Trout Will Out Fly-Fishing School Is Fun, But There’s Always A Catch

It was a fascinating sight: men standing around in rubber pants, adjusting their flies, whipping their rods back and forth and occasionally exclaiming, “Look here. I’ve got a big one!”

Of course, I’m talking about fly-fishing. And here in the shadow of Pike’s Peak, fly-fishing isn’t just a hobby, it’s a way of life.

I, too, was wearing rubber pants, better known as “waterproof support hose,” as I stood in the parking lot of Deckers, a well-fished stream just 20 minutes north of Pikes Peak, waiting for my 9 a.m. beginners fly-fishing class to start.

I spent a good deal of time checking my gear, or just fidgeting with it.

I carried my rented $300 rod and reel awkwardly, like a new father trying to find a comfortable position to hold his baby. I spent 10 minutes studying my sunglasses, trying to determine whether or not they were polarized because I’d been told it was a crucial feature.

And I rechecked the new fishing license I’d picked up at 7-Eleven for $5 to make sure it had the right date and a coupon on the back for a Big Gulp.

Fellow classmates Carol and Libby, both in their 40s, arrived together. Mark, also around 40, and the only student who confessed any experience, came on his own.

Our barrel-chested, bearded instructor was also named Mark. He was co-leading the class with Antonio, a pony-tailed junior high school teacher and part-time fishing guide. Both wore vests covered with several hundred dollars’ worth of fly-fishing gizmos, although to the untrained eye they appeared to be colorful wads of lint.

Instructor Mark announced we would start fishing with nymphs. (At this point, I wouldn’t have been able to pick a nymph out of a police lineup, even if everyone but the nymph was wearing a police uniform.) A nymph, Mark explained, stays underwater, not on top of it, and nymphs should definitely not be confused with streamers, emergers, wet flies or dry flies (whatever those were).

To determine exactly what sort of nymph we needed, Mark took a ping-pong net - or something that looked like a ping-pong net but probably cost 10 times as much - and used it as a strainer to catch some small things floating in the river. He pulled up a couple of squirmy critters the size of head lice. He and Antonio studied them with more interest than you’d expect two grown men to display when looking at aquatic larvae. This, they explained (as if it weren’t evident), was part of the fun of fly-fishing.

Antonio baited his line accordingly and caught a trout to show us how it’s done. More impressive than the catch, which took about a minute, was how gentle Antonio was with the fish once he’d caught it.

He wet his hands before touching the trout so he wouldn’t damage the scales, and extracted the fly like a surgeon. Then he held the trout in the water and stroked it while the fish regained its strength.

All of this would have been touching if Antonio hadn’t just jerked the fish to shore by its mouth with a hook.

The whole fishing process seemed a bit like lassoing a bird flying south for the winter and yanking it to the ground, then gently fluffing up its feathers and letting it go.

It certainly didn’t look like much fun for the trout, some of which, Mark explained, had been caught upwards of 40 times.

I must have caught one of these professional trout. The moment I got him on the line, he swam straight to shore and beached himself. He knew the drill. He didn’t even blink when we took a flash photo of me holding him. Possibly because he didn’t have eyelids.

I caught two trout and myself three times (twice on my shirt and once on my hat). Libby and Carol each caught two trout, plus each other.

Even Signe, my girlfriend, who put down her camera for 20 minutes, caught two fish, plus Libby. Mark (the student) was having bad luck, probably because he jinxed himself by telling everyone he had experience.