...It’s a beautiful day in early spring. You are standing beside a beautiful river flowing through the mountains of Colorado. In your hands you hold your gear. You are brimming with excitement as you imagine what you will catch today. You are getting ready to fly fish and you can’t wait to get started!
People have been fly fishing for years. In its beginnings, people would use flies to fish with for food, but then it turned into a sport and now anglers fly fish for both food and sport.
Fly fishing is a traditional angling method that uses artificial flies for lures that are made of materials like fur and feathers. The flies are fastened onto a hook and are meant to imitate a fish’s natural food source. The rods are light, but the lines are heavy providing the weight and momentum for casting.
Fly fishermen use a series of casting moves meant to imitate the bug on water. The techniques are wide and varied. When casting much of the rod’s movement comes from the angler’s wrist.
Fly fishing as a sport is something many people find amazingly enjoyable. Most fly fishing is done in certain places like Colorado, Montana, and Wisconsin. The fish most often caught are trout and salmon, although anglers can catch a variety of fish with their flies...

...Back cast – The portion of any fly cast that extends beyond the person doing the casting.
Bass Bug - Name used to describe a large number of surface bass flies usually tied with hollow hair (such as deer hair).
Bass Bug Taper - A special weight forward floating fly line with a short front taper so that the generally wind-resistant bass bugs can turn over.
Blood Knot - The most widely used knot for tying two pieces of monofilament with similar diameters together; the best knot for construction of a knotted tapered leader; also called the barrel knot.
Breaking Strength - Amount of effort required to break a single strand of unknotted monofilament or braided line, usually stated in pounds (example: 6 lb. test).
Caddis - One of the three most important aquatic insects imitated by fly fishermen; found world wide in all freshwater habitats; adult resembles a moth when in flight; at rest the wings are folded in a tent shape down the back; the most important aquatic state of the caddis is the pupa, which is its emerging stage
Casting Arc - The path that the fly rod follows during a complete cast, usually related to the face of a clock...

...Turle Knot
The Turle knot is ideal when tying on flies with turned-up or turned-down eyes to your leader. This gives your fly good action because of the way the knot causes the leader to pull away from the hook. It can be tied with one or two wraps of an overhand knot.
Step 1: Pass the leader end through the hook-eye. Take two wraps around the standing line and pass the tag end through the loops forming a simple overhand knot. Tighten it down.
Step 2: Pass the fly through the large loop formed and snug it against the hook-eye.
Step 3: Tighten down and trim off the excess.
(knot pics here)...

...A haul is a pull or tug on the line that is normally done during the back cast or the forward cast. It increases the speed of the line, enabling you to make longer casts with less strain on your casting arm.
You can also use it during the pickup to ease the line off the water with a shorter stroke than you'd normally need. When a caster hauls during the pickup, he's usually doing it because he is trying to pick up and back cast a long line, one so long that he just doesn't have enough rod travel in his pickup-and-back cast to get the job done.
Before you make your single haul, make sure you have enough slack between your line hand and the reel to permit the longest haul you can make without yanking line off the reel during the haul. To haul on the pickup, begin pulling on the line directly away from your rod hand the instant you begin the pickup...