subject: Persevere To Catch Your First Trout [print this page] When one first takes up a sport, there's often nothing to keep them away! This was my situation when I arrived on a cold and frosty morning to fish my two favourite lakes.
As I was putting my rods together I examined the lake I had come to fish. No ice thankfully, a slight riffle on the water but no sign of any trout, although I knew they were there, just deep down in the water.
Fly fishing was still new to me then, having come from course fishing, I had only taken it up some two months previously.
Fly fishing had always appealed to me, but I had been put off by its "elitist" image and high cost.
Sure, if you want to fish the premiere rivers and lakes of the world, it will cost you money, but I was surprised both by the charming people I met and the low entry cost of getting into the sport, typified by my first exploratory visit a couple of months previously.
On walking around the lake I met Ernie, a retired gentleman who instantly engaged me in conversation and then insisted that I held his rod to get a "feel" of things.
George has fished for many years and was enjoying his fishing even more since he had retired
He blew away all my misconceptions about fly fishing, and introduced me to a number of the regular fishing "crowd".
I also made sure I had a long chat with the fishery manager, from which I gained an idea of what the two lakes were like, and where the "hotspots" were often found.
This is something I would recommend to anyone taking up the sport - spend time talking to those who already know what they are doing and get to know the water you intend to fish.
Going back to the morning in question, I was by this time getting familiar with the two lakes, but had yet to catch!
I settled at the far end of the deeper of the two lakes, 18 feet in places, with the light breeze blowing into my face.
I stuck with my familiar floating line, but to get down to the fish I used a long leader.
With no sign of any fish on the surface as you would expect on a dark winters day, I went with a "Bloody Butcher" fly, being dark but with a flash of silver and red colours.
To this day I still find an intermediate or sinking line more difficult to cast, so I use a floating line with a very long leader attached.
There were three of us fishing the lake that morning. After about an hour and a half I started to find casting difficult. The line just did not seem to want to shoot.
I then attracted a number of jovial comments from the other fishers, one of which was something like "it's harder to cast when it's frozen!" Sure enough, my rod rings had completely iced up!
By now I was also freezing cold and about to pack up, but I first decided to do something different. I broke the rules. I put on an orange fritz.
That did it. By breaking the rule of using dark coloured flies on dark days I caught my very first trout with my first cast of that particular fly!
Trout can be very picky as to what fly they will take. Being a weekend, I returned the next day to the same spot full of hope, and duly cast out my orange fritz, but to no avail!
So bear in mind, what works one day may be ignored completely by the fish the next!
