Early Days- Intro

I was introduced to fly fishing by a English friend many years ago while living in Colorado, I had always seen these guys standing in the river waving sticks around, I was thinking what the fuck are they doing.

Years on now Im one of those guys and I still think- What am I doing?

I learnt to fish in the Rocky mountains of Colorado, I was living in Aspen at the time. Snowboarding and late nights of drunkiness was the only thing that mattered at this stage in my life, One summer I tagged along with a friend to a little creek up by Maroon bells to watch him fish, I thought this will be funny what the hell are you going to catch in there. His first cast was placed down on to the water and within a split sec that fly was smashed, He pulled in a nice little rainbow trout.
Shit that was cool," Your turn" he said after about a 1/2hr of trying to cast more than 3 feet of line from the end of the rod and catching bushes and trees and anything else that was behind me I managed to get a fairly good cast out with a white feather fly thing on the end, It hit the water and sunk- dam I thought that wasnt supposed to happen.
I suddenly felt the wiggle and weight of a fish on the end I could not believe how strong this fish was, It came off, Apparently you are supposed to let them run a little not skull drag them in.

The rest of the day was spent catching Brookies and Rainbows and this was the turning point in my life. The next day I went out and bought a rod and reel for $80 and fished 310 days that year.
Yep I was hooked.

I fished all over Colorado and some neighbouring states most days for years and have meet some amazing people and have made many many friends, I miss the rivers and creeks of the Roaring fork valley and one day I will return.

Now back home in NZ the adventure is just begining, friends are been made lessons are been learnt and always will be. I love Fly fishing.

www.waikatoflyfishers.co.nz