Tyler Befus - The ORVIS Kids Guide to Beginning Fly Fishing: Easy Tips To Catch Fish Today

Copyright 2016 by Tyler Befus

Foreword 2016 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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Manufactured in China, November 2015

This product conforms to CPSIA 2008

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Sarah Brody

Cover photo credit Tom Rosenbauer

Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-338-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-619-9

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

BY TOM ROSENBAUER

You might wonder What the heck is a guy in his early sixties doing writing a foreword for a kids guide to fly fishing ? Good question. First, I have a ten-year-old son, so I have some idea what goes through the mind of a kid, although I will admit that I probably only know what Brett is thinking about maybe a quarter of the time. Also, I heard a friend the other day say that fly fishing appeals to grown men and women because its the only time its appropriate for us to be twelve years old again. I sure dont disagree with that statement. When I am fishing, all my adult troubles become like wisps of mist from a trout stream waterfall, and the only thing I can concentrate on is looking for bugs in the river, spotting fish lying in wait along an undercut bank, and getting a fish to inhale my fake bug so I can match wits with it, trying to get it into my net and safely back into the water after touching it for a brief moment and maybe snapping a quick photo so I can remember its brilliant colors.

I taught myself to fish with a fly rod when I was about eleven or twelve years old. My father took me fishing as early as a toddler, and he loved to fish, but when I got older he became obsessed with golf. We still fished together, but not as much as we used to, and when I decided fly fishing looked fascinating I knew I would have to learn on my own. I know its hard for you to imagine, but in those days we had no YouTube, no Internet at all, and we didnt even have DVDs. If you wanted to see fly fishing in action you would either have to find people who were good at it and follow them around, or, once a week, you could watch the TV show The American Sportsman, where you could see people like Bing Crosby, Curt Gowdy, and Lee Wulff fishing with a fly rod in exotic places around the world. Those names probably dont mean anything to you, but Bing Crosby was one of the most famous singers of the twentieth century, Curt Gowdy was a beloved sports announcer, and Lee Wulff was the most famous fly fisherman in the world. And, no, you couldnt watch this show on demand or record it on TiVo. You got one shot a week, and if you missed it, too bad.

Not a single person in my high school of two thousand kids knew anything about fly fishing. I had one buddy from Boy Scouts who went to another school, and we were able to learn together, borrowing the few books on fly fishing from the library and devouring every issue of Field & Stream and Outdoor Life magazines, searching for the few articles on fly fishing each year. We practiced casting in our yards and tried to get the hang of fly casting, but we really had no idea what we were doing. We finally joined a local Trout Unlimited chapter when we were sixteen and could drive, and luckily some of the older gentlemen in the chapter (we were the youngest members by at least twenty years) took us under their wings and out on trips to local trout streams. And when I went off to college on a campus of close to twenty thousand students, in the four years I was there I only met one person who was a fly fisherthe teaching assistant in my zoology class. Young people who fished with a fly rod were a rarity, as it was the province of stuffy old guys.

Today, there are fly-fishing classes in elementary schools, fly-fishing clubs in high schools, and large, active fly-fishing student groups on many college campuses. You shouldnt have to look far for some instruction from one of your peers, and Im sure youd rather learn from someone your own age than from an old guy like me. Of course, you can also rent or buy DVDs with good fly-fishing instruction, you can stream thousands of hours of great instruction from the web, or you can download helpful podcasts to listen to while driving or cutting the grass (hopefully not during Algebra class, although I know youll be tempted).

Dont rule out books, either. There are a number of reasons to use books to learn fly fishing as well as visual instructions. First, chances are that books are vetted, because someone paid a lot of money to design and print the book you have in your hands, and you can be sure that publishers make sure the instructions and illustrations in a book are credible and valuable. Otherwise, they would be wasting many thousands of dollars to produce the book. Anybody can upload a video to the web, and although there are some great fly-fishing instructions out there in cyber land, there is also a lot of junk done by bozos who really dont know what theyre doing.

I think books are also easier to scan. If you are looking for instructions on a particular area of fly fishing, its so much easier to quickly page through a book to find exactly what you want. Maybe you dont agree because youd just use the search function in Google, and maybe I am showing my age by preferring to scan a physical book. But sometimes its nice to hold a book in your hands, sit back in a comfortable chair, and relax your eyes by getting them away from a screen.

That vetting business I described earlier is especially true for the author of this book, Tyler Befus. The guy has earned his chops and has nothing to prove, because hes already had a rich education in fly fishing. Lucky for Tyler, he has a loving dad who is a superb and patient fly fisher, so Tyler got the head start most of us wont have the opportunity to enjoy. Hes fished many places, from the Great Lakes to Japan. In fact, Tyler was invited to Japan to teach fly fishing to elementary school students by Japans Board of Tourism. You can bet they werent about to buy an expensive plane ticket for a kid who didnt know anything about instructing fly fishing.

Tyler was also on the USA Youth Fly Fishing Team, probably the highest honor for any kid involved in fly fishing. Competitive fishing is demanding and hard work and it may not appeal to you, but to get on a competitive team like this takes real skill. Lots of kids try out for this team but very few make it, and the kids who do make the team are coached by some of the finest adult fly fishers in the world. Having Tyler share what hes learned in that experience is a great benefit to those of us who read his book.

I really admire the way Tyler presents his information. His writing is clear and concise, and he doesnt overwhelm us with jargon or overly technical descriptions of fly fishing. After all, its just another way of fishing, and fishing is supposed to be easy and fun, not a chore like schoolwork.