Fly Fishing For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Fish don’t do much if water is too hot or too cold, so you might not want to waste your time fly fishing in certain weather conditions. Use this guide, (along with a thermometer) to decide if you’re going to fish or stay home and clean your fly gear. (All temperatures are in Fahrenheit.)

Here are a few important pointers that you need to keep in mind about fly fishing. All of them have to do with getting your fly to the fish without scaring the fish away. Scared fish don’t eat, so no matter what you cast to them, no matter how pretty the cast, they will stay away.

• Keep a cool head. You see a fish that is finning quietly just below the surface. No scene is more enticing to an angler, yet at no other moment is a fish so skittish. When approaching a fish like this — in fact, when moving through any water where you think you might find fish — steady yourself, concentrate, breathe, and follow the rest of the rules here.
• Go slow. The faster you move, the more likely you are to make a disturbance. In calm water, moving slowly is a matter of taking a step, waiting a second for the ripples to subside, and then taking another step. The same goes for rowing or paddling your boat, kayak, or canoe — do it slowly and steadily.
• Be quiet, please. Be careful about banging your oars, scraping rocks with your boots, or walking with heavy footfalls. Sound travels well underwater. Take it easy, take it slow, and if you must do anything, do it quietly.
• Stay out of sight. In most cases, if you can see the fish, the fish can see you. This rule is not always true, however. For example, if you are downstream of a rising trout, it probably won’t notice you. Still, the basic idea is this: Stay out of the line of sight of wary fish. How do you do that? First, blend into the background. Although you don’t need full camouflage, wearing clothing that is the same color as the background against which the fish will see you is a good idea. Next, keep a low profile. An angler should stay low and out of sight.
• Be chill. I just want to re-emphasize how important it is to stay cool, calm, collected, and quiet. The more enticing the fish, the harder keeping quiet may be. But the only way that you are going to be sure not to scare off a trophy fish is by being quiet.

Fly lines are rated according to their weight. A 1 Weight is a very light line used with an extremely flexible rod. As fly line numbers go up, so does the weight. Rods are rated according to the weight of the line they throw. This table lists recommendations of line (and rod) weights for some common game fish.