First Fish On A Fly (A Fly Fishing Journey)

Late August in the Northern Wyoming mountains never reached more than seventy degrees.

A cool afternoon found me in denim and knee-high muck boots, an interesting choice of attire for wading through the Wood River, but I thought it better to be warm than frozen in sandals and shorts, and I had lost my hip-waders a long time ago in one of my many cross-country moves.

I stood on the bank of the river with my mentor, Fred, and a friend from the program, Heather, a woman of a different generation than myself but friendly and enthusiastic about experiencing this process with me.

We had come to this moment after a series of clinics throughout the spring. First, we learned to tie flies in the front area of a local storefront, North Fork Anglers, with the clothing fixtures pushed inward to accommodate our three rows.

Ten of us gathered around the white plastic folding tables that had been set up and watched as our instructors walked us through how to tie a “woolly bugger” from start to finish.

A month later, we met again outside of the community library and were coached by our mentors on properly casting a line. We stood in the expanse of grass next to a local pond and practiced the repetitive motion until it felt natural, the sun shining as an afternoon shower sprinkled overhead.

This process was part of the First Fish on A Fly clinic through the First Hunt Foundation, Wyoming Chapter. It included an application process, from which ten individuals were selected out of thirty that submitted.

I had moved to Wyoming only a few short months prior and was forcing myself through the beginning phases of a major transitional period; this was a new chapter, a journey I was embarking upon on my own while simultaneously mourning the end of a four-year relationship, nursing a potentially career-ending wound on my too-young heart-horse, building a new community of friends and starting a new career.

Somewhere along the trajectory of this journey, I decided to not only embrace these changes but pursue them.  A lifelong vegetarian, I had finally decided to take a bold leap and immerse myself in a new adventure. Fishing and hunting were both skills I had long been intrigued by, and I made an ethical promise to myself that were I to begin eating meat again, I would learn to harvest it myself.

Fishing seemed like the less intimidating of these two endeavors, and so I found myself researching fly fishing courses between Wyoming and Montana for the spring and summer of 2023. As a semi-broke horse mom making it on her own for the first time in four years, expense was a factor, and when I stumbled across the First Hunt Foundation’s fully sponsored First Fish on A Fly course, I leapt at the opportunity and submitted my application.

That series of events is what ultimately led me to where I stood, denim soaked through to my thighs and muck boots sucking in river water with that familiar squelching sound as I carefully placed each step on the rocky bottom and waded my way across and upstream to a nice hole at which my mentor guaranteed we would find trout.

Fred coached me calmly through the motions of properly casting my line, over and over in ceremonious repetition until I started to feel a sharp tug on my fly as it floated through the water.

“When you feel the pressure, flick your rod up and create tension on that line,” he told me, and watched patiently as it took me several tries to get the movement right.

Patience and repetition attracted me to this discipline more than anything, and catching my first fish was a lesson in both. When I ultimately jerked the line at exactly the right moment and felt the satisfactory tug of tension confirming that I had, in fact, succeeded in hooking my first trout, Fred grabbed his net and talked me through reeling it in as he prepared himself to unhook the fish and demonstrate how to properly hold and release it.

These little movements, I realized, were second nature to a seasoned fisherman but strange territory to a woman unfamiliar with the craft of fly fishing. I was grateful to be privy to these intimacies, to revel in the artistry of the discipline, as I marveled at the colorfully speckled body of the Yellowstone Cutthroat that writhed between my fingers. Fred gently reminded me of the strength of my own two hands as I held this small life within them, and coached me through its release back into the river from whence it came as he ensured I supported it against the current until it regained the energy it needed to begin swimming again.

In as many small moments as it took for me to decide to learn to fish, apply to this program, tie my first fly, stand squarely in this river and reel in my first trout, the creature had revitalized itself, thrust its tail from left to right and right to left, and disappeared once more into the camouflage of the silted brown river rock and blue-grey rushing water.

Grayson Highfield

2023 Women Hunt® Graduate

https://www.instagram.com/grayhighfield/

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