When you’re first learning to fly fish, casting a fly farther than you could simply throw the dammed thing represents something of an achievement.

Later, you struggle to catch your first fish (on purpose), then you struggle to legitimately catch and land a tough fish, and finally you end up viewing technical water (or apparently fishless water) as a puzzle instead of a place to invoke divine intervention.

And at some point – after most of the technical barriers have been overcome – you start wondering what comes next.

Every fly fisherman answers that question a little differently.

Some head off to exotic locations. Some become headhunters. Some test themselves against educated trout on famous waters.

Others – the anglers most likely to sink from sight while living in a deteriorating trailer near the water – chase only exotic or little-seen species like permit or steelhead.

Some keep repeating the same trips over and over, returning to the same spot out of a sense of comfortable familiarity.

And still others become explorers, heading off on Ahab-esque searches for the one stream, current seam or inshore flat that may, in fact, have never been fished before.

Some even become assholes, undermining every fly fishing victory with phrases like “these fish aren’t anywhere near as big as the fish I caught at XXX last year.”

(Hint: Don’t become that guy.)

In simple terms, mastering the cast (and the reach cast, and the mend, and the stack mend, and the rollcast, and the…) only prepares you to begin your fly fishing journey.

Where you went from there was probably not the subject of a lot of thought; like many of life’s big decisions, it’s a choice often made organically, without much conscious thought.

Still, it’s worth pondering for a minute – preferably while bank sitting your favorite stream.

What kind of fly fisherman have you become?

Quo Vadis

I know one angler who fishes all over the west, but derives a special kick when fly fishing water that may technically be private.

Another thrives on a certain social equation; he’s happy catching a lot of trout (he’s a coldwater guy), but he’s even happier when – at the end of the day – a good bottle of good Irish Whiskey might get passed around a well-populated campfire.

It’s always easier to define others instead of yourself, but in my case, I’m pretty clearly tumbling for smaller waters remote enough to guarantee a bare minimum of contact with other anglers.

If I’m the first to fish the water that year (or can make myself believe I’m the first) then the taste is even sweeter.

At one point in my life, I intended to fish the sport’s better dry fly hatches, but that’s not the bright light it used to be – especially once I realized famous hatches draw sizeable crowds.

So there it is; I prefer an intimate, predatory experience to larger waters, though even I’m not immune to the charms of big fish on big water eating big dries.

Tomorrow, I’m driving into the mountains, hoping to find my way to a small stream that may still be snowbound.

I’m hoping it’s just as I left it late last year, when I thought I could have been the last to fish it before the snow closed the road.

With any luck, I may be the first to fish it this year.

That’s pure hubris, of course. The odds are stacked against me on both ends of the season, yet I’m a fly fisherman, and like every other fly fisherman, I’m a sucker for a poetic ending.

If I fail to reach it, I’ll find my way to another – and far more accessible – stream. It lacks a certain romantic element, though it turns out the brown trout are still plenty fun to catch.

See you on the stream, Tom Chandler.

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