Not for us Wyomingites

A few weeks ago, I traveled with Grandpa to Washington D.C. We had the best time, we saw and learned so much, and it made us really glad to live in such a great country! One of the days we were there towards the end of our visit, a buddy of ours, Joel, who lives in the D.C. area, invited us to go fly-fishing with him on the Potomac. We were to catch many different types of fish, including shad and catfish. Grandpa packed his fly rod for the two of us to split, and we were ready to go.
        Joel picked us up from our hotel north of D.C. in Maryland, ready to go with all sorts of fishing gear. From there it was about a twenty minute drive to a spot on the Potomac south of the city near Alexandria. We rented a small little rowboat, got our gear in order, tied a little black fly on the rods, made lunch, and set sail for deep waters towards the other side of the river.

      It was fun from the start. Grandpa and I were so used to mountain trout fly fishing, so Joel had to teach us the whole new way of doing it. Contrary to before, this new way of doing it involved throwing out the weighted line, letting the current take it out and under the water, then stripping it back in slowly. When a fish caught on, in order to set the hook, rather than pulling back on the pole with all your might, this new method was called “strip-setting.” You took grabbed some loose line and stripped it back like heck. This was really new for us Wyomingites, and it took a ton of getting used to. Right at the beginning, I felt a sharp tug. I did this crazy flailing thing with the pole that may have worked back home, but definitely not in Virginia, and the fish fell off. Grandpa took a gander at it and did much the same thing. Oh, dear.   

     I finally got the hang of it somewhat, and I almost brought a fish in, bringing it just feet from the boat. Joel brought in a nice shad, and people nearby seemed to be doing well. What matters was, though, is that we were having a blast and learning all kinds of cool new things. Soon, we realized that all of us were getting kind of hungry. At that precise moment, we also realized that nobody had brought the lunch along. Ai karumba. We went all the way back to shore and ate lunch. Others who were fishing only a bit downstream from us had brought in about a dozen shad and catfish, but we didn’t seem to be having as much luck. After lunch, Joel took off for the bank to try to do some river-side fishing, but no luck. Ah well. You can’t win every day I guess. 
         Grandpa and I traveled to the other side of the country to learn some cool things about our nation’s capital and to see and do some way awesome stuff. Little did we know, however, that we would get a taste of a very new and foreign type of fishing, and boy did we love it!

-The Ranger