My first Fly Fishing Experience

Some years ago before I met Z, Dave and Ronnie and I were fishing the the mouth at the north end of channel between the Lake of the Isles, and Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis.

We were using hook and bobber rigs with night crawler or minnow on the hooks. The channel was lined with people fishing. Many of the people that were fishing were taking every fish the caught. Even the ones we would consider too small for fillets.

At that time the center of Lake of Isles had weeds in the center. A young man walked up to the edge of the lake with a fly rod and a wicker creel. He started to haul his line and cast it further that we could into the weeds. I watched him as he twitched the fly on his first cast without success.

After his second cast landed further in a hole in the weeds and sat there a few seconds, a fish rippled the surface of the water and he set the hook. He stripped the sunfish in took the hook out of the sunfish's mouth and put it into his creel.

Nothing was happening with my bobber so I watched him make his next cast. As he dropped the fly into the same spot with what seemed like grace the fly attracted another sunfish. I knew at that moment there was something to this fly fishing that caught fish.