Fly Fishing's Learning Curve

As the fishing season kicks on, it's easy to get complacent that you're catching enough fish and that you've figured it out. Maybe, just maybe you're missing something.

For me the attraction to fly fishing is trying to perfect the unperfectable. We generally all know the fact that we won't know it all, and that we'll always have the odd curve ball thrown at us by the weather and/or the fish. What very few of us do is actively go out of our way to spice up our own fishing by learning and trying new techniques.

Here are a few idea's to improve your fishing experience and put you at the leading edge of the learning curve.

1. Call Chris

As a good starting point, there are a bunch of great guides out there like Chris Dore. A guy like Chris can not only give you a great day on the water fishing somewhere new, he can also help you to improve your casting skills, show you how better to read water, give you a new point of view on fly selection ..... the list goes on. Anyway you get the point right? Letting a guy like Chris into your fishing world will improve your skills and your fishing will never be the same again.

2. Go see Mike

Mike Davis is an owner in the Hunting and Fishing store in Rotorua. What's important to note is that Mike is one of the best fly fisher's in New Zealand. So when you go into his store not only do you get to see a bunch of cool tackle. You get the right advice to back it up. Mike wont just sell you any rod he'll find the right one to suit your needs. So what's the difference? The fact that a guy like Mike spends his spare time on the rivers, is a really big deal, in a day and age when there is more gear than any of us would ever need the most important thing in getting the right product is someone with a good understanding of what is available and what will best suit your needs.

3. Compete with Yoshi, you know you want to

One of the great ways I improved my fishing skills was entering fly fishing competitions. I was suddenly in a bunch of different fishing situations where I needed to figure out how to catch fish. Yoshi from Newmarket's Rod and Reel is a great competition angler and will be able to let you know how you can get into competition fishing and how to gear yourself up to be successful.

4. Read Zane's stuff

Zane Mirfin is New Zealand's most published Fly Fishing writer and photographer. What's more is Zane is a phenominal angler and guide, we fished together at the start of the season and Zane totally showed me up. What was great is I learnt a lot and now really take time to read every word Zane writes. So check out Fish and Game magazine and any of Zanes books and take note, this guy knows what he's talking about.

5. It's all about people

As you can see from this it's all about the getting in touch with the right people and learning what you can from them. And there are a bunch of great guys and girls around the country that you can learn from. The most important thing you can do is make sure you are up for change. Remember if you spend 20 years doing the same thing every day you still end up with just one days experience.There is too much to learn is so little time you'd better get cracking.