I took a class last week with community ed about Fly Fishing.  Of course, A River Runs through It is one of my favorite movies, its such a romantic sport, we live in a fishing haven, and I love to eat fish, so it was a logical choice.  Nathan and I were going to both go, but all our babysitters had plans, and Nathan was worn out after work, so I got the honor of getting out of the house. 

I learned what equipment to get (the expensive kind), when to go, and which rivers to try.  I learned that the dolly varden, cutthroat, and steelhead trout in these rivers don't go for typical "flies", since we don't have much in the way of flying critters around here.  They go for "flies" that look like salmon eggs, alevin, or smolt.  Our instructor has fished here for over 30 years and his "thing" is traveling exotic places to fly-fish.  At one point he said, "If you're fishing a hole, and you haven't gotten at least 20 in a couple hours, move on."  I said, "you mean 20 strikes?"  He looked at me like I was crazy, and said, "No, 20 fish, you'll have no problem getting that many in 2 hours here."  OK. 

I arrived here the end of last summer, so I never even fished here, although Nathan got several pinks, silvers, and a couple king salmon before I arrived.

The funnest part of the class, though, was tying our own flies.  This is the "secret 90% of the time fly":

And the finished product:

I'll keep you posted and let you know if this little critter does the trick.