I have been fishing for my entire life, and was just very recently introduced to fly fishing from one of my buddies i met in class.
Well then, you haven’t been truly fishing your entire life, just “partially fishing” through it until recently. Haven’t even lived your entire life yet and now that the other ball has finally dropped and you’re a flyfisherman, you can set about living the remainder in a much more fulfilling manner. Now your fishin’.
:clap2:You have righteously broadened your horizons, dude. Props!:clap2:
More seriously, I can’t say flyfishing is better by comparison, but I’m certain
my flyfishing is better in a synergistic way because I fish across various tackle types. What one learns on the water with any tackle tends to have a strong influence across all of them, at least for me. Lure making, flytying, tackle making has a great deal to do with this and I’ve been at it since I was a child in some form or another. Very hard for me to compartmentalize tackle types and evaluate any in true isolation. Cross pollination is the norm for me.
Definitely can agree with you on the “whole lot more fun” part, though. Just about any fish is fun to catch on flytackle and even when they’re not on or few and far between, it’s still a wondrous activity. Never have I truly enjoyed practicing my casting with any other tackle. Fish catching be darned, flycasting just plain feels good all by itself. Always been my favorite tackle and I reckon it always will be, it even gets bonus points for having an elegant simplicity relative some other tackle types.
Full disclosure, I’m not one who gets too caught up in tallying or fish counts and couldn’t evaluate in good faith any tackle via such criteria. Most of us flyfishers probably know how to catch far more fish than we actually do on any tackle, we simply welcome the trade-off and will lean in favor of fun over absolute effectiveness much of the time. Preceding statement about the nature of our kind tends to produce a richness like no other tackle can, we largely ditch the scorecard motivations and thus get to have it all. The world of flyfishing is hugely unique that way and not something I’ve ever been able to detect in any other tackle styles, at least not to the same degree.
Come to think of it…yeah, it’s probably better (by the most meaningful metrics, anyway).