Last week, I got a call from Kevin. He is a friend and client who I have guided several times over the years.
More than 10 years ago, I taught his son, David, to fly fish on Dry Run Creek. He landed a 16-pound brown on his first day of fly-fishing.
They wanted to have my wife, Lori, teach LuAnn, David’s girlfriend, how to fly-fish. I told them Lori had a broken arm (a dog-walking accident) and would be unable to do it. I told them I would do it.
We scheduled a wade trip on the North Fork River. When we arrived the water was on the bottom. It was cool and threatening to rain. I told Kevin and David I would take LuAnn upstream into the catch-and-release section.
They decided to fish near the access so they would not interfere with our class. I told her my goal for the day was for her to catch more trout than the guys. She told me her goal was to catch a bigger fish than them.
LuAnn, a former serious soccer player, was young, tall and fit. The wading was easy for her. The weather was also no problem. When it began raining, she continued fishing and did not pull up the hood on her rain jacket to keep her hair dry. We began with a brief casting class. She picked it up quickly. She was a natural.
We started fishing with a woolly bugger, but that just did not work. I switched over to a nymph rig, a pheasant tail with a ruby midge dropper. I worked on her presentation and she was soon into a nice 16-inch rainbow.
The next trout was truly spectacular. It was a fat 13-inch brook trout. For a brookie this is huge. It gave her a good fight but finally surrendered to the net. We caught another three trout with the nymph rig. It was time to learn a new technique.
I took off the nymph rig and tied on a partridge and orange soft hackle. I taught her how to fish it and worked on improving her cast. We were rewarded with four nice trout. By this time it was time to walk back to the access and see how the others did.
They had caught one small trout each. She had out-fished both of them on her first day fly-fishing, both in numbers and size. They were in awe of her. They were especially impressed with the brook trout. It had been a great day of fishing, and she had done extremely well.
Was this beginners luck? I don’t think so. LuAnn was a natural.
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