SUMMERTIME : Taking a Fling at Fly Fishing : A trunkload of gear, the cash to afford it and a lot of patience--that’s all you need to get hooked on the fastest-growing sport in America.

If you want to fill a bucket with trout this summer--and who doesn’t?--just plunk a worm onto a hook and fling it into any area lake. Castaic. Casitas. Pyramid. Even that new swamp hole in the park in Encino will do.

And then wait. And wait.

It’s the fishing equivalent of being dead, without your relatives being gouged by funeral expenses and you having the eternal guilt of sending six close friends to a chiropractor with back problems from lugging you to the cemetery.

But if you want to do some real fishing this summer, then arm yourself with the latest fly-fishing gear. First, though, a word of caution. Fly-fishing can get stunningly expensive. And so, we offer a suggestion: We certainly do not recommend that you knock off a Brink’s truck to be able to afford the $100 to $500 graphite rods, the dazzling reels, the $40 fly line and the trunkload of other gear you’ll need. Better to let your nincompoop brother-in-law Elston pull off the actual heist; you can be the wheel man.

That done--and hopefully you didn’t get caught, because the quality fly-fishing experiences available at Folsom have nearly vanished; the prison tackle shop, for example, has recently been converted to a weight-lifting room--let’s go fishing.

Specifically, let’s try to convince a trout in, let’s say, nearby Piru Creek, that a tiny hook covered with fur and feathers floating over his head would make a fine snack. This quest has become the fastest-growing sport in America in the past 10 years. As proof, surveys conducted during the World Cup soccer matches show that nearly all of the 16 billion people who filled the Rose Bowl actually came to the United States to buy fly rods and went to the soccer games on a whim.

Really.

And, just like a man in a wide-eyed, frantic search for a bathroom, it all begins with the fly. This can be overwhelming to the novice. There are hundreds of varieties of flies, from dry flies (they float) to streamer flies (they look like tiny fish) to nymphs (they’re nice to have along when the fish aren’t biting; OK, just kidding). Nymphs are flies fished deep, imitating the emerging form of an insect.

All of the seemingly endless variety of flies have their place in fly fishing. That place, unfortunately, is often the tip of the angler’s nose, which--and this is not just a theory--causes a grown man to hop up and down, shrieking and yelling bad words.

Of course the needle-sharp point of the hook doesn’t always embed itself in the fly angler’s nose. The ears are also popular targets. The reason for this is called “the presentation,” which basically involves waving a 9-foot rod and 30 feet of line with above-mentioned sharp hook attached madly over your head in brisk winds until you can somehow lay the whole mess down on the water, or anywhere else it might decide to stop. See nose .

At this point, if all the shrieking and hopping and swearing hasn’t startled the fish--and it will--the fly angler lets the fly drift in the current, waiting for a trout to snatch it. When the fish does take the fly, the general idea--and this comes from years spent not only observing but of actually doing it--is to yelp sharply and jerk the rod and fly violently backward, yanking the fly away from the hungry, frightened fish.

These fish are then referred to as “finicky.”

*

But if the trout is faster than the fly fisherman and hooks itself before the human is able to rip the fly away from him--and believe me, it can happen; rumor has it that a man named Pete in Montana experienced this during the Ford Administration--the next thing the fly angler does is to break the line. It’s most commonly accomplished by tugging on the line with roughly the same force suggested for wrenching the Queen Mary’s anchor from the mud. If that doesn’t work, a more advanced technique is employed. This involves giving the fish just the right amount of slack line so he can wrap it around a rock and break it.

Fish that are hooked, even briefly, before the fly fisherman snaps the line are known as “huge” fish.

OK. Now you have the basics. And you’re wondering, “Where can I, a dazzling urbanite, go to yank fake flies away from hungry trout?”

Well, you can go to Piru Creek, near the town of Castaic. Or a few of the tiny creeks in Los Padres National Forest in Ventura County. Or the Angeles National Forest above San Bernardino. Or you can go to Montana or Colorado or even Alaska.

See, that’s the greatest thing about fly fishing. No matter how close, no matter how far, you still have about the same chance of actually catching a trout as you do of catching Al Gore dismantling a party with a series of outrageous, off-color jokes.

And, surprising as this may sound, fly fishing isn’t for everybody. Why, just a few years ago, a group of men who believe trout look best with lemon wedges on them, men apparently frustrated by the complexities of fly fishing--or the constant pain in their noses--strung a gill net across Piru Creek, from bank to bank. They snared hundreds of small trout, dragged them onto the bank and whacked them dead with sawed-off mop handles.

They were arrested, of course. Because not only is a thing like that illegal, well, it’s just not very sporting, either.