Losing an hour for Daylight Saving Time sucks. I mention this while writing, as I haven’t yet noticed the sun setting an hour later than usual. So there’s that. As we slowly wake up to spring, it’s also time to rekindle the fishing stoke. Since my last trip in November was cut short by the one-two punch of an atmospheric river and a bomb cyclone (why the fancy names for plain old “rain”?), I’ve been busy gaining and losing holiday weight, practicing my casting, meeting long-time subscribers of this magazine at The Fly Fishing Show in northern California, cleaning my gear, and postponing March fishing trips due to the uncooperative weather mucking up my destination waters.
Now that my upcoming trips are lining up on the horizon like a heavy North Shore swell in Oahu, I can’t help but reminisce about the epic season I had last year, made memorable by a great time with friends and some quality fish landed—and lost. A year of Hero Shots and agonizing misses. As I relive those moments, a piece of advice from a long-time guide friend breaks in, like the moment we broke through the willows onto that buttery McCloud River run last summer: Make your first cast count.
I peeled off some line, fed it into a newly learned single-handed Spey cast that fell well short of the seam I was aiming for, made two half-hearted mends, and—WHAM!—completely flubbed the hookset and lost the fish. My guide friend of many years, whom I’ll call “Shane” (because that’s his name and I think he’d appreciate it more than me calling him “Shawn” or “Carol”), immediately responded with, “That was f—king TERRIBLE!!!” It was the most constructive feedback I could’ve gotten—and he was absolutely right.
He laughed when I told him this newest “Shane story” just before our November trip blew out. Thankfully, Shane didn’t seem to remember how badly I fished that juicy run. That textbook example of bad fishing, though, is exactly why I’ve been practicing my casting and trying to break my bad hook-setting habits. The bigger takeaway, however, is to approach untouched water with the mindset of fishing it well, not lazily throwing half-assed casts punctuated by blasé mends and nitwit upstream hooksets. Sure, I can show up as a terrible fly fisher, get lucky, and still trick a fish into biting. But I shouldn’t be surprised when I fail to land that fish—one that probably knew better. Or maybe it did. It certainly has seen better.
My plan moving forward is to approach the water with intention. No more. “I’ll just prospect this run with a few drifts and see if anyone’s home.” Sloppy fishing yields sloppy results. Let me know in the comments if you’re focusing on anything as the season kicks off. You can bet I’ll be making my first cast count and staying ready on that first drift. A Hero Shot is waiting in that riffle.
