So picture this scenario: the Bubba family piles out of the family truck, the kids skip rocks in your fishing hole and their beagle gets tangled in your leader. Like it or not, this type of scene is becoming all too common. As more and more people take to our rivers and streams, finding seclusion while flyfishing requires greater work and more creativity.

Find the scrappy, messy, remote
waters that other anglers overlook,
and you'll be jungle flyfishing

Searching out more remote waters has helped me escape the masses, but I have found another alternative—jungle flyfishing. What exactly is jungle flyfishing? It is searching out and fishing waters most people would never dream of using.

Although these locations may require moderate athletic feats, such as leaping between automobile-sized boulders, crawling through mazes of various thorns and nettles, and wading through death-defying currents, the rewards can be worth significantly more than the inherent risk of injury and possible death. But then again, my infatuation with flyfishing has come under fire by my saner friends and has even been considered abnormal by many. In fact, I have difficulty maintaining relationships with the opposite sex because my vacations are emphatically planned around western insect hatches.

Let me first clarify something about jungle flyfishing. The streams and sections of water we are discussing are not necessarily remote. They are just hard to reach. Some of these pools and runs may be located within a hundred yards of roads and parking lots.