, and may be used for a number of reasons including to dry a soaked fly or just to reposition a cast. Other casts are known as the single-haul, the double-haul, the side- or curve-cast, the roll cast, and the tuck cast.