Quoted By:
Day 3 of beginner fly fishing
Today was an eventful day. I decided to take my fly fishing outfit to my local urban lake, despite my earlier misgivings. I figured I should try it to see what the actual limitations are.
At first I just used my setup as a tenkara rod, didn't try any sort of casting. Eventually I figured that I could try a bit of fly casting if I did it in a diagonal angle, so I didn't need to cast straight to the walk path (this is a very crowded lake at all hours of the day). Then it dawned on me to try casting bow and arrow style. This definitely helped in spots where I had absolutely no space behind me.
However, on one of the bow arrow casts I accidentally got the hook caught in my finger. I couldn't slide it out, so I had to rip through the skin, it was kinda deep but it doesn't hurt at all. I also learned from my previous outing using the size 24 green midge that I needed something way thinner than my regular clamps to take flies out of bluegill when they go deep. So I took my Tamiya hobby tweezers, they worked well. I seriously fucked up a bluegill by driving the hook deeper and deeper. I had so much blood on my hands, literally. Poor fella. Eventually I got the technique down for removing hooks using tweezers.
I almost caught a monster actual pan-sized bluegill and it pulled a ton of line in a second. I panicked and did not palm the reel or kept tension on the line and it got off the hook. Didn't catch it but still felt good about triggering a bit bite from my fly outfit.
Last thing I learned is that I SERIOUSLY need to buy floatant. Dry fly is way more effective on the surface and the bigger the bluegill the more likely it will NOT hit it if it's falling down the water. If I cast the line out, there's just no way of keeping the fly on the surface without floatant.
