Since that's out of the way...
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine gave me some introductory instructions to fly fishing. After our first session I was double hauling and shooting line roughly 50-60 feet (not consistently) without a leader and in a field. I decided to purchase my own set up and have been practicing for the past week in my spare time under similar circumstances... until today. After watching the radar to see what the storms would do I decided it was safe to head out. So at around 6 my trusted fishing partner Sam and I headed out to look for some of the schools of redfish I have been targeting lately.
It was surprisingly cool (not really) and the tide was low but had long since began coming in. I've been most successful targeting these schools of redfish during the first of the incoming tide around the full and new moon low tides. When I've been able to locate them I often find them in schools of several hundred all tailing at once, sometimes more than 50 tails in the air at a time.
Once we arrived to the area I expected to find them I was a little distraught to find the tide higher than my liking and after 15 minutes of watching I had not seen the first sign of them. I brought a spinning rod and we began working sebiles and topwaters around the schools of bait on the flat. If you guys haven't seen it yet, there were tons of small pilchards on the flat today and the snook were fired up blasting them. Sam landed a nice snook that might have been slot that was released without a photo. While standing in my kayak and reeling in a dink snook I noticed a push out of the corner of my eye and knew right away that it was the school of fish.
I raced over to where they were and positioned myself up wind of them. Like the snook, the redfish were FIRED up blasting schools of bait.. similar to a school of jacks. The fish would push and blast baits as they moved, stop and tail for sometimes 10+ minutes at a time, then continue moving very quickly. I jumped out of my kayak and waded towards them with my fly rod and the only fly I brought with me. I'm not sure what kind of fly it was, but a friend had left his fly box at my house so I grabbed one that looked good and that was all I brought with me.
My first couple of casts at the school were terrible. I was in panic mode and was trying to force things. I took a couple deep breaths, regained my composure and remembered my training. I had to reposition as the school had moved out of range before I could take a shot at them again. Wading towards them I began stripping line off my reel and made 4 or 5 false casts before I shout roughly a 40 foot shot at them. I started stripping and almost instantly came tight. I have no idea how I remember to set the hook, but by the grace of God I came tight and it was fish on!
This was my first time ever fly fishing and I wasn't exactly sure what to do, but I let the line pass through my fingers until it came tight on the reel and my rod doubled over. Fighting a fish on a fly rod is A LOT different than fighting a fish on a spinning rod. But after a decent fight I had the leader in my hand and the fish's tail in my other.
I've caught a lot of fish during my life so far in a lot of different ways, but I have to admit this is without a doubt one of my proudest moments in my fishing career. First time fly fishing... first fish on fly... I know it's not always going to be this easy, but tonight at least I am on cloud 9. I know it's been a long time since my last post, but I really wanted to share this with you guys. Thanks for all the inspiration through the years, if there's anyone reading this right now that was like me when I first joined this site... an awkward teenager, or on the fence about fly fishing, I hope this post inspires you.
