Truly Tangled: A beginner learns to cast

By Michael Duca

You know the guy. He decides he’s going to learn how to fly-fish. He spends a weekend at the Orvis School in Millbrook, is dazzled by the embedded complexity of the sport — the equipment, the methods, the etiquette. Taking full advantage of the special discount extended to the newly anointed “graduates,” he buys a lot of high-end gear at the conveniently located in-house store. And never goes fishing again. 

I am that guy.

Two years went by before I worked up the nerve to ask Patrick Sullivan to take me fishing. From reading his articles he seemed like a fly-fishing enthusiast, albeit a bit of a curmudgeon, willing to take on a project like me if for no other reason than his own personal amusement. 

“Sure. Meet me next Thursday at 7 a.m. across from the Falls Village power plant.”

To prepare, I spent Wednesday looking in vain for my course notes, and unpacking and cutting the tags off of my equipment. What do you wear under the waders? I should have thought about this a week ago. An internet search yielded opinions from the usual array of self-appointed experts: jeans (“Never”), cotton (“Bad Idea”). I settled on fleece.

I didn’t want to be late so I set my alarm for 6 a.m. Not to worry. A faulty smoke alarm shouted me out of bed at 4 a.m. and I spent the next hour with the security company trying to shut it off.

Tired, frazzled and two years removed from whatever knowledge and confidence I had gained from fly-fishing school is not the best way to start out and … it didn’t matter. I had fun.

For Patrick, fly-fishing is not some precious activity to be handled with kid gloves. It doesn’t matter if your box of flies is not well organized. Why buy $12 ergonomic Orvis snips when $2 nail clippers from CVS will do? It’s supposed to be fun. Find a fly you like, knot it to the leader, and go fishing. And thanks to Patrick’s generous and patient guidance we did.

By Patrick L. Sullivan

There are as many theories on how to teach fly-fishing as there are anglers who try to teach fly-fishing.

Cast with your back against a wall. Cast to hula hoops on the lawn. Think ten o’clock and two o’clock.

Fulcrums. Levers. Physics.

Hike!

Or you can take someone to a place full of gullible and hungry panfish, a spot that is wide-open for casting, and let them get the hang of it themselves.

This is what I did with Michael Duca the other day.

I know nothing about this guy except that he lives in Boston, has a place in Twin Lakes, and he owns fancy wading boots.

Now I know one more thing: He’s a quick learner.

He went from hopeless to beginner in about 90 minutes.

We were chucking things at bluegill, rock bass, crappies and smallmouth — part of the grab bag of species that inhabit the stretch of the Housatonic River between the dam and the hydroelectric facility in Falls Village.

Sometimes this area is a raging torrent. Sometimes the water gets so low that fish are trapped in the pools of the Great Falls.

This was an in-between time.

I started Duca off with a short leader — 6 feet maybe — and a panfish popper on his 8.5 foot 5 weight rod.

That elicited a few half-hearted responses, so we fiddled around.

After half an hour or so, Duca landed his first fish on the fly. A bluegill took a dry fly with a black body, orange rubber legs and white wings. (I call it “The DTs.”)

We continued, and he caught several additional fish, with both floating and submerged flies.

I coached him throughout, occasionally taking the rod over to demonstrate a point of technique.

The important part of this procedure was this: You can talk until you are blue in the face about casting strokes, but until you get on the water and start trying to get fish to eat things, it’s all theoretical.

Later we went down to the Trout Management Area, where he failed to catch any trout. Or anything else.

But Duca was throwing perfectly competent casts in the bigger water.

I managed a lone brown trout and a couple of suckers, so it wasn’t the casting.

So … get the newcomer’s feet wet (haha), and worry about the refinements later.