1. Cast, you can't fly fish if you can't cast.
2. Reading the water, fish don't live in trees dude, you need to know where they are so you can at least have a shot at hooking one.
3. Bugs, a 14 inch rainbow wont hit a 4/0 bass popper (usually) and a Tarpon can't hit Tricos, so figure out what they like.
4. Presentation, yea this is important but you can't even get a fish if you don't know how to cast, where the fish are, or what they eat, presentation matters less, you can catch a fish on a bad cast, but not in a tree.

AP

Seems there is a standard order for many flyfishing books. How about doing it differently:

1. Trout ... What are they? and why do we catch and release them?
2. Bugs and meat ... what do trout eat? and what artificials look like breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks?
3. Reading water ... where do trout hang out and when?
4. Casting ... how do you use that delicate rod, artful reel, and mishmash of lines?
5. Presentation ... how do we put it all together and catch fish?

A forward by J. Merwin would be nice.

Well said poppa ,..still the plain truth is,.. you have to want to do it first .
That will usually open the first door.

Here's how I started ,.. I knew I wanted to fly fish when very young ,.. I just knew it ,.could actually feel it.
Yet ( and this takes nothing away from parents or relatives) there simply were no mentors in this regard for me.

So I didnt get to do it ,. until one day in mid April when I was 34.
Was at my office working my tail off ( per ususal)
I had a window open a slight breeze floated in.
It occured to me then I wanted to do it ,.and not next year.
I walked out of my cave ( what I used to call my office )
and annouced I would be leaving for the day. Maybe the week,( this was Tuesday ) cause I didn't for sure know how long it would take me to learn how to flyfish,
Needless to say ,.I got a few looks but by then there was no one that was going to tell me I couldnt.

So I left,the office 10 miuts later ,.. didn't go home didnt change out of business clothes ,. went directly to the nearest place I had seen flyrods in the past.
And I got LUCKY ,. ran into a retired guy who was a fly fisherman who worked there part time.
Mostly for something to do but also to pay for his fishing trips.
I said Sir I wanna get set up to fly fish ,. can you please point me in a direction that won't cause a major equipment train wreck.

The guy asked me a few questions and finally said look ,. buy a beginners outfit ,.get some poppers and spidders and go try the blue gills ,. there on the beds now,.if you like it you can always upgrade,.. he even told me where to go.

I was standing in the water ( in my duck hunting waders)
two hours later ,.. and I cought a nice mess of Bluegills . The 8-9 " variety,..
When I finally came out of the time warp /coma this new intriging sport had put me into ,. it was getting dark ,. I figured must be gonna storm ,. looked at my watch and looked arond again.
No storm ,. just getting dark,.. I had been at it 4 hrs and had no clue how much time had passed until then.

If I could offer my 2 cents ,. getting started is a combination of things already said here,. but immediate success on the panfish population is a very positive reinforcement plus its not complicated and not expensive.
If its in you,.. you can find out for $100s buck or less.

Have since caught other fish,..
But stream trout for what ever reason don't give me the thrill that a 10-15lb steelhead ,. 20lb chinook or an early fall Great Lakes brown does on flyrod.
Had a "king" take the line and and 90 yds of backing three times before O lost it ,.using #8 St croix Legend

But without question ,. my all time favorit(still to this day) is to hit a lake or pond in spring with a buddy or concenting female or just by myslef .
With a number 5 or lighter flyrod . Cath a mess of Bull Bluegills,..and fry those babies up that night or the next.
Yup ,.fried Gills (to a nice golden brown),.. a few fried potatoes, a salad,. some sourdough bread ( and butter ) and a cold one ,.. will for ever be the best fly rod adventure possible to me.

Hope that not too far of topic

As someone who wanted to learn flyfishing this summer, I am clueless as to reading water and what flies to use. I think that the casting is primarily learning the proper technique and practice, practice and practice. I'm not really surewhat presentation is.

In thinking about this I look at my own shortcommings when I learned to flyfish and thought about which way I would have done it different. It seems to be more of a which came first, the chicken or the egg.

1. Reading water
2. Bugs
3. casting/presentation

I still can't read water all that well, mostly because the vast majority of my fly fishing(99%) is stillwater. So that ranks top for me, I can cast, present to fish all day long, and when I started to learn I spent all my time areializing line and not enough time with the bug in the water.

Etemology isn't too hard, mostly because I can look at a hatch chart and see what I'm working with and narrow it down, but if I was on strange water in an unknown location I'd be lost other than to throw a san juan copper john dropper setup.

Casting and presentation, as far as I've seen on moving water, goes too closely together. Worry about it when you know where the fish are and know what they are eating.

1. Read the water. Sit still and shut up and the fish will wave to you.
2. Pick a good bug for the place.
3. Cast (from a tree choked river bank)
4. Presentation to put it on the fish's plate.
My home-made rod, my home-made flies and the fish is on my plate. That's as good as it needs to be.

Deeter! Kings on the Root dude' all you need is an 8wt.

This past weekend was a test in this very subject for me. The family and I just returned from 6 days in the Great Smoky Mtn. NP. My oldest son has taken up fly fishing at the local farm ponds and was eager to give it a try in the wild streams of East Tennessee.

I think reading water is the first. There has to be a fish somewhere in the vincinity or it is just casting practice. The next is definitely presentation. We saw quickly that even if it was a good cast, that little v-wake is killer. However, there were bad casts that got hits IF the drift was decent. I would say next is cast, because it makes the other parts easier. Finally, fly selecetion, unless of course they are REALLY feeding on something specific. Otherwise just put on a small stimi or a parachute adams.

My son did land 2 rainbows, so I am a big puffed up Daddy. Fished were hooked, but more so was the boy! He is already trying to figure out a return trip. I managed a Smoky Slam, landing a brown, a brookie, and a rainbow during the trip. I also hooked (and lost on during a botched land attempt) the largest rainbow I have ever personally seen in the park, so I am thinking about that return trip as well. Plus we got to see some bears in the Cove.

Presentation, fly, reading water, casting.....fish on.