The Oath-Takers

 

 

Two old friends have an adventure of a lifetime along a northern Wisconsin trout stream… one that they might want to keep amongst themselves for obvious reasons. Copyright 2019 Erik Helm

 

The plan, as Ed explained it to Pete, his life-long friend and fellow fly angler, was to fish Moose Creek in Northern Wisconsin for brookies. They would park the old Buick at the highway bridge, wade up the creek carrying their lunches, and be able to fish right until dusk without having to retrace their steps after dark by utilizing a dike which lay at the upper stretches of the creek, and ran back to the road through a cranberry bog after skirting a local lake.

This idea emerged after last year’s trip to this same river led to stubbed toes, a dunking or two, a lost wading boot in the bog, and an exhausting trek back out following the meandering river back downstream to the car, and missing the evening rise for fear of being trapped after dark. This seemed like a better plan Pete thought to himself, but asking Ed anyway “Are you sure about that dike short-cut… Is it public…?”

“Old railway bed, I checked with the guy at the gas station, and he says it’s fine.”

It was a warm sunny morning when they parked the car at the bridge after a drive of six hours from the city.

“Risers!” Pete said as he looked over the bridge into the little creek as Ed busied himself with waders and assembling his Garrison bamboo rod, his cherished possession. Pete had purchased a Payne rod ten or so years ago, but he always was jealous of the Garrison. Ed felt the same way, he was jealous of the Payne.

It had always been like that for the two old lifetime friends. Since they met in grade school, they had always done everything together, fished, hunted, dated and even married two sisters, having the ceremony together at the same church. The friendship had warmed to a form where polite teasing and friendly competition always formed a background to their adventures.

Ed opened up the sack with his lunch to check it before stuffing it into the back pouch on his vest, and the smell of burned bacon wafted forth. Betty was a great cook, Pete reflected, but she always burned the bacon. Everything Ed owned tended to smell a bit like bacon, even his fishing tackle. Pete’s wife, on the other hand, had a thing for cabbage, and cooked it into everything, even the eggs. His lunch would be stuffed cabbage rolls wrapped in foil. Between the two of them, they smelled like a cheap diner blue-plate special, but Ed liked burned bacon, and Pete had an affinity for cabbage. The friendship fit together like two puzzle pieces.

The rising trout were a good omen as the two friends fished their way up the stream. The air was filled with little brown mayflies, and each angler had several dozen flies they had tied in the weeks before the trip that matched the hatching insects perfectly, even if Ed’s flies smelled a bit like burned bacon.

By the late afternoon they had made their way a mile up the creek and stopped for lunch. Both Pete and Ed had released a dozen brook trout in the ten to thirteen inch ranges, and kept several of the largest for the ladies to cook for breakfast. They paused for an hour after they had eaten and smoked a pipe, quietly enjoying the beauty of the conifer forest, the spring warblers, the wood ducks flying overhead, and hidden calls of woodcock and bittern.

They needed this trip away from the noise and fast pace of the city and their jobs, Ed thought. They were both nearing retirement age soon, and the thrill of business was slowly being replaced with a longing for memories made in quiet places.

Memories…

Pete thought about the time in their early teens that the two of them discovered his dad’s beer stash under the porch, and climbed an apple tree to drink a few in secret, feeling like men, or at least playing at being one. The beer was warm and kind of skunky, but neither of them would admit it or say anything, so they finished drinking them while telling stories of the future, and what they would do when they were older. The problem became how to get out of the apple tree. Pete’s legs didn’t work right after the beers, and Ed was seeing double. They both had thrown up their dinners, and it took them several hours to sober up and get down from their perches among the branches.

Ed reminisced upon the time when he and Pete had first hunted grouse together. Pete’s first hunting dog was a remarkably dumb lab named ‘Pep’, short for Pepto-Bismol because that damn dog gave anyone hunting over her a case of sour-stomach. Sure enough, Pep never did flush a bird that day, but instead found a skunk, and deciding it might be a funny kind of grouse, chased it into some bushes. They returned to the car and drove home with Pep in the trunk covered in tomato juice. They both had to burn their hunting clothes.

Funny all the memories that old friends can share, and through all of them, they had kept the vast majority of any misadventures to themselves, despite temptation after a few drinks to tell the boys a hell of a story. “Let’s keep this to ourselves,” became their oath of silence.

