Three FATC brothers helped train a group of Scout leaders this weekend. Mike Bisaga, Jim Craig and Dave Beerbower taught the fly fishing portion of the BSA Certified Angling Instructor course. This three day long course teaches adult Scout leaders about fishing and fly fishing to prepare them to be merit badge councilors or provide them the skills to promote fishing activities to a wide range of ages within their units. The 12 students in the class were from Cub Scout, Boy Scout and Venturing units in Missouri and Illinois.
The class consisted of a two hour classroom portion where we touched on all the equipment, safety, aquatic insects and a few fishing techniques. Students were then taught some of the basic skills of fly tying and they each tied two flies of their own. With flies complete, the class headed outside to work on their casting skills. We worked on understanding the basic cast and the roll cast. Both of these skills must be demonstrated by a Scout to meet the merit badge casting requirements.
As we all know, it is impossible to learn to fly fish in just a few hours. However, these leader now have enough knowledge of fly fishing to get started and to go out and learn more on their own if they desire. They all did a great job handling the large amount of information dumped on them in such a short period of time. We appreciate these leaders taking the time to learn the skill to help promote our great sport to our youth. We had great time working with these Scout leaders and look forward to the next time we can help out the Scouts fishing program.
Mike talks about the dead drift
Dave overseeing tying
Jim provides guidance with tying the Wooly Worm
Learning some techniques
Learning some techniques
Students learned to tie flies
Learning about Aquatic Insect
Good flies take concentration
Good flies take concentration
Jim helps with tying
Leaders enjoyed learning about Fly Fishing