I don’t know if anyone here remembers that Sesame Street sketch with Bert and Ernie. The two friends are sitting out on a boat, Bert has a fishing pole and is trying to catch fish. He turns to Ernie and says something like, “Ernie! How do you expect to catch any fish without a fishing pole?!” And Ernie says, “I just use my special fish call. Heeeeeeeere fishy fishy fishy!” Whenever he does the call, a fish just jumps up into the boat.
Well, I learned on Monday that there’s a LOT more to fishing than just saying “Heeeeeeere fishy fishy fishy!” The Sasquatch Fishing desk inside Sweet Memorial closed about three weeks ago, but this great new guy named Dan came in to provide fly fishing trips. All the kids at the fly fishing desk before were college students and had to go back to school, but Dan is a retired helicopter pilot from Texas and loves to come to Colorado in September to fish. One day while we were chatting in Sweet Memorial, he asked me if I would like to learn how to fly fish. Always up for trying new things, I said sure!
On Sunday evening, I went out to a private lake with him and watched him fish. He was talking to me the entire time about technique, how to find the fish, and how to lurer them in. Monday was my day off, so we met up again and he taught me how to cast. It’s a lot harder than it looks! Your timing has to be perfect. Dan was amazingly accurate with his fly rod, and after about an hour of practice on land, he took me back to the private lake to test out my new skills.
I had to put on a pair of waders, which are like waterproof overalls with waterproof sock attached to them. I asked Dan, “Do I look like a fisherman?” “Fisher PERSON!” he corrected me. I put on some boots and we waded out into the lake onto the sandbar. Dan put a dry fly on my line, which means the fly floats on top of the water, rather than sinking. I did my first few casts, and my line got tangled a few times, but Dan was patient and always helped me out. I was having a hard time casting the line out far enough, so Dan cast a good one for me and handed me the pole. Then, I felt a tug on the pole so I lifted it to a 45 degree angle like I had been instructed. I reeled in my first fish, which was a rainbow trout! I’m pictured with the fish down below. After we got the picture, Dan took the fish off the hook and put it back in the water. The trout didn’t move, and kinda resembled a dead gold fish floating in an aquarium. “Uh oh!” said Dan, “I may have to revive him!” I started to feel really bad. I didn’t mean to KILL the fish, just catch him. “How are you gonna do that? Mouth to mouth?” “No, you just gotta give them a little nudge.” He poked the fish a bit and sure enough, it swam away to the darkest part of the lake.
I wasn’t completely satisfied with this catch because I didn’t cast the line. I stood out in the water for another two hours, seeing fish all around me, but I couldn’t catch them! Meanwhile, Dan had caught three really good sided brown trout. I decided to change locations, and moved to a different sandbar a little closer to Dan. The sun had set behind the mountains, and it was starting to get cold. I wasn’t going to budge though until I caught a fish on my own. I saw a ripple come up from the water–the sign that a fish is near. I cast my line out to the ripple and VIOLA! A perfect cast! A moment later, I felt a tug on my line. “Dan!! I got one!” Dan ran over to me as I easily reeled in the fish. I could tell as I was reeling that this wasn’t going to be an impressive catch… I had caught a 7-8 inch brook trout! Oh well… I told Dan to hold it and I took a picture of him with my first REAL catch.
We had stayed out at the lake for so long, that we had missed dinner at the YMCA. Dan said, “How does Pizza sound?” He took me out to dinner, he said, to celebrate my first catch. We went to Poppy’s Pizza, the same place I went with Mom and Dad for my birthday. At dinner, he told me about his days as a helicopter pilot, his travels around the world, his world records in fishing, and some fishing shows he shot for TNN. He also told me a lot about his 4 daughters, who are all doing very different things, but are all very happy and successful. He said he was never disappointed that he didn’t have any sons, but his own father was.
I really enjoyed his company, and it came at the right time, since most of my peers have gone home already. Dan gave me a pair of polarized sun glasses (because you need to have them to see the fish under the water) a box of flies (including the one I caught my first fish with) and then the following day gave me a book about all the fly fishing lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park. I told him that I appreciated his kindness more than he would know, and will always remember my first fishing experience and the pro who taught me how.
