So you have been fly fishing for a while and you feel like your game is pretty advanced. You are more than self-sufficient and have become a proficient caster and overall fisherman. Now may be the time to introduce the sport to others such as friends and family.
Remember how difficult fly fishing was to learn in the first place? It is much more difficult to teach, requiring patience and strategy to help someone fully grasp the sport. With a few tips and tricks you can become an excellent teacher. Follow along with our guide to understand our approach to teaching fly fishing.
Basics of Teaching Fly Fishing
Make sure they know the lingo
Fly fishing has a lot of terms and words that an experienced fly fisher takes for granted. However, if you start teaching by immediately using terms like “stripping”, then your student may not be able to look at you with a strait face. For a teaching session to work you will need to set the stage with terms like stripping, false cast, forward cast, back cast, shooting line, and trigger finger. These terms explain all the basic components of a cast and are necessary for every fly fisher to know.
Start out in a controlled casting environment
Trying to throw your first ever cast in an uncontrolled environment would be difficult for even the most naturally gifted casters. Instead, start your student on grass or another flat surface in an area with minimal wind. Doing so will allow the student to more easily grasp the fundamentals of casting without having to worry about battling the elements. In calm weather, the forward and back cast should easily create the quintessential loop we all know and love which is one of the most necessary visuals for a new fly fisher.
Teaching fly fishing means teaching fishing
I am mainly a self-taught fly fisherman. My dad and I took a few casting lessons when we first started fly fishing but we primarily read articles and watched videos to take our game to the next level. One of the most important lessons I learned early in my fly fishing career was that casting is only a part of the equation. The sport is not called fly CASTING, it is called fly FISHING. The fishing aspect of the sport is right there in the name and when teaching fly fishing, you cannot skip this step.
Fly fishing is one part casting, one part understanding and reading water, and one part fishing. If you do not know how to present a fly, know what type of flies to present, and where to present a fly then your catch rate will be low. Many people early in their fly fishing career spend a lot of time on their cast. Although a good cast is necessary, it will not matter if you cast to an empty body of water. In fact, many of my most prized catches have occurred when I needed to cast less than 50-feet. The technical aspect of the sport cannot be overlooked, and as a teacher you must insight that knowledge on your student.
Have patience for regression
I think we can all agree that fly fishing is difficult. Regressions are part of the game, especially day-day regressions for new fly fishers. Many of the people I have taught will pick up the sport with ease on day one and come back on day two having forgotten just about everything I taught them. Rushing someone along is a slippery slope to making both student and teacher frustrated at the lack of progress. The best thing you can do is assess a new students’ skill level and bring them along according to their ability.
Many people interested in teaching fly fishing are not instructors and instead are interested in teaching the sport to significant others, children, and friends. The personal relationship adds another wrinkle to the game. Navigating that relationship requires that patience be at the forefront of your mind when teaching. If you are successful in teaching those who are close to you, you can make a lifetime fishing partner.
Minimize Frustration
This tip can go both ways as it is easy for both you and your student to get frustrated during the teaching process. I have witnessed multiple professional guides and instructors be too quick to express frustration when a student is not grasping the concept of fly casting. I have also observed many students be quick to write themselves off because they do not pick things up fast enough. Frustration is an emotion that will lead both student and teacher down a path to failure.
Fly fishing takes time to grasp, and it can take some people several years to master it if they ever manage to. As such, small daily incremental improvements are far more important than anything else.
Take a stepwise approach.
Fly fishing has a lot of complicated concepts and terms that are foreign to most people. To combat this, it is imperative that you take a stepwise approach to teaching fly fishing. I always start with the basics of the cast by having a brand new individual false cast a small, fixed amount of line back and forth to understand the timing and rhythm of the cast. I teach the concept that the fly rod is the hand on a clock and you need to stop at 10 and 2 on the forward and back cast. The 10 and 2 method also gives new fly fishers an idea of how the mechanics of the cast work.
Once my student has mastered the basic casting concept, I have them continue to strip off line until they are able to successfully lift, back cast, and forward cast approximately 30-feet of line consistently. Afterwards, I advance them to the concept of shooting line. This step is generally the longest and most difficult step in the process of teaching fly casting. It is difficult for most people to grasp the timing associated with shooting line and I find that most people let their line go too early before the rod is fully loaded.
Once someone has mastered the art of casting in the yard, it is time to teach them the concepts of fishing and get them on the water. When teaching fly fishing, it pays to teach all the knots someone will need before hitting the water. I generally make sure people know the clinch knot, improved clinch knot, and Kreh loop. These knots cover most of your needs when tying flies onto line. From there they can start to learn other knots such as line to line knots and other loops that are beneficial in other situations.
Hit the water!
So your student knows how to cast, tie knots, and basic fishing concepts? Sounds like it is time to hit the water. All bets are off once you hit the water because practically applying learned concepts is much more difficult than applying them in a controlled environment. The best thing you can do is make sure that your student knows to constantly fall back on their fundamentals and isn’t afraid to fail. I see many students too afraid to make a shot or fish a certain location because they are afraid of hooking a tree or finding another snag.
Continually boosting new fly fishers’ confidence on the water is the key to their success. There will be failures and problems that arise because of inexperience but it is up to you as the teacher to reassure the student and let them know they are doing just fine. Teaching fly fishing has its trials and tribulations, but in the end, it is very rewarding to insight your experience on someone else. There is nothing like watching someone catch their first fish and the lifetime of smiles that follow.