With evening approaching and the sun beginning to angle, the woods and river cooled and mists began to rise along with the trout, giving an otherworldly almost spooky church-like atmosphere to the upper stretch. It was worth all the planning though. As dusk set the two friends caught more trout than they had ever caught before, and Pete hooked one while his fly was dangling beside him in the water between casts, while Ed managed to hook a trout on his back-cast. The fish were suicidal now in a crazed frenzy to eat the falling spinners of the brown mayflies that hatched all day.

The last light faded from orange into pastel pinks and fuchsias as the mists rising from the creek and surrounding bog became thicker. It was time to go. They could keep the trout fresh in the cooler in the car and breakfast tomorrow would be heavenly.

Ed led the way through the bog to a small rise that indicated the side of the dike or railway grade dimly appearing through the growing fog which smelled and tasted like something from prehistoric times. Whippoorwills began to call all around them, and darkness blanketed the woods.

They were ten feet from the dike when Ed stopped.

 

“Shh…” he whispered. “There is something big and dark standing out in the cranberry bog right ahead of us… Don’t look like a tree, kind of like a bear or some animal…”

Pete had better eyes than Ed. “That’s a Moose,” he exclaimed in surprise, trying to keep his voice low.

“Shoot. Moose are unpredictable and dangerous. Does it have antlers?”

Ed squinted through the fog. “Yup, big rack too. I can see them clearly outlined against the sky.”

As darkness settled into inky blackness, the two stayed very silent and still. Neither had any idea what to do at this stage, and the thought was beginning to occur to them that they may have to spend some time stuck here until the moose, still dimly outlined in the near distance, moved on from its feeding. Ed found a large boulder nearby, and suggested that if they were going to be stuck here for a bit, they might as well be dry. They climbed the knobby chunk of granite careful to not make an errant sound.

It became obvious to both of them before long that they were well and truly stuck. The moose might or might not be still there, and they could no longer see through the fog and moonless night to be certain.

“O.K., let’s take inventory,” Pete quietly murmured. “I have a bag of peanuts, what do you have?” “A half a pint of peppermint schnapps,” Ed replied. They had left the half-full thermos of hot coffee back in the car because it was such a nice day. Both of their minds ended up focused on that hot coffee as a light drizzle began to fall, and their backs began to ache from sitting on the uneven cold rock.

After midnight, they broke down. Ed offered the schnapps to Pete after taking a swig himself, and Pete opened the peanuts. “Wait a minute Pete!” Ed exclaimed. What if Moose like peanuts? I can smell them like anything, and I bet the moose can too.” The peanuts were put away, and a long silence began. After an hour a staccato rattling was heard.

“What’s that?” Pete asked in a hush. “My teeth!” Ed answered. “I’m freezing, and I can’t feel my feet!”

“We need energy… food. I am so hungry I could eat my hat.”

“Kind of like the Donner Party…”

“What…. Eat each other and our hats?”

“No, as in we need food and we are marooned. Moose don’t eat trout, get it?”

“Cold trout? I can’t see my pocketknife to clean them.”

Hunger and cold can drive men to do things they might think themselves incapable of in better circumstances. The raw trout tasted like bog, slimy and silty, and made an interesting combination with the last of the schnapps. They almost gagged, but managed to eat a trout apiece to help keep them warm through the night.

The two old friends spent the night on a cold knobby boulder in a cranberry bog miserable with the drizzle surrounded by woods noises that to both of their now acute imaginations sounded like a huge moose on the prowl. In the weak dead hours of pre-dawn, they managed to nod off to sleep, propped against each other for warmth and stability.

A cloudy and misty dawn broke slowly into the forest and bog, the light increasing until the two anglers could begin to see again. Awake, but bleary eyed, they both peered through the banks of fog and into the heart of the cranberry bog in the direction of the road and the position of the moose the night before.

“I can’t see it,” Pete sputtered, “It must be gone by now…”

“No… there it is!” Ed chattered through his teeth, “It hasn’t moved!” “It’s in the same place as last night.” “It’s huge! I can see its antlers from here!”

“Wait a minute…” Pete exclaimed, the increased volume of his voice causing Ed to cringe. “I smell foul here. No moose is going to stand out there in a field all night and not move. I am too tired and cold and hungry to care any more. I am going to creep forward and check it out.” They decided that Ed would follow behind, and if Pete got mauled, he was in charge of breaking the news to Erma, Pete’s wife. Pete figured he had the better end of the stick.

