During that first spring of the pandemic, I rekindled my passion for fishing. It seemed like a good solitary outdoor activity that I could safely enjoy during the pandemic.
In the summer of 2020, the world felt like the pandemic might finally end. Regulations were loosening up a bit and people were starting to go out in public again. (Sadly, COVID-19 would come back with a vengeance in the fall, but that’s a different story.) My wife and I decided to take our first vacation since COVID-19 started squeezing the world. We had just adopted a new dog (Roxy), so we booked a long weekend at a little dog-friendly inn up in West Rutland, Vermont, called the Paw House Inn. We picked this location because a childhood friend told me he and his family were going to vacation in the area and invited us to hang out with them.
I don’t honestly know what inspired me, but I wanted to try something different on this trip (maybe it was because we were on lockdown since March due to the pandemic). I have been fishing most of my life but had never been fly fishing. I’d seen videos and movies with people fly fishing and always thought it looked peaceful. Maybe after dealing with the start of the pandemic, I just needed some peace in my life.
Anyway, I did some research and found a fly fishing guide out of Rutland. I hired a guy named Randy McGuiness. I didn’t know anything about Randy except what he had on his website. His site featured some nice client testimonials, had some nice pictures of people holding fish and it said he was an Orvis-endorsed guide (even I knew Orvis was big in the fly fishing world, so I figured that was a good thing). Oh, and his prices seemed reasonable.
Here’s my first money-saving tip. Some guides, including Randy, charge the same price whether you have one person or two, so bring a friend and then you can split the cost. That’s what I did with the friend I was visiting in Vermont.
We met Randy at a town gas station and followed his pickup truck to a wide-open stream behind a power plant. There Randy set us up with waders and wading boots. He then handed us our fly rods and explained what we were holding. In case you’re curious, it was a 9’ 4wt rod with a 9’ leader… whatever that meant. We then waddled into the middle of the stream where he very patiently taught us the basics of casting the fly line. I remember being struck by how very different it was from casting with my spinning rod (or any other type of rod I’ve ever used). “With spinning gear,” Randy explained, “you’re casting a weighted lure (or baited hook) that pulls the line along, but with fly gear, we’re using a longer rod to cast a weighted line that brings the light-weight fly along.” We spent over an hour in that location learning and practicing the casting basics. “Bring it back quickly to 2 o’clock… pause…. Then bring it forward to 10 o’clock.” Don’t forget that pause, he kept reminding us. “Unless you’re Indiana Jones, you don’t want to hear that whipping sound.” It means you didn’t pause long enough for your line to extend behind you, and it is often the sound of losing your fly because your line broke.
When Randy thought we finally were able to cast without poking an eye out (or maybe he just lost patience), we headed out to a different stream to see if we could catch some fish. This small stream was way out in the woods and apparently, it was packed with small, but hungry trout. My buddy and I took turns fishing while Randy watched our technique and gave us tips. I went first. We were using dry flies which Randy informed us meant they floated on the surface (versus wet flies which sink below the surface).
I had gotten okay at casting, but there were still two hard parts for me: stripping in the excess line as my flies floated downstream toward me and actually seeing the flies, so I’d know when I had a bite. The light was dappled, and it was hard for my 54-year-old eyes to follow the small fly floating downstream. There were a few times when Randy would yell for me to set the hook – “Set it! Set it!” he’d holler. After missing a few bites, I finally set the hook and landed my first trout. He was a real beauty – almost as long as my pointer finger. If I had him mounted, he wouldn’t take up much wall space, but I nicknamed him Moby and gently released him as Randy suggested.
My buddy had similar luck, although he would tend to pull too hard when he tried to set the hook. When he did finally hook a fish, he yanked it right out of the stream to go soaring through the air behind him. We joked about him catching flying fish instead of trout.
So, that’s how it all started for me. As weird as that whole experience may seem, I fell in love with fly fishing that day. Two days after I got home, I’d ordered a cheap pair of waders and an entry-level fly rod from Amazon. I was hooked.