practice

Earlier in the week, I protected this Sunday morning for practicing my fly casting. Lately, I have been putting in some hours on the grass along the Charles, but today I chose to bike to Jamaica Pond and get some practice casting on the water. I tied on an elk hair caddis and got to flailing my stick at the water. I got better with time, but was clearly struggling. Every now and then, a cast would feel and look good, but most often, the line would drop in a pile....

Boston got a warm day in the upper 50’s (Fahrenheit), so I took the opportunity to get some quality casting practice in over at Jamaica Pond. The warmer weather not only made standing by the water more tolerable, it also reduced the memory1 stuck in the line and I no longer had to worry about frost building on my on line if it sat still for half a minute. I was far more successful this time around....

I returned this morning to Jamaica Pond with the primary goal of finding the Wooly Bugger I lost yesterday. Took a few minutes of shuffling in the freezing cold, but I eventually found my fly. With the primary objective accomplished, I decided it was worth trying my hand at casting practice again since the wind was relatively calm. So I strung up the rod, tied in my Bugger, and gave it another go....

This afternoon, I took my Redington Crosswater and collection of a dozen flies down to Jamaica Pond for my first go at fly casting. It was freezing (literally) and windy, but at least the sun was out. I strung up the rod with a #16 Parachute Adams thinking it would help me see the fly as I took my first step into fly fishing. Instead, I failed miserably as the wind prevented me from making any forward movement with the line....