The two crept slowly forward on the relatively dry abandoned railway dike toward the outline of the moose, appearing now menacingly large before them. Fifty feet away they paused. Pete spoke first, standing up and clicking his tongue in disapproval. “Look Ed, It has wooden posts for legs!”

“I’ll be a monkey’s…” Ed began, trailing off into silence. They walked up to the moose. Ed knocked on it with his knuckles. Wood. It was over life-size and was painted black. They could see the highway now clearly as the meager sun began to burn off the fog of morning.

They walked around the moose and stared at it from the front. A stylized moose it was. Looking not half like Bullwinkle the billboard proclaimed cheerfully…

“Visit Scenic Moose Lake! Next Exit.”

 

“I’ll be damned…” they both exclaimed quietly.

“I feel like an idiot,” Ed admitted.

“That is beside the point Ed,” Pete laughed rather seriously.” “The point is I feel the fool too, but the important thing is to keep this to ourselves. Nobody, even our wives must ever hear of this.” “Even our wives?…” Ed grimaced. “Yea, especially them. You know the boys at the lodge and the tavern would here of it sooner or later, and we would be the butt of jokes forever.”

They came up with a story. The car broke down, and they had to spend the night huddled under blankets until in the morning, when they discovered the problem: wet spark-plug wires. That would do the trick, Ed thought aloud. “Yea… Betty is always nagging me about getting the spark plugs changed anyway. She would get a chuckle out of that one, and it would only cost me a few bucks for new plugs.”

“I am serious about the silence thing Ed,” Pete said shaking his head and smiling. “I think we should take an oath.”

“What… like double dog dare, or spit and shake… that sort of thing?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of something else… If you tell anyone, I get your fly rod, and if I tell anyone, you get mine as a penalty. That should keep our mouths shut for a while.”

The two old friends shook on it and the oath was taken.

 

Ed got the nickname of ‘Bullwinkle’ a few weeks later. Pete was referred to as ‘Moose’ for the rest of his life.

It was worth it, Pete reflected as he landed a nice trout on his new Garrison rod. Pete was in the distance, proudly playing a fish on his equally new Payne.

Author’s note: On a trip to the Brule’ river in northern Wisconsin, I passed a field on foggy autumn morning and glancing to my right, spotted a huge bull moose with black fur and white antlers standing in a boggy lowland, partially shrouded by the enveloping mists. I was pumped to see such a rare sight in Wisconsin… until…

 

Two years later I was driving the same stretch of highway up to the Brule’ on a sunny day, and reflected that right about here is where I spotted that moose…

Out in the field stood a perfect replica of a moose, made of plywood and life-size, and painted black with white antlers. Some farmer’s idea of a joke. I felt the fool. Now that might make the basis for a good story I thought… until three years later here I am with the idea fully formed. A fishing trip and an oath of secrecy… else the fool!

 

 

Floating lines and classic flies in the Midwest?

Nah... That won't work.
Or... will it?
I have committed to fishing the floating line with classic flies this fall here in Wisconsin. As long as the water is low and the temps are above thirty five, I have confidence that the steelhead will rise to a fly. I would fish wakers and muddlers, but the low flows provide no current for waking a fly. However, I hit a chrome hen yesterday on a classic hairwing. Neat stuff!

I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that I am wasting my time fishing classic flies in our rivers with a floating line. I agree that when the water is high and cold, big flashy patterns and sink-tips will out-fish the dry line in general, but so few if any practice McMillan's winter techniques here that real experiences are hard to come by. The floating line also minimizes flies hooked on rebar or cinder blocks, although the constant presence of leaves hooked on the fly can drive one to distraction.

The Rest is Noise

Recently, while exploring fly fishing blogs and adding to this sites collection of preferred links, I started pondering what I and others were adding to our sport. Then while browsing further an answer slowly came to me:

The rest is just noise.

Sounds arrogant, doesn’t it? Read on…

The early exposure I had to fishing and hunting literature was by reading back issues of Outdoor Life from the 1960s and 1970s that my father collected and saved. In those days, short stories, both fiction and non-fiction, and adventure tales actually had substance. People actually read back then. Substance and quality were appreciated more than flash, and people had attention spans long enough to digest a two thousand word article. Twitter would have been laughed at.

