09/03/2025
How to Fail Gloriously at Fly Fishing (and Still Win)
Over the Labor Day weekend, I decided to break out the beginner fly tying kit I bought a while back and finally learn how to tie a few flies. That ledâinevitablyâto pulling out the fly rod and seeing if I could figure out how that worked, too. It had always been something I planned on getting into... eventually. Like a lot of folks, I enjoy buying cool things. Actually using them? Well, thatâs a separate hobby entirely. Turns out, I have a lot of fly fishing gear. Back when I was selling on eBay, I was always on the huntâand when youâre constantly looking, you tend to accumulate. Fast. So, Saturday afternoon I parked myself at my desk with a book, the tying kit, and a quiet sense of confidence that lasted approximately 2 minutes. Fly tying, as it turns out, is one of those deceptively difficult activitiesâright up there with folding a fitted sheet or getting your dog to swallow a pill. Thereâs a true art to it: laying down thread just right, wrapping feathers, dubbing, chenille, foam⌠and at least six other things I had to Google because I immediately forgot what they were called. And thenâof courseâthere are the tools. So many tools. Thereâs even one you use when you cut hair off a peltâyou stuff it into this little gadget, tap it on the table, and it lines up all the ends evenly like some kind of squirrel barber wizard. I had no idea I needed such a device, but somehow three of them ended up in my Amazon cart before I came to my senses. Eventually, I pulled myself away from the online distractions, sat back down, and got back to tying. I even managed to make a few flies that looked sort of like something a fish might want to eat. Or at least something a curious trout might laugh at. After a trip to the local sporting goods store that afternoon, I somehow walked out having only spent $26âwhich may be a personal record. I had a few more supplies, a new pair of scissors, and that wonderful feeling of being one step closer to becoming a fly fisherman. I stopped at Wileyâs for a ginger beer (because hydration matters, even in the wild), then headed home to prep my rod and study up on casting. Naturally, I turned to YouTube and decided I was going to fish for carp. Big ones. The kind of fish that make the rod bend all the way down to the cork. Greeley has several small lakes around town, and one of them actually produced the Colorado state recordâ35.5 pounds. That was good enough for me. Sunday morning came and I loaded up my gear, heading out to a small lake just five minutes from the house. After setting up the rod and threading the line, I hit my first real challenge: tying the fly on. My eyes donât work quite like they used to thanks to a 4th nerve palsyâcourtesy of someone driving a Dodge Durango into me at 90 mph (but thatâs another story). Still, I managed to fumble my way through it and got the fly attached. I think it was secure. Probably. Now, the fun part: casting. With a 9-foot rod and an 8-foot leader, technically I could have just held the rod out and plopâthe fly wouldâve landed right on the water, basically right on top of the fish. But thatâs not how it's done. So I whipped the rod back, let the line fly behind me, then snapped it forward. It wasnât pretty. It wasnât smooth. But it worked. I had a fly on the water. So for four hours, I walked around that lake waving my rod like some kind of fly-fishing Jedi Padawan. I didnât catch a single fish. A few followed the fly, but none took the baitâturns out carp are surprisingly choosy for a fish that basically lives in a mud puddle. Still, Iâm glad I broke away from the screens and spent time doing something that was a true break from responsibility. It didnât matter if I caught anything. The only real damage was maybe to my egoâand, of course, the fact that I still donât have one of those classic âguy holding fishâ photos for my dating profile. (Ladies, imagine the fish.) But it felt like rest in the truest sense. Not the âIâll just scroll on my phone for a bitâ kind of rest. Not the âletâs binge a season of something and call it self-careâ kind of rest. This was uncomfortable. I was bad at it. But I was learningâand that changed everything. Maybe the key to real rest isnât doing nothingâitâs doing something new, something that challenges you just enough but carries no weight if you fail. Something that feels like work in the body but rest in the soul. For me, that day, it was fly fishing. And maybe thatâs enough.
