No fish this past weekend, but perhaps something better.
My son Paul transitioned to Boy Scouts this year from Cub Scouts and I
have the opportunity to be one of the Assistant Scout Masters. The
Troop that Paul chose is super active, they camp every month and have
the boys try all kinds of new things. This past weekend was a special
one. The Camp Site that the leaders chose was on the Gun Powder
River, the one here in MD that I have started fly fishing. Well, I took
the challenge that was laid out before me and coordinated with the
Scout Master to introduce 18 boys to fly fishing on this really great
trout stream. The boys were broken down into 3 groups of six and I
had each group for one and a half hours. Fly Fishing is one of the
many merit badges that they can work on and so prior to the weekend
I looked at the requirements and focused on some of the simpler
aspects. For about an hour we worked on learning the fundamentasl on
the forward cast and the roll cast, a general discussion of fly rods,
reels and line and a little bit about flies. The flies were the most
interesting to the boys. I had brought along a box of dry, a box of
nymphs and streamers, and of course a box of RLS Bucktails and
Flatwings. The boy's could not believe that we fish with something as
small as a #20-22 midge and as big as some of the large RLS Flatwings
tied on a 4-0 hook that is 8-10 inches long. To a boy what could be
more cool than seeing the representations of bugs, leeches, eels, squid
and bait fish. Their eyes truly lit up!. After the hour or so on shore, we
went into the river, all of them wet wading in about 55-60 deg water.
They quickly realized why us older guys wear funny looking rubber
pants when we go fly fishing. They each had about 15-20 min's
practicing the roll cast and seeing how a grass hopper fly would float
down current using a dead drift. It was really neat to watch a few of
them actually get the hang of it in such a short time. Some of them
had such nice drifts that if the fish had not been spooked away by the
commotion of 6 boys in the river they surely would have taken the
boy's offerings. Each group of boys were different in the way I had to
teach them and in the way the picked up on the information.
Obviously the older boys (15 or so) were better at grasping the
concepts and also handling the rod and the line, than the younger ones
(11). That will be something I pay better attention to next time.
I believe that about half the boys are at least interested in earning the
Fly Fishing Merit Badge and I will be their counselor for that endeavor.
In the future as we work on that badge I will try and take them to
places, and at a time of year, that will increase their chance to catch a
fish. They have to catch two fish on a fly rod to get the badge, they
also have to learn how to tie two flies, I am thinking woolly bugger
and Ray's fly and perhaps an elk hair caddis as a bonus dry fly.
After each group was finished in the water I had them stand on the
bank and observe the current seams, riffles and pools formed by the
moving water. I also showed them that just upriver from where they
were fishing, trout were coming to the surface occasionally and then I
explained to them how important it is to be quiet when in the river.
This is a lesson, they will have to learn and practice another time -
maybe with smaller groups. The hardest thing I had getting them to
understand was to slow down their cast. They all wanted to rush their
motions and it seemed that it was the older boy's who finally figured
out to slow everything down. I think I might have been seeing some
Xbox or Nintendo hand and arm movements thrown in.
All in all it was a good weekend and I look forward to teaching some of
the boys more about this addiction. I'll try and break the cost of the
habit to their parent's gently....
TLA
Paul M.
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