Please excuse the newbie question...yesterday was my first time actually fly fishing.

After practicing a few times in the back yard (with a 1" piece of yarn tied on as a fly plug) I felt as though I had my cast good enough to actually try fishing. While out there I had very little trouble casting a #14 caddis however, when I switched to a larger, #8 woolly bugger, I was having a lot more trouble. The fly seemed much heavier on my 5 wt line and seemed to slow the line speed down dramatically. This really messed up the natural rhythm of my cast and caused the fly to snap a lot and even get tangled around the line. Was I simply doing something wrong or is that fly too big for my line?

With regards to what size leader and tippet I was using...unfortunatly, I don't know the answer. I purchased a starter rod that came preloaded with 5 wt line, leader and tippet.

On a positive note, I did catch a number of Bluegills. They actually put up a pretty darn good fight on a 5wt setup .