Tyrel Todd Weighs In On ... Fly Fishing
11/30/2006 12:00:00 AM | Wrestling
I've done a lot of different fishing. There's sea fishing, spinner fishing, worm fishing, etc. Fly fishing, however, is definitely the best fishing I've done. When you catch that fish, you're connected to it through the line, and you're feeling every movement that they make. That is probably the coolest part. You can let them go, let them run a little bit on the reel. You're basically tricking the fish, and that's what makes it so much fun.
Todd searches for trout on Rock Crick in Missoula, Mont., made famous by the film A River Runs Through It.
There's definitely an art to it, and the more you do it, the better you get. It comes pretty easy to some people; I think it's just a feel you have to develop. You get better at it by doing it. Once you get the basic feel down, it's just basically trial and error. Once you start figuring things out a bit and start catching fish, it's a blast.
The summer after my freshman year of high school my good friend Jared Payne -- whose dad, Dan Payne, and my dad wrestled together at Montana State and still are best buddies -- came out to Montana for the summer to fly fish. For three months he worked at a sod farm and fished in the afternoons. So I went fishing with him all the time, and it just grew on me. I started to like it more and more every day. Once you're hooked, you just have to go all the time.
My buddies Ross and Ben and I continued to fish all through high school. When we graduated, we took a six-day fishing trip throughout Montana. It was the best week ever. My favorite spot is a little place called Rock Crick in the Gallatin Valley. It's probably about two or three car-lengths wide in most areas. It's just great fishing, and my buddies and I go there all the time. Nobody knows where it is; it's hidden. We go up in there and just fish all day. Nobody can see you, and you catch great fish -- Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, some Brook Trout. If you go up to the mountain lakes and streams, you'll find a lot of Cutthroat and Golden Trout.
There's a lot of different water that you can fish. I'm a pretty good creek fisherman, because I fish that Rocky Creek all the time. You kind of have to sneak up on the fish, get down and cast into a shadow. In a big river, you'll have a lot of line out and really whipping it. That can be tough because you get it all tangled up sometimes and get wind knots. It's really complex. Some people like fishing on lakes, but I've never really done much of it. You need that current.
A 2000 Todd family fishing trip to Pine Creek Lakes. (From left: Tyrel, Jeff, Tel, Kim and Tay).
I really enjoy the quiet of fly fishing, getting out a little away from people. It gives you a lot of time to think and really just gives you peace of mind. All the while, you're getting better at casting. It's something you can always improve on. Once you get into it and start tying flies, you can make the flies and see what works. Even on a day when you're not catching fish, you can still improve fishing and figure out what might be going wrong.
When I was little, my dad would always take us fishing as a family, and we would never catch anything. It was just so depressing. So I started to not like fishing. My dad would always try to figure how we could catch fish each time, but we rarely did. My dad is a bait fisherman, which is boring. I think it's cheating to use worms and live bait. I'm really the only one in my family that got into it. My brother Tay got into motorcycles, and Tel really got into snowboarding.
I probably get out a couple times a week in the summertime when I'm home. I really miss it when I'm in Ann Arbor. During the school year, it's not too bad because we're so busy with classes and wrestling. But in the summer, it's really bad. We have a lot more free time and several days to wait between camp sessions, and you really don't want to just sit at home and watch TV. That's probably the hardest time of year for me. Hopefully, I'll have a vehicle out here next spring, and I can just shoot out and go up north. There are good spots up there. I floated a river up there with Craig Gillison this past summer in Traverse City, and it was great. There were a few fly fishermen out there, and I wanted to be out there with them.
It's continuing to grow in Montana. I think people are catching on. There are a lot of guide outfits popping up, and a few of my friends from high school guide on rivers. People just come in, go up the river and catch fish all day. But as far as I'm concerned, the longer it's kept a secret the better.
Note: "Weighs In on" runs in The Riding Times, an inside look at U-M wrestling.
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