So for the past year, Amanda has been into fly fishing and she seems to love it. She works at a fish hatchery, so it's easy for her to walk over to the river and fish after work. By the way, catching fish at a fish hatchery isn't easy, they seem to be smarter there.

Anyway, so last week I bought a rod and reel so I could go fishing with her. I didn't get anything expensive or fancy, but they seem nice. I found out that just buying a rod, reel and line wasn't all. You have to install backing which is thick string that you start on your reel, then tie the actual fly line onto that, then you have to tie a leader on the end of the fly line. The leader looks more like traditional fishing line that you can tie or, in Amanda's and my case, has a plastic connection point so you can switch them in and out when you need a new one. Anywho, there was much more to the preparation than I anticipated.

Once I got it all put together, I went outside for the next few days to practice my casting, which also isn't very easy. It looks cool when you get the motion down, but making a perfect cast takes some work.

On Saturday, Amanda and I went to her work and out for my first fly fishing expedition. The conditions were pretty far from ideal. It was cold and it rained and stopped, rained and stopped, rained and stopped, on top of that, we were wading in the river. We had waders on, but you could feel the cold of the water through them, not to mention, my hands were absolutely frozen. After about an hour of fishing (which in my case was actually digging my fly out of brush and getting the line untwisted from the end of my rod) we decided to go inside. This was welcome because; a) I was freezing; b) my poor fly was destroyed from the branches and the fish were probably laughing at me; and c) I was freezing.

After getting a snack, a new fly and warming my digits, we set back out to try again. I got tangled in brush less often, but still didn't catch anything. It's possible that I suck as a fly fisherman, but I got to spend some time outdoors with Amanda (who didn't catch anything either) and learned a new hobby.

Next time I'll have tales of large brown, rainbow and whatever kinds, of trout and warm weather.