Casting Through the Ages

I warily close in on the fly rod, sizing it up like a snake that will bite if I don’t grab it just the right way.

“I am not sure I am going to be able to do this,” I say.

A few weeks earlier, learning to fly fish seemed like a great idea on the eve of turning 40. Something new and adventurous, something novel and romantic. But now I’m doubtful. My vision of whipping graceful S-curves through the air suddenly seems far-fetched.

“I promise you I am not going to allow that to happen,” replies Dustin Stanberry, the resident fly fishing expert for the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

Stanberry assures me he’s taught scores of first-timers from this very spot. Framed by weeping willows, a mirage of the regal Biltmore House reflects in the lagoon at our feet. 

A path hems the shore. Smart visitors who leave ample time for exploring the estate grounds stroll by to photograph the perfect shot of the house on a distant knoll. A retired couple in lawn chairs basks in the view, wiling away the afternoon. 

While I grapple with my grip, Stanberry checks in on my husband. He is several yards away—a safe distance for us novices—pumping his elbow back and forth while the line flails overhead like a lasso. He releases with gusto, and the grass gets a flogging.

“Let the rod and reel do the work,” Stanberry tells him. “A lot of people try to strong arm this out there, but this is not a muscle game.”

Stanberry somehow deduces that my husband is mechanically minded and ladles a helping of physics into his pointers. The rod is like a spring, he explains. It bends and bows, storing up potential energy to fuel the final cast. 

“Now step number two comes in. You have to make an abrupt stop to transfer the energy from the loaded rod to the line itself,” Stanberry says.

My husband seems to be getting it, so Stanberry slides back to my side. I’ve only held a fishing pole twice in my life—both times with my kids at a stocked trout pond, and both times I hollered for help at the slightest hint of a nibble. 

Stanberry ducks as I cock my pole back.

“When we watch fly casting, it looks like an art form. It looks very delicate and fluid,” Stanberry says. “It looks easy, but there are a lot of moving pieces to it.”

“Mine falls on the ground like a spaghetti noodle,” I note. 

“We’ll get it, we’ll get it,” says Stanberry, jovial even in the face of adversity. “Here’s what we’ll do, I am going to cast with you just for a minute.”

I shut my eyes briefly. I quit thinking so hard. I try to feel the rod and sense its motion.

“Bend at the elbow and finish with a wrist snap. It’s kind of like trying to flick a potato off the end of a fork,” he says.

My line arcs out and back, out and back, and then vaults straight and smooth toward the dandelion I’m aiming for. 

“I did it!” I shout. I look at my husband, and he’s now doing it, too. Stanberry is happy, but not surprised. During his seven years with Biltmore, an Orvis-endorsed fly fishing school, he’s amassed more strategies than there are spots on a speckled trout.

“You have to be able to adapt. Everybody learns differently. Some are visual, for some it’s tactile, some people get real technical,” Stanberry says. “It is like a puzzle. You are figuring out how to put it together so everything clicks and the cast works out.”

Stanberry fell in love with fly fishing as a teenager after witnessing it for the first time on a camping trip in Cherokee.

“There was this older guy in the river just catching fish left and right,” Stanberry recalls. He was captivated, so his parents got him a fly rod, but the trial-and-error path was a thorny one. 

“It was a painful process at first,” Stanberry says. “Once I realized I could get it done, that’s when I put everything I had into it.”

As an instructor, Stanberry gets to relive his own epiphany moment from 20 years ago over and over again.

“You see their face light up when they realize they can actually do it,” Stanberry says. “The next thing I know, I’m getting an email saying ‘Hey Dustin, I’ve got this new fly rod and reel. We’ve been out in the yard practicing and we’re going fishing next week.’ For me, that’s what I enjoy about it the most.”