Ryan,

You ask for the best way to learn. Lesson #1. Read, read, & read. Fly fishing has a rich and expansive literature, with thousands of books. Search the archives for titles that were suggested to other inquiries for local basics.

Reading can help you use your time more productively once you finally visit a stream or lake. Reading will also instruct you that "poles" are used for stringing electrical and telephone wires. Anglers fish and cast with fly or spinning rods. (My personal rant regarding vocabulary. Using the right words makes a person better understood in any language.)

Next to reading, a personal mentor is the most valuable asset. A mentor can teach you the nuances of the concepts and even details that you read about. That covers the selection of tackle, using it more effectively, wading, deciding when and where to fish, reading the water, and presenting your offering so that a trout or steelhead will take it.

Lacking a mentor, take classes offered by fly shops and hire a guide. This can save you years of putzing around doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place.

Oh, and fair warning: when you begin to master the fundamentals of casting and fishing, your life will be forever changed. Fly fishing is an opiate that has forever corrupted thousands of otherwise socially productive men and women. Initially you will live to fly fish. Eventually you will fly fish to live. Don't say no one warned you!

Sincerely,

Salmo g.