Jackson: How fly fishing keeps capturing converts

Even though we are immersed in a new age of communication, I still get a charge (thrill) walking to the mail box to retrieve a dozen or so mailed missives that scream at me in four-color attacks upon my senses.

In between the promotional pieces I sometimes find a serious piece of communication from my grandchildren or some government nonsense. Once in a while there is a piece of good news buried among the junk.

Then there are the emails, coming at me in waves and settling in my electronic inbox. There was one in particular I got a few years ago from a Daily Herald reader, Eugene, who resides in Schaumburg.

"I'd like to try fly fishing and do the things in streams like you write in your columns," he wrote. "The way you laid out those words and phrases was enough to pique my inner emotions to the point where I went and got the gear necessary to become a novice. I even did what you suggested - was to get some casting lessons and an evaluation of my setup."

The next year I received another email from Eugene. He had used his vacation time and invested a few bucks with a Montana guide and fished on not-so-famous streams. He used his newfound equipment knowledge and lessons to catch some brown and rainbow trout. He also wrote that he was planning a trip to one of Ganglers' Manitoba lodges where I caught monster pike on a fly rod.

Learning how to use and cast fly gear is not a big deal. Many beginners start their "journey" by going after local panfish. If an angler is lucky, he or she can find an area pond where 8-inch to 9-inch bluegills cruise the weed lines once the water warms to a comfortable temperature for spawning and aggressive feeding.

A week ago I had a long conversation with the executive director of AGLOLW - that's the Association of Great Lakes Outdoor Writers.

This chap is also a fly fisherman and when he was a kid he lived in the Elkhart, Indiana area. I too was in Elkhart in the mid-1960s, and that's where I learned how to tie flies. I also fished Christiana Creek for smallmouth with my ugly creations that hardly ever teased a fish to the take.

Les Miller, an elderly man when I first met him at a local fishing club in Elkhart, was famous in the Midwest for creating magnificent dry flies. He would make jumbo ones as well as tiny Royal Coachman varieties.

He took me under his wing and taught me the basics of fly tying, Miller style.

Then he had me tag along to the Little Elkhart River, where he explained that 10 p.m. was the perfect time to catch big brown trout.

That was unheard of in my book, as well as a bit mystifying, all because whatever trout fishing I did was daytime stuff. All I thought about was having my fly hung up in tree branches behind me on every cast.

I watched while he made short casts (roll casts) under the branches of an old cottonwood tree. The Coachman caught a slight drift and made its way downstream. I could barely make out that artificial work of art.

It was on the third cast and drift when a big brown trout rose to the surface and gulped the fly into its jaw in what I later learned was a "classic" take.

It has been more than five decades since those days and I've learned that fly fishing for a "newbie" can be exciting and wonderful, especially if spinning and bait casting has taken a hold of an angler like a treble hook. The addition of fly fishing opens up new avenues to new adventures.

In my estimation, fly fishing is the nonprescriptive medication anyone can take while keeping their eyes glued to the surface of the stream while getting an old-fashioned high on life.

• Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, catch his radio show 7-9 a.m. Sundays on WGCO 1590-AM (live-streamed at www.1590WCGO.com) and get more content at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.com.