Over the course of a long life of fly fishing and teaching people how to fish, I’ve attempted to formalize a list of tricks and techniques that, when deployed, would automatically lead to fish in the net for me and my clients. I’d imagined creating something as solid and sacred as the ten commandments, a pithy scroll of timeless wisdom that would be carved into stone upon my death. Alas, this project has been far more difficult than I thought. It turns out that catching fish, though easy at times, is also more difficult than one expects.

After all this time, I’ve managed to come up with only three items for my list. On good days I think of them as rules. Otherwise, given the difficulty of directly linking hooked fish to the following of said rules, feel free to view them as mere suggestions:

Make the shortest cast you can get away with. This one is a natural fit for New Mexico, since all but a handful of our streams are small and brushy creeks. Fight the temptation to let your rod do your feet’s job; in other words, wade as close as you dare to the spot you want to fish instead of covering that distance with a cast. Train yourself to move slowly. Conceal yourself behind instream rocks and logs or in the shade of bankside trees. You may be surprised at how close you can get to fish before they bolt.

Notice that I’m not suggesting the shortest cast possible but the shortest you can get away with. Bright sun, slick water, spooky fish, and deep and dangerous water will tell you how close you can approach and that a longer cast may be necessary.

Learn to tie knots quickly and blind. Many insect species hatch late in the day, when the stream surface boils with splashing trout. If the fly you’re using doesn’t work, you will have little time to change flies, maybe more than once, before the sun sets. Less confident knot tiers may opt out of switching flies during such exciting events, and the fish will continue to ignore them. Or you might take so long to tie on a new fly that darkness falls before you’re ready to fish again.

One of the best things about fly fishing is the opportunity to be creative. Changing flies is a big part of that and, in my opinion, the aspect of the sport where we learn most about fly design, trout food and feeding behavior. With this learning comes confidence and success, more difficult to achieve if you’re all thumbs and tangled fishing line. Practice tying knots – a knot for attaching fly to tippet, tippet to leader, and leader to fly line – while watching television. Doing so builds muscle memory in your fingers that will come in handy during hectic evening hatches when the ability to see is getting worse by the minute.

When it comes to fishing, the words always and never have no place in one’s vocabulary. This one is simple. Rule number 2 is intended to boost your success; this one is meant to knock you back down to earth. For while confidence is indeed important, humility is equally critical to becoming a competent fly fisher.

Another thing I love about fly fishing is the recurring phenomenon of thinking I have things all figured out before realizing how far from a true understanding I really am. Make mental notes of the exceptions to what you think you know for sure. Put another way, always be prepared to ignore rules about fishing, including the ones you have been reading about here (except for the knot rule; it’s hard to land fish if your knots are bad), especially if doing so will help you catch more fish.

Above all, never take anything you hear from me too seriously.