Where did it start?

[ffb]

Found this pic in a photo album today. Neither of my parents fished so I was on my own to learn but they would take me to the library to check out books and VHS tapes. Pretty sure I borrowed every fly fishing or tying book and video that Kitsap Regional Library had back in 2000 or so. My dad would drive me all over to fish wherever it was that I had looked up or been invited to. I spent a lot of time in the old FAOL chat room back then too trying to soak up as much info as possible. Looks like I'm tying a really mean wooly bugger here.

 

[Bob Carroll]

My Dad was born/ raised in South Side Chicago…not much fishing there. Was an NCO in the Army in WWII and then Air Force beginning 1950 or so. Was assigned to Kingsley Field (Klamath Falls, OR) 1964-66. During that time, he bought a couple of spinning rod setups and took us fishing for catfish off some bridge about an hour away from home a few times. Us 4 redheaded kids loved it. Then he was reassigned to Europe and that was it for a long time.

But I was always drawn to the idea of fly fishing. In 2000, I had an opportunity to attend a multi-day Orvis school in Coeur d’Alene, ID. I was 45. Went from there. Thankfully, my Seattle born/ raised girlfriend (now wife) loves the outdoors and fly fishing too and we have had many adventures together.

Our 9yo granddaughter is already learning and loves it!

 

[krusty]

For me it was bait fishing at my grandfather's farm on Dragoon Creek around 1959, when I was 7. Pretty much had the run of that whole area for hunting (mostly jump shooting ducks, pheasants, and armed with my little scoped JC Higgins single shot 22 I was welcomed to dispatch ground squirrels all over Wild Rose Prairie) and fishing since all the farmers knew him, and it was long before that area's suburbanization and devolution into patchwork hobby farms.

Started flyfishing around 10 years of age, and soon thereafter 'recruited' into flytying because my dad lost so many flies (sometimes entire flyboxes) on the thin blue lines we fished. Gotta be quite a few of his old Perrine flyboxes out there still stuck under logjams.

 

[Xoxo]

Found this pic in a photo album today. Neither of my parents fished so I was on my own to learn but they would take me to the library to check out books and VHS tapes. Pretty sure I borrowed every fly fishing or tying book and video that Kitsap Regional Library had back in 2000 or so. My dad would drive me all over to fish wherever it was that I had looked up or been invited to. I spent a lot of time in the old FAOL chat room back then too trying to soak up as much info as possible. Looks like I'm tying a really mean wooly bugger here.

View attachment 6193

What a cool dad you had!

 

[Paige]

Started out about 3 or 4 fishing for trout with a single egg at Martha lake behind the tavern, but was going out even before then. Chased the old man all over the north sound rivers from age 5 or so, mostly on the Skykomish as it was only 20 minute drive.

Pic of my sisters fishing for smelt and me not happy I wasn't!


My Sister and me with the mornings haul! I'm sure I puked that day LOL!


For some reason I can't find any pics with my first Steelhead I caught all by myself, well 2 actually as I limited before dad had even mad a cast!

A Point Wilson dart did this fish in at Mid channel circa 1984ish!


Still looking through some old albums and boxes upon boxes of pictures.

 

[Old Man]

Used to jig for smelt when I lived in Poulsbo. Used a jig line. 6 small treble hooks in a line. Used smelt for bait. Used to catch them off one of the floating docks in the harbor. This was in 1949. Before it became a tourists town.