He’s Trying!

My six year old – wow – actually he’ll be turning 7 next week – said to me, “Dad, I want my own fly rod.” I’ve never tried to teach such young children how to fly cast and really wanted him to express an interest in casting it himself before I tried to “force” it on David. He’s always enjoyed coming along with me when I go to the ponds as he can hang out on the long casting platform with me, or kick a ball around on the grass. But mostly, he likes to “help” me retrieve line. There have been times when fish have hit when it’s David that is doing the retrieve too. That’s fun.

When he expressed an interest in having his own fly rod, I did some research and the Echo Gecko rod was recommended to me. It has a small diameter grip that better fits children’s hands and is 7’9″. However, the shops that are in close proximity to don’t have any in stock.  So today, I took out the lightest rod I have that I wouldn’t worry too much about it being broken – an inexpensive White River 9′ 5 wt. Definitely a bit on the long side for a wee fellow that stands just under 4′ tall.

So we went down to the dock and the first thing we tried to master was the roll cast.  He actually did a pretty good job of that but got bored of it fast. He wanted to learn to backcast.

Because he lost his sunglasses, I decided not to put a fly on the end of his leader. And David was satisfied with that and decided he just wanted to practice casting. Well, he doesn’t quite have tight loops – but hey… he could put 15 feet of fly line out straight in front of him. Didn’t always look pretty but he was doing pretty good once he got started at remembering to keep the tip of the rod low and pretending he was peeling tape off the water as he lifted the line. Took a bit to get him to try to stop his cast at the 2 o’clock position, but at least he has it in his head.  And the best part was that he had fun and enjoyed it. He laughed at himself when things went wrong and then got right back into practicising some more.  Here’s a couple of photos of him:

We’ll work a bit more on arm positioning etc later – for now I just want him to have fun. But I do think I’m going to have find a shorter rod for him too.

Any readers that have experience teaching kids at 6 and 7 years old to fly cast? Anything to focus on or try to make sure they get in the habit of doing right away?  I don’t want make this seem too much like work for him although he doesn’t mind work either. We ended up staying out until after dark until the mosquitoes started to eat us alive, so I know the wee fellow is pretty keen on this!