Who was taught to Fish by their Father?

[flymantis73]

not just fly fishing, but fishing in general?
would be safe to say most of us here were taught that way.
i got into Fly fishing way after he was gone. but he gave me the basics of spincasting.
who else went to the local pond or reservoir with dad and learned how to dunk worms?
:beer1:

 

[flytire]

my dad was not a fisherman.

our family had a cottage on a lake in Massachusetts and it was there with the help of some of my great uncles that i learned how to dunk worms, bread, corn etc for blue gills and bullheads

it was many years later that i learned that my great uncle Camille was a fly fisherman. he lived in Vermont so we never saw him all that much.

it wasn't until 1980 (28 years old then) when i lived in Colorado that i picked up fly fishing for my preferred method of fishing. free lesson from our recreation department where i worked for a major defense contractor got it all started.

 

[Trout Nazi]

Father is not a fisherman. He taught me how to ski like a demon, but not fish. The fishing thing, fly and spin I had to do all on my own, trial and error. I fished with only 4 patterns for years, till I'd run into people here or there and pick up a few things. Took a while, still taking a while.

 

[Trouser Trout]

Well, my daddy left home when I was three <meta content="And he didn't leave much to ma and me" itemprop="line">And he didn't leave much to ma and me <meta content="Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze" itemprop="line">Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze. <meta content="Now, I don't blame him 'cause he run and hid" itemprop="line">Now, I don't blame him 'cause he run and hid <meta content="But the meanest thing that he ever did" itemprop="line">But the meanest thing that he ever did Was before he left, he went and named me Sue. So i learned how to fly fish by myself.

 

[tomfly]

My father taught me how to fly fish at the age of 12. We fish literary every Saturday and Sunday during the season. We fished a lot of different streams together. He taught me not only to appreciate the art of fly fishing but to have profound respect for nature as a whole. But fishing all the time with your father can be a double edged sword. When he past a way I could not fish for 2 years. I just could not deal with it. So I put down the rod and the vise. It was not until a good friend of my fathers who also fished with us all the time and kind is my second father told me what I was doing was not healthy or right by my father. It has been over 14 years since he passed and I still have some trouble fishing his favorite water. This is the first year I have been back to the Firestone on the Big Bushkill. Every once and a while there are those moments fishing I can still get a glimpse of him for a brief second on the stream out of the corner of my eye. It makes me look at what I took for granted at the time and now relies what great times they were.

 

[NJpatbee]

My father had no interest in fishing and hunting but he did introduce me to golf which was his passion. My grandfather, and some of my uncles and cousins got me into fishing and hunting, but I did not have any family guidance in fly fishing. I got the bug in my later years in college and read like a fiend, but it was my friends in TU in the early-mid-70's that led me along fly tying and fly fishing, and a lot of trial and error on my own.

 

[Pete]

Mine didn't teach me how to fish, but he got me my first outfit.
A 5' solid fiberglass bait rod with a stamped sheet metal reel, and 25 lb line.
The entire set up cost less than 2 dollars.
Casting directly from the reel was limited to about 15 feet.
That's when I invented "chuck & duck" (with a 5 ft rod you definitely had to duck).

Sometime later as payment for feeding his dog, while he was away, a neighbor gave me an Arex Batch Brown MasterReel, with a 6' solid fiberglass rod. Fishing got a little easier. Lures/plugs for bass became possible.
Once while fooling around with a hookless "practice plug", I got four hits on one cast.
A friend had access to a wood lathe. We turned down a length of broomstick and added a hook.
That's how I invented the "stick bait".

I once hooked myself while attempting to cast a "fly rod" sized Flatfish with a spinning rod.
An uncle heard about it and gave me his old 3 piece split cane Montague (one tip "short"), with a brass South bend click reel, and a level line with the coating worn off.
That was the beginning of the end. My fate was sealed.

 

[Rusty Spinner]

The first person to take me fishing was my grandfather on my mother's side at his lake front home in Wayne (Pines Lake). I was four at the time and loved catching sunnies on worms I dug myself and kept in an old coffee can because Grandpa thought a young boy should dig his own worms and learn to bait the hook and handle his own fish early on. I quickly learned that sunnies have sharp spines and they hurt when they poke your hands during worm de-hooking. We often had family BBQs at their home over the summers for many years and all three families and their kids - my cousins - fished like fools for hours, even the girls. Our dads often joined us as did our grandfather.

