Trout bums | Banishing beginners' blunders

This is a story of failure, wasted time and money, and persistence. It is also a story about avoiding these things.

When I started getting serious about fly-fishing, I had a lot to learn. This was a slow process filled with missteps and bad information. More than once, I swore I would never fish the Yakima River again — it was too tough for me at that stage.

I wish I could have avoided some of the mistakes I made, but I'm not sure they are always a bad thing. When you learn the hard way, you have an appreciation for things when they are going right.

Chris, co-author Randal Sumner's cousin, started fishing with us a few years ago. He didn't know anything about fly-fishing, but he thought he might like it. Chris was just as green as the grass. He didn't know how to tie the knots you need, he didn't know how to cast, and he didn't know anything about the hatches. It was interesting to watch his development.

Randal started Chris out nymphing, fishing deep. This may have been a good choice, because I think nymphing is "easier" and often more productive than fishing on top. Chris became a competent fisherman with the nymph that first year. The only problem with that was that he hated to fish the dry flies.

I found this comical, a fly-fisherman who didn't like to fish the hatches. Chris hated dry fly-fishing so much that more than once I caught him nymphing during an excellent mayfly hatch. My first response was, "You have got to be kidding. We waited all summer for this hatch and he is ignoring it."

When I first started to tie flies, I was buying some of everything, before I figured out that I didn't need to be able to tie every fly known to man.

Chris didn't get to buy all of that neat, useless stuff. He just bought what he needed. Tying seems to suit Chris' personality. He ties flies almost every day and now probably ties the best flies of anyone I know. He also always has plenty of the flies that are needed at any point in time, so he has pretty much become the fly bank.

After a year or so, Chris found he had the skills and liked to fish the dry flies. Now he often goes months without nymphing.

Sometimes we joke about Chris being cheated out of that school-of-hard-knocks learning experience. He didn't have to spend hundreds of dollars on worthless gear like I did. He didn't experience the joy of going up in the canyon stretch of the Yakima River and getting skunked time after time like I did when I first started to fish it.

How would you ever figure out some of this stuff? It's best to get some good advice. This is a rare thing. There are a lot of guys who act like they know or even think they know, but there are very few really knowledgeable fishermen. If you, like most of us, aren't lucky enough to have a professional fisherman for a cousin/mentor, well, welcome to the school of hard knocks.

Trout Bums, a column authored alternately by Randal Sumner and Mark Littleton, appears on the first Tuesday of each month. Sumner owns Blue Skies Guide Service on the Yakima River. Littleton, who also lives in Yakima, has been an avid fly-fisherman for more than 25 years. They can be reached at guides@blueskiesfishing.com.