I made a spur of the moment trip to Maramec Springs Trout Park today with my Father-In-Law. He has never fly fished before, and I invited him to join me — completely forgetting about the crowds that Labor Day Weekend brings to the trout parks. The weather report was for heavy thunderstorms and temps in the low 70s; but no rain when I woke up and we ran into a little rain on the drive down but not much. We spent about 30 minutes out in the big field by the pavilion trying to show him how to cast a fly rod — it was sloppy but it was not his fault as I learned that I am not a good teacher. We then headed up to the top of the park to try our luck. I didn’t fish hardly at all, and spent time with him trying to show him how to cast and how to control his line and what not. I did have three hookups with fish (one on a black wooly bugger, one on a softhackle, and one on a brown mohair leech), but they all were when I was just drifting my line and retying my father-in-laws fly or untangling a knot or something. All in all it was a good trip. We only fished till 10am, and did not catch a fish. However, there was no crowd and the scenery with the fog on the water (due to the colder temps and misting rain) was awesome. I also found out that it is best to leave the teaching of fly casting to the guys at the fly shop. For those of you in St. Louis, Feather-Craft Fly Shop offers free casting lessons on Saturday morning in their casting yard. The first words out of his mouth as he went in to say hello to my wife was “That fly fishing is allot harder than it looks.” If he only knew the half of it.