We moved here to NJ less than a year later from California and into a small lake community where my dad, brother and I fished like fools for bass and sunnies and oftentime until dark on the lake. When I was 7, my dad got a brand new LL Bean fly rod and attached his old Pflueger Medalist to it and showed me the art of fly fishing. He had grown up in the CA Sierra mountains and fly fishing for trout was nearly all he knew about fishing at the time. I owned my own Eagle Claw with my own Medalist a year or two later and never looked back. I spin fished and baitcast for many years after, but fly fishing grew in percentage of my time on the water. When I took up saltwater fly fishing a couple decades ago, I more or less quit any other form of fishing.

Now my nearly 13 year old daughter has the bug but wants nothing to do with spin fishing any more. She's all on the fly and proud she can ties flies that catch fish.

 

[lightenup]

I love to hear all these stories.....
My father taught me nothing as he passed before I could ever know him...My grandfather taught me to fish on the "Yellow Breetches" with a fly rod and worms...he always said.."you gotta use the treble hooks so they don't get away".....I spin fished until about 8-10 years ago..then I was at point mountain during a yellow sally hatch and couldn't get a fish to bite....I had a plastic stamp of a yellow looking bug in my tackle box and put it on...two seconds later I had a fish....Just by chance, my grandfather was moving to assisted living at the same time, and asked me to come to his house and help clean-up..I went and found all his old fly rods...he said take them, my legs don't allow me to fish anymore...so I did, and haven't touched a spinning rod since.......I am more than happy of the turn of events....

 

[Petergoodman]

My Dad was an orphan, which meant that no one spent a lot of time teaching HIM to do stuff like fish. So when he had us kids, he made a point of taking us fishing, although once I was an adult and knew what I was doing it became obvious that he frequently had little idea of how to do it. For instance, he knew that you were better off away from other fishermen - so we would row out into the middle of a deep lake, drop lines with bobbers and minnows about 3-4 feet below the water surface, and caught nothing - wondering why those lucky fisherman clustered around the lily pads by the shore were doing so well. But we had a great time, enjoyed being outdoors together, and ultimately that is the point, and what got me interested in learning more when I was older. In my early 20s I caught the fly fishing bug, and at a certain point got him an ioutfit for Fathers Day and taught him to cast. We spent a decent amount of time together on the WB and other streams, and he even managed to catch a couple of salmon on the Miramichi eventually (wouldn't mind doing that trip myself, when kids out of school...), and always had a lot of fun together. And I think that is the point - if you ever read William Tappley's "Sportsman's Legacy" about how he was taught fishing by his father, you emphasize fun and picking up how to do things on your own, and you end up with a passion for fishing - which is how it worked for me. Now passing it on myself - both kids tie, both fish with anything from a fly to worms as it strikes them as fun.

 

[Drossi]

Every once and a while there are those moments fishing I can still get a glimpse of him for a brief second on the stream out of the corner of my eye.

You too. My dad passed away last July. He taught me to fish and was one of the few people I could ever fish with. I've made it a point this season to try and hit all his old favorite spots as a way of honoring his memory (although I draw the line at tackle he was a die-hard bait fisherman, I'm not budging from flies). Like tomfly said every so often I catch a fleeting glimpse of ghosts of the past. I feel his presence very strongly when I fish.

 

[strike proof]

I wasn't really taught to fish by my father, but I was taught to go fishing by my father.

My father was a Brooklyn kid. He played stickball and football in the street. He lifeguarded summers at a couple of resorts in the Catskills, but he was not a real outdoor guy. I started fishing with droplines and cane poles in summer camp and quickly needed more. My father bought me, and himself, spin casting rods, and off we went. We fished a lot of backyard worms and caught lots of small fish, but I pushed for more. So he did more. We took a couple of guided trips, never more than once a year: Lake George, Lake Okeechobee, Florida Keys, some party boats from the NJ shore. We did very little research. I read a little Field and Stream and some scout magazines to find out about tackle and techniques. We didn't always catch great fish, but we got out together, rented rowboats, borrowed canoes, and figured it out. Eventually, our last big trip, we went to Lake Gananoque for the first weekend of pike season when I was in my teens. We had a 100-year-old foul mouthed guide who put us on some great fish on a beautiful lake. My father, poor guy, caught the first two fish -- I can only imagine the stress he was under waiting for me to catch up, which I thankfully did. It was cool, rainy long weekend and one of my favorite memories: big pike, hot shore lunches with an open fire, wet socks, and bad language.

