The water of Oak Creek can be an incredible thing, and one of the best ways to spend a few hours on the creek is by fly fishing. “There’s lots of boulders. It’s absolutely crystal. That water, you can look down on good days, and you can see little grains of sand in the water. It makes it good for fly fishing because it’s tight quarters,” says Victor Vaughan, a guide and co-owner of Sedona Fly Fishing Adventures.
But before we go further, what even is fly fishing? “The allure of fly fishing is that everything you do is manual. Getting your fly where it needs to be, line maintenance. Everything to even bringing the fish in manual,” says Victor. “That’s pretty much fly fishing in a nutshell: It’s manual.” Sedona Fly Fishing Adventures has a permit with the Forest Service and takes their customers out on Oak Creek. Although some of their clients are experienced, most of them have never fished. Guides teach customers how to properly hold a fly rod. Victor will give tutorials on how to fish. They might discuss where fish hold and why or even bug life. Victor tells us that spring and summer are usually the best seasons for fishing, but you can fish year-round in Sedona.
Although Victor can never promise a customer that he or she will be able to catch a fish (they are wild creatures, after all), you might spot wild brown trout, a native species, and rainbow trout stocked by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Those are the two main fishes that live in Oak Creek, according to Victor. If you’re fishing outside of Sedona in the warmer water, you might see and even catch smallmouth bass and catfish.
But fishing isn’t even necessarily all about the fish. “It’s a different way to see Sedona,” says Victor. “It’s the whole experience. The fish are there. It’s hard not to spend half your time looking straight up at all the beauty and the red rocks, and it’s just that you’re learning something. I’ll be old and gray still learning tricks. So you’re constantly learning something new. The clarity of the water, and especially first timers with a fish to the net, and you just watch them kind of glow.” – Teresa K. Traverse
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