Looking for bugs and bites

You can walk into the Taylor Creek Fly Shop as clueless about fly-fishing as anyone has ever been and walk out knowing the difference between a stonefly, mayfly and a midge.

Ahhh, the intricacies of fly-fishing. From now on, look out trout.

The Taylor Creek Fly Shop in Basalt offers free fly-fishing classes on Saturday mornings. The classes started in April and continue through June, so there's just enough time to catch a full rotation of four courses.

"The reason we do these classes is to give something back to the locals," shop manager Tim Heng said. "I bet we've been doing this for about eight years."

It starts out with the basics of equipment. Instructors cover things like tying knots and how to use hip waders. The second class is a basic casting clinic out in a parking lot, so no fish or people get hurt. The third class is all about the little bugs fish eat and how to make a fly look just like a real fly. The fourth course is about reading the water.

So, in a month students can gain just enough knowledge to become really intrigued.

"The key to fly-fishing is figuring out what the fish are eating," said Kirk Webb, the instructor on Saturday and a fly-fisherman for more than a decade. "It's a chess game."

Yes, some fishermen may just go out and noodle around, toss any old hook on their line and see if they catch something.

Not Webb.

In a little more than an hour, he showed the 20 or so people in the class that fly-fishing is a whole different game.

He walked out into the Fryingpan River, just behind the shop, and used a wire seine to catch as many bugs as he could. Then he brought it to the outside table while everyone gathered around to check out what he caught.

The first one he picked out was a stonefly nymph. These little buggers live under and near rocks in streams and serve as a delicacy for passing trout.

Then he showed a mayfly nymph, so named because they often enter into the adult stage of being an adult fly in May.

Anyone at the class now knows how to look for fish that are feeding on nymphs rather than adults. Unfortunately, that's a trade secret and can only be given away in a hushed undertone.

"A seine," said Webb, in a somewhat hushed tone, "is going to be one of your best friends when you're out on the river."

Joel Stonington's e-mail address is jstonington@aspentimes.com