My whole life, I've been a conventional rod and reel fisherman. I started like everyone else with a Zebco and worm under a bobber catching bluegill and sunfish with my dad. As I grew up, I moved on to crankbaits and soft plastics targeting bass like I was a member of the pro fishing tour, using stink bait to try and land channel cat in the summer hot summer months. Now I have discovered something new. Something I thought was only for trout anglers in the mountains and wealthy socialites wanting a rustic picture of themselves to hang on their office wall. Fly fishing; my interest started when I was watching movies in the negative fifty Iowa windchill last February. Watching the movie "A River Runs Through It" now I'm sure I'm not the only one who has started fly fishing because of that movie, making probably a basic bitch when it comes to my fly fishing story but none the less that's my story. As the spring came and turned into summer my knowledge started to grow in the field of fly fishing and even now half a year later as I sit here typing this, instead of studying for the test I have tomorrow, I have a lot more to learn, and I can't wait to do that. The question though for me now is which is better? Now I don't mean which is the superior form of fishing because any kind of fishing and being in the outdoors is great and should be cherished but which is better for me. A week ago I would have said fly fishing walking away is the only way I'm going to fish for the foreseeable future. It's fun, exciting and new to me. The more I learned, the more obsessed I became with it. Starting with catching small bluegill in a pond by my apartment, I was relearning to fish like I had when I was a kid. Eventually, moving to trout streams and catching brown trout on dry flies for the first time was a fantastic experience I won't forget. Then learning about fly fishing for bass and going out and accomplishing that on my third cast with a sex dungeon fly. Fly fishing was the only way to catch fish, or that's what I was beginning to think. That was until this weekend. In Minnesota, I decided to leave the fly rod at home and only bring my spinning real some panfish lures. The main reason is we would be fishing out of a canoe the whole time, and I didn't feel like learning to fly cast in a seated position. I hadn't picked up my conventional tackle since the spring, and I honestly was a little disappointed I wasn't bringing my fly rod with me. I was using just a standard panfish jig and jig for crappie and walleye, or really anything that would bite. We had very little success just catching small sunfish and small pike. That was until we got into a crappie hole Saturday afternoon and caught a one-man limit. It was after that when I remembered how much fun conventional tackle is. I was flooded with the feelings I had about fishing when I was a little kid catching blue gill with my dad. Conventional tackle allowed me to switch from jigs to live bait when it came down to needing to catch fish to eat.
Being able to have the ability to change tactics to easily is one of the advantages of conventional tackle. So that brings me back to the central question of this blog, which is better? My answer, well it's a copout. I would say a person should know how to do both. Conventional tackle is excellent. It's easy to learn and gives a lot of opportunity to a high number of people to get out and fish. Fly fishing, at least for me, had improved my conventional tackle skill by allowing me to look at fishing from a different point of view. From presentation to fly or jigs to use, I'm a better angler because of fly fishing. Now, if I had to pick one to take out with me, I'm going to fly fishing. It's new, exciting, and I'm still learning. I love the challenge that it brings every time I go out. It's like a puzzle that needs to be solved, whether I'm going for bass in a lake or trout in a stream, every time is different and brings its own set of challenges. I encourage anybody who hasn't started fly fishing to do so and if you want to but are worried about it being to expensive check my podcast episode 3, where I break down some of the gear I have to start.