A River Runs Through It

Way, way back when we lived in Pennsylvania and I started flying for a living, I flew with several hard core fly fishermen.  They mentored me and taught me how to fly fish as well as tie flies.  I loved it.  But as time often does, after I was hired by Delta and we moved and life progressed with building a house, raising kids, commuting to work, running a hardware store, etc, I let it go.  Now Jan and I had been doing a lot of talking about our lifestyle and our traveling and realized as we have covered so much area out here and were starting to overlap in places we've been to before, we needed to come up with something that would allow both of us to do something together and that excited both of us in our myriad travels.  It's not that it just came up either, we actually had talked about it off and on for years but without any kind of drive.  We have driven by or hiked along some incredible waterways where one of us would comment how enjoyable it would be to lose yourself fly fishing for a few hours.  Jan has always loved to fish, but never fly fished before.  So while we were in Boise we decided to do some investigation and see what would be involved to get back into a sport that I left for...y years, well let's just say a LONG time ago.

We also realized that my fly rods, reels, and other stuff from that time were safely stored away in our storage unit in FL.  There is a huge Cabela's in Boise so over we went and looked at rod and reel combos, vests, waders, flies, leaders, tippets, nets, and on and on.  We hemmed and hawed and went back two more times before we made a move.  We felt it would be stupid to invest in all the gear if Jan didn't like it, or wasn't thrilled with learning to cast, it isn't intuitive.  So we bought a rod and reel combo that was already loaded with fly line and leader, tied on a little tell tale and went out to a park and I proceeded to teach Jan how to cast.  She did great and best of all loved it.  So step two, go back and get a bunch of stuff.  We got another rod and reel combo and a bunch of stuff at Cabela's and tried to buy waders, but neither of us was able to find anything that fit us, so we ended up going to an Orvis store and after trying on tons of different waders and boots we got our gear.  We ordered some more stuff including our nets from Amazon, so by the time we got to Twisp, WA, we were ready to take our maiden voyage.  

We got our licenses and found a good spot to start, and were glad there was no one else around to see us get all dressed  and set up for the first time:)

Bottom line, we had a great time.  Jan progressively got better and better, she's a natural, and by the end of our second day was able to land her fly where she wanted to.  It very happily came back to me, kind of like riding a bike.  We fished for a couple days, and plan to fish some more here in the Rockport, WA area in the Cascades, and several more times in Washington state as we move around.  So now you know our new endeavor and as I warned several of you, it might be kind of a let down, but for us we are pleased to have a new hobby to add to our repertoire.

"Our spot"

Working it

A very happy Jan!