Starr Nolan is a fly-fisher, trauma therapist, and founder of Casting Carolinas, a fishing education and support program for women surviving cancer. Starr combines her two passions to help women in her community cope with the trauma of cancer.
Starr Nolan is a fly-fisher, trauma therapist, and founder of Casting Carolinas, a fishing education and support program for women surviving cancer. Starr combines her two passions to help women in her community cope with the trauma of cancer.
It’s so easy a third-grader can do it. It’s actually a lot simpler than normal fishing, actually. It can be hard to learn to cast a long ways, but you don’t need to cast a long ways. Just get closer to the fish if you can’t cast to them. People who talk about how “challenging” flyfishing is are just crappy fishermen, or fishermen trying to impress people by flyfishing in conditions that are crappy for flyfishing. It’s not challenging, it’s actually a lot easier to catch fish with a flyrod – when the conditions are right. Meaning the fish are close, there’s room to cast, and the lures are light. Flies are really good lures – because they weigh nothing they are much more like real fish prey than anything you can cast with a regular rod. For example, even highly pressured largemouth bass will take a buggy little wet fly. And during insect hatches, you can catch a fish on every cast with the right fly.
Just don’t become a fly-only purist, or you’ll be stuck sitting on your ass whining about the wind whenever the conditions aren’t good. Seriously, I’ve been flyfishing for over 16 years and most of the “fly-only” crowd we have nowadays are a bunch of sad losers that talk more than they fish, but love to brag about how they aren’t “lowly worm-dunkers” – the name they give to the foul scum who actually catch fish when it’s windy or when it rains.
Even though I’ve been a flyfisher (and a bait-fisher) for all my life, I hate to even admit to other anglers that I flyfish, because the image that the flyfishing media projects is that it’s all a bunch of people posing like supermodels in their latest gear from the Orvis catalog, taking carefully posed photos holding their flyrod in their teeth like their fancy rod is more important than the fish, wearing a Kafiya like they’re part of Delta Force, and taking a huge dump on the sport of fishing in general. It’s a disgrace. Most of them took up flyfishing because they’re too squeamish to handle chicken livers or get worm guts on their hands.
Honestly, I think flyfishing is so simple and effective that every angler should do it. But the idea that catching a fish “on the fly” is somehow “better” than catching a fish with other tackle is really stupid. The point of flyfishing is that it works, really well. It’s a good tool for catching fish. Spin fishing is also a good tool for catching fish.
You can also fish bait with a flyrod, and you can fish flies with a spinning rod. They are both highly effective in different conditions. When you go fishing, select the proper tool and don’t pay attention to the stupid hype.
Also, for the love of god don’t spend more than a hundred bucks on a flyrod. It’s not worth it.
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