Fly fishing just looks classy, and face it, there are some anglers out there who could use an image upgrade. You know who you are; you spit whenever and wherever you please. "Sorry about your poodle ma'am, I didn't see her. Oh, it's a him." And then there was the time your spouse took you to a modern art gallery opening, and you loudly critiqued the paintings by saying, "Art? That painting looks like a raccoon dipped its paw in paint and scratched it on the page." And when they brought hors d'oeuvres, you tried to wrestle it away from the non-English speaking waiter, saying, "Is this all that they're gonna feed us?" While fly fishing alone may not improve your social standing, at least from a distance you'll appear marginally less rough than the proverbial cob.

First, you need equipment, so you head down to the upscale Orbiz store in town, which should have everything you need. The sales guy there reminds you of Jeeves the butler, and when he quotes you $400 for the price of an "entry level" setup, you burst out laughing at the obvious joke, until you notice he's not sharing in the jocularity. Channeling John McEnroe, you blurt out, "You cannot be serious" Unfortunately, he is, so you revert to Plan "B" and take a trip to the flea market, where you get a perfectly serviceable, state-of-the-art outfit from 1950 for $20. The store still tags you $50 for the fly line, which reminds you of a similar scam in which printer companies charge you for ink as if it's gold, while the printer itself only costs you around $69.   

To learn how to fly fish, you could go to one of those fancy schools at a resort that charges more for a weekend seminar than the cost of gall bladder surgery, but you've always been a do-it-yourself kind of person anyway. Besides, how hard can it be? For heaven's sake, they taught Brad Pitt how to do it for the movie A River Runs Through It, and he looked pretty good. Of course, he would look suave even if he were a sloppy Roto Rooter technician. But heck, you taught yourself how to tie a knot in a cocktail straw with your tongue, so this fly fishing thing should be a piece of cake.

You figure it's just like deploying a buggy whip, although you've never actually used one of those either, so you head to the backyard and are amazed by how easy it is. With no hook on the line, you make long and accurate casts with only a few minutes of practice, and with confidence brimming, you head to the lake.

As you're tying on the fly, you notice that the wind is kicking up a little, but with your newly honed skills, that shouldn't be a problem. You start casting, hear a loud crack and notice that your fly is missing. Hmmm, must not have tied it on too well. So you tie on another $4 "woolly mammoth" (or whatever) fly, and darned if you don't do it again. By now, you've figured out that you're forward casting too soon, cracking the fly off like a whip, so you slow down, and the next cast engulfs you with the loose coils of line. Must not have used enough "oomph." So on the next cast, you put as much muscle into it as an Olympic javelin thrower, and the fly rockets forward at the speed of gossip, and bang! It sticks you right in the ear. In retrospect, you wish you'd taken the advice of the tackle store guy and gone barbless, since now you need help getting it out. So you leave it in, looking like some sort of half-baked, piscatorial pirate. And then the secret of successful fly fishing suddenly comes to you: Just troll with the darn thing and forget about the casting.