I remember lying on my dad’s bedroom floor for countless hours imagining what mountains must look like, or what I would do if I were treed by a grizzly. The short stories were imaginative also. They had a way of engaging the reader and drawing him into the story. In my imagination, I traveled the world fishing, hunting, and exploring.

Then I lost track of the natural world as I grew older and pursued other things.

When I took up fly fishing, I began to read everything I could get my hands on. I subscribed to multiple magazines, bought how-to books and destination guides, and began reading John Gierach, Nick Lyons, Seth Norman, Thomas McGuane, Roderick Haig-Brown, etc. Here were real treasures.

After awhile, the magazines began to bore me. There was a conspicuous lack of substance and quality writing. They were all flash, or ‘noise’ if you allow me. The articles began to repeat themselves: “Hopper Tunity!”, “Midge Magic!”, “Five-weight shootout.”, yada, yada, yada… They seemed to be written by the same people that produced motor-sports magazines. Pictures replaced words. I would eagerly turn to an article, misled by the front cover blurb into thinking it was going to be a feature story, only to find some sophomoric and cursory treatment.

So, I dropped the subscriptions, and began to collect old magazine articles from the 1970s again.

Then I began this blog, and discovered like-minded persons out there that wanted and demanded quality. They keep blogs on fly fishing as varied as our fishing is. Conservation, wild fish, history, literary reviews, fine quality gear, river journals, and adventure tales are covered with taste. Here was a whole new world.

Browse down the links on the right side of this blog.

The Quiet Pool, where Shane often covers conservation and details Oregon’s trout and steelhead fisheries. He writes beautifully, and is a traditional angler with respect and reverence.

Singlebarbed, which is some of the most humorous and yet very inciteful writing on the subject.

Cutthroat Stalker, where Scott writes about his favorite trout and their habitat, as well as excellent literary reviews on the subject of fly fishing.

Dr. Andrew Herd’s exhaustive history of fly fishing site. I get lost here for hours at a time.

Colin Innes, who keeps the very important research site Vintage tackle and Salmon Flies of Aberdeen. A source of original research and history painstakingly and lovingly assembled.

Tony, who created the site Stream Thought about fishing and thinking, complete with book reviews, trout science and more.

Eccles over at Turning over Small Stones is an Englishman living in Pennsylvania. He writes deep meditations and observations about our sport.

Jeff Kennedy and his fly paintings and drawings is another site dedicated to fine art. Jeff is a professional illustrator who paints beautifully.

The Angler’s Life List, a site dedicated to wild salmonids.

Tom Chandler at the premier site The Trout Underground never fails to inspire or call our attention to something interesting or important.

These are just a few examples of what is out there somewhere. Each site has several things in common that tie them together. First is quality content. Second would be some artistry. This can be in many forms. The third is respect and passion. On these sites and many others that I have yet to discover, one can find gems of writing, art, philosophy, and thought that are often missing from many other blogs and publications. I found these sites through accident, as well as other blog links, and comments on this blog.

I have not linked to the large commercial fly fishing blogs. I am tempted to, but then comes a post full of foul language, boasting, or some other odious trait that I doubt if readers of The Classical Angler would appreciate. The bigger something gets and the wider the circulation, the more scrubbed over or dumbed down the content has to be in order for it to sell.

So, for those that long for the days when the Art of Angling Journal showed up in their mailboxes, or who cannot wait for the new Gray’s sporting Journal to arrive, these blogs will help fuel your fire between hookups with epic fish. Enjoy.

The Fisherman

The Fisherman

by William Butler Yeats


Although I can see him still.
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'

What is it about steelhead?

What is it about steelhead?

A meandering musing on the rather enigmatic, esoteric, irrational, and all consuming sport we call fly fishing for steelhead.

Why?
Why do we fly fish for steelhead?
Is it just purely because they are there? Do we fish for the same reason a climber is drawn to a mountain?
What are the inherent aspects of steelhead fly fishing that seem to captivate so many of us?

The fish:
A good point of departure is the steelhead itself. Chrome bright or colored with whispers of fuchsia, the steelhead is built like an athlete, and contoured with a water dynamic shape. It migrates hundreds of miles in its life dance, and is as unpredictable as the wind. Along with the Atlantic salmon, the steelhead is the