My father is a snowbird now, coming up in about a month from FL. He called me in April to discuss a problem. My sister has three kids and, to his distress, they have never been fishing. Their father is a decent guy, but he has no interest in fishing and it seems that they just never got around to it. My father asked to take them fishing and just wanted some tips on where to go for easy sunnies to fill the experience. Of course, I am planning on buying some extra rods and being there -- just hoping everyone gets into fish and everyone has a good time. My five-year-old will be lecturing the older kids how to handle the sunnies so they don't get stuck, how to lip a bass, not to touch the eyes or the gills. And he will be the first one into the worms.

Like I said, my father didn't really teach me how to fish. My father taught me that you grab onto whatever your child wants to do and go do it with him/her. Of course, it works both ways: My son wants to fish with me because he knows I love to fish. Right now, my son wants to play for the NJ Devils. I don't know anything about hockey (Dennis, expect a call), but if it sticks, you can bet I'm going to learn, and I'll probably be out on the ice playing goalie for his shooting practice, God help me. Hope I don't break anything.

 

[flymantis73]

some good reading here.
My dad took his Fly Rod up again later in life, but i had no interest at the time, regret is too strong a word, but i wish i had shared learning to fly fish from him, i got the basics of spin casting, but feel i got at least a bit of a jump start on Fly fishing, my brother has his fly rod over his fire place.
I remember him going to Flat Brook on time and bringing back a nice rainbow for his supper.

 

[flyI4]

I started fishing with Papa dukes before I can remember, though he makes sure to tell the stories whenever provided the occasion. I started spin fishing until about 8 years old. We use to bring the fly rod and the spin rod on the trips, but would usually cave in and just fish the spin rod because we had no confidence we could catch fish on the fly. I distinctly remember the day we said we would leave the spin rod in the car and took the fly rods with us. I was fishing on the upper beaverkill at the Rt. 206 bridge and caught my first fish on the fly, a big 18'' brown that took a march brown dry. We were pumped up, to the point that I actually slept in my waders that night in the East branch hotel because I didn't want to be late to hit the "early morning hatch" at 5 am. That trip got everything started. We went from going to the catskills two times a year, to going just about every other weekend, and eventually bought a cabin after the trips became too regular to justify staying at hotels for 25 weekends a year. Biggest take away from the whole experience for me is the learning phase when you first get into it. The thrill of learning little lessons when you first start and making the tough cast to a fish you didn't think you could catch/ect. are moments you don't forget. Even when you get good later on and expectations are higher, those moments are important to remember to keep things in perspective and remember what its all about.

 

[Rusty Spinner]

My dad took his Fly Rod up again later in life

I bought my dad a new fly rod and reel late in his life and he was getting back into it after a 20 year + hiatus. After he passed, I gave it to my best friend's son who's been FFing for the past 7 years with it.

 

[lightenup]

I started fishing with Papa dukes before I can remember, though he makes sure to tell the stories whenever provided the occasion. I started spin fishing until about 8 years old. We use to bring the fly rod and the spin rod on the trips, but would usually cave in and just fish the spin rod because we had no confidence we could catch fish on the fly. I distinctly remember the day we said we would leave the spin rod in the car and took the fly rods with us. I was fishing on the upper beaverkill at the Rt. 206 bridge and caught my first fish on the fly, a big 18'' brown that took a march brown dry. We were pumped up, to the point that I actually slept in my waders that night in the East branch hotel because I didn't want to be late to hit the "early morning hatch" at 5 am. That trip got everything started. We went from going to the catskills two times a year, to going just about every other weekend, and eventually bought a cabin after the trips became too regular to justify staying at hotels for 25 weekends a year. Biggest take away from the whole experience for me is the learning phase when you first get into it. The thrill of learning little lessons when you first start and making the tough cast to a fish you didn't think you could catch/ect. are moments you don't forget. Even when you get good later on and expectations are higher, those moments are important to remember to keep things in perspective and remember what its all about.

You are a very lucky man......

 

[Rusty Spinner]

You are a very lucky man......

He is and his dad is cool.

(just don't expect the cabin floors to be level)