"John Fereira" wrote in message
.. .

When I first started kayaking one of my primary goals was to use the boat
as
a means to get to point A to point B while where I could weild my flyrod.
I
haven't done much kayak fishing since then but one trick I learned was to
bring along a little plastic paddle from a cheapo pool raft that I could
use
to position the boat for casting. Casting from a kayak with a flyrod can
be
difficult (having a good roll cast helps) but hook into a large fish and
it's a lot of fun. I once hooked into a very large carp that dragged me
around for a half an hour before it finally broke off. I saw the fish
once
and it looked to be well over 10 pounds.

The thought of being dragged around by a large fish has a certain appeal,
but I really didn't buy the kayak with the intention of fishing from it.
What I had in mind was exactly what we did on my first outing in a friend's
boat. He and I were in single seater kayaks, while four others were
distributed in a two seater and a canoe (the canoe was VERY handy for
carrying food and beer!). The whole point of the venture was to drift for a
bit and stop freqently to get out and fish likely looking spots for
smallmouth (well, that and the company and yet another excuse......as if one
were needed.....to indulge in more beer). This was in Penns creek in
central Pennsylvania. A bit further upstream from where we did our float,
Penns is justly famous as a magnificent trout stream. I love fly fishing
for trout.......but smallmouth are also dear to my shrivelled little heart.
The method we employed wasn't especially productive on that day (that's why
they call it "fishing".....not "catching", right?) but it was an awesome day
and I fell immediately and hopelessly in love with scooting around the river
for a bit and then wading in the shallow water while fishing with the boat
tethered to my waist.

As far as the community goes, I've been participating on the Internet for
20
years and have been involved in a lot of them. Rec.boats.paddle is a good
one.

Feels right homey so far.

I also participated in the flyfishing groups for a number of years (I
wrote the RFD for the flytying group) and made a lot of virtual friends
from
those groups. A week ago or so I was sitting at home on a Sunday
afternoon
and got a call from a guy that also used to read the FF groups. He'd been
in town on business and just looked me up to call and chat about the local
flyfishing before he got on a plane. It's not exactly fishing season here
but if he would have called earlier in the day we could have grabbed a
couple of my flyrods and ventured down to the lake to wet a fly. This
community is similar in that many regulars might meet up when traveling,
loan a kayak, and go out and spend some time on the water. I know that
there are quite a few people that have contributed to this group that I'd
love to paddle with some day.

If you'd like to rekindle an interest in fly fishing groups on line,
rec.outdoors.fishing.fly is far and away the best place to go. Given your
background, I'll assume you don't need to be warned about the possible
pitfalls. As is true with any newsgroup, we've our share of "unusual"
individuals there.......some might go so far as to list me among them......I
wouldn't know about that. At any rate, over the course of the last six
years I have not only made numerous virtual friends there, I have also been
fortunate enough to make several very good literal ones.

Wolfgang