The image of his fly-fishing beginnings is as fresh for Bob Swan as it was 36 years ago when he walked into a hardware store in Green Bay.
“I met a neat, old guy and there he was sitting at a fly-tying vise,” said Swan, 60, a viola player for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “I bought an old bamboo fly rod sitting in the window. The first cast I ever made I hooked about a 9-pound steelhead. I was also new at tying knots and the knot came undone.”
Swan’s brief tale explains a lot about fly-fishing. Mostly about how it will hoodwink a novice into thinking it is easy but then swiftly shoot down the notion.
One thing that is not easy, even for a sophisticated veteran, is being a fly-fisherman in Chicago. Chicago is a terrific and pleasing urban fishery, with Lake Michigan at its doorstep, the Chicago River running through the back yard and lagoons dotting the neighborhoods.
Swan, who quickly became hooked, is one of a small number of fly-fishermen who work the lakefront for coho salmon and the occasional steelhead.
He usually casts from the concrete abutments near the Shedd Aquarium. Robert Tomes, 43, of Chicago is another avid fly-fisherman, who sometimes casts from Navy Pier or near the Shedd.
But there are hazards.
“You can catch bicyclists,” Tomes said. “That’s why I don’t do it much after Memorial Day. The lifeguards really don’t want you to.”
Only the most devoted Chicago fly-fishermen actually fly-fish in Chicago, it seems. For most, like the long-term members of the 54-year-old Anglers Club of Chicago, it means flying somewhere else to fish.
“We have a big airport and I can go anywhere in the world I want to,” Tomes said. “Montana, for one. It’s kind of in their blood. They have wonderful rivers.”
Tomes also has gone fly-fishing in New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and the Bahamas.
Fly-fishermen have frequent-flier miles, will travel.
In his recent book, “Fly-Fishing the 41st,” James Prosek, a noted author and artist of fishing subjects, fished around the world at 41 degrees latitude, from Connecticut through France, to Russia and Mongolia. He tried to catch the perfect trout in the Tigris River.
“One day I left in a straight line from home at 41 Kachele Street (Easton, Conn.), east along the 41st parallel,” Prosek wrote, “following my passion for fish. It was a journey not only away from home, but toward it; which is the beauty of traveling in a circle, and the irony of adventure.”
Almost all fly-fishermen begin like other youngsters, with inexpensive poles, using minnows for bait as they try to land bluegill, only later to switch emphasis.
Tomes worked in a fly shop in Wilmette when he was 14, so he was exposed to fly-fishing experts at an early age.”[Fly-fishing is] a whole different environment,” he said, “but the skills you learn as a bait fisherman, those are vital skills. They teach you about fish behavior. You have to be able to read water.”
How easy is it, really, to be a fly-fisherman in the Chicago area?
“It’s easy,” said Bill Davis, 45, of Northbrook, another club member. “But you pretty much have to travel outside Chicago, at least to southwestern Wisconsin. In Indiana and Michigan there is steelhead on the St. Joseph’s River.”
The 85-member Anglers Club–which meets monthly for lunch, lectures and storytelling–organizes one exotic outing a year, and Davis said recent journeys have included trips to the Florida Keys for bonefish and Cape Cod for striped bass.
“On Cape Cod, we caught 25 to 30 fish a day,” Davis said. “It was a continuous thrill. I’d love to be fishing more in the Illinois area. I don’t even own an Illinois fishing license.”
Mike Carothers, 46, of Kenilworth, grew up in Massachusetts, where he went fishing often. His dad introduced him to fly-fishing in Colorado when he was 12.
“It sort of grew from there,” said Carothers, current president of the Anglers Club.
Swan, who likens fly-fishing strategy to chess, and Carothers are fascinated by the process.
“There’s something really intriguing about trying to fool a fish into thinking it’s trying to eat a fly,” Carothers said.
