Digital Edition
Balanced Fishing by reavis z. wortham
PHOTO: LUCELUCELUCE, CANSTOCK
I WAS “SKUNKED” AGAIN this past weekend while fly-fishing with my family on a skinny Oklahoma river. Skunked is an Old Timey word meaning I didn’t catch a fish. Not one. There is probably a good reason for being skunked, since a couple of kids sitting on the bank not far away were hauling them in with a traditional cane pole outfit including line, a weight, a hook, and a can of worms. Traditionalists. I was showing my daughter and son-in-law how to use a fly rod, but the wind was a bear that day. The little 5-wt rod is almost perfectly balanced with the reel, and is a dream to cast, but not in a hurricane. In a frustrated effort to heave the fly into fishable water, I dug out a box of salmon flies and tied on a monstrosity that worked like a champ, but on a 9-wt rod. T F & G
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The whole desperate mess was virtually impossible to cast. We gave up, went back to camp, and opened a bottle of single malt to salve our wounded pride. While sitting beside an aromatic cedar-wood fire that cool night, I explained how the casting ability of the rig was completely destroyed by the sodden, heavy fly, and that conversation branched into a discussion of properly balanced fishing
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7/27/12 8:51 AM