Ryouto’s Debut to Fly Fishing – Fish On Ozenji
We went out for fly fishing at Fish On Ozenji today, and my younger son, 4, successfully caught his first fish, 39cm rainbow trout, on fly. He now follows his brother’s footstep who also caught his first fish at age 4.
He used, exactly the same setting as his older brother, tenkara fly rod called “Easy Fly" with pink egg fly. He couldn’t cast with just one hand, so I led him to do it in double handed.
So, again Easy Fly with pink egg fly proved its might on youngsters who wants to bypass the learning step of fly casting and go straight into fly fishing.
My older son (6), on the other hand, now faces the challenge of casting with conventional fly fishing rod & reel whose fly line doesn’t come easy as much as fixed length tenkara leader. As he finally managed to execute “pick up & lay down", he caught his first trout on white egg fly.
He used both my 3wt floating line tackle and 4wt sinking line tackle and caught fish on both end. Proper fly casting is yet to come, but he now asks me to take him out for practice on ground. Which is a fine first step for this young pupil to start overhead casting.
Next Step for Older Son at Age 6?
Just as I read Joan Wulff’s notes on youngster fly fishing, it is true that young kids don’t have enough physical strength to carry on single-handed fly casting too long. My 6 year old son begins to getting into shape, but he mostly needs to do two-handed casting to stay in game.
He now needs his own fly rod that can give him choice of single/two-handed casting, in which case Echo’s Gekko 4/5wt is probably the best choice. SSP is 99 USD, so let’s see how he does on his next exam.
Next Step for Younger Son at Age 4?
I couldn’t manage enough time for him to go through the same lesson as his older brother on the concept of “catch & release" and “kill for food". So he needs to go through the same thing next time we go out camping near mountain stream.
Also, his tenkra system needs proper line winder to keep things neatly in case we want to move from one spot to another. Let’s see what I can do with DIY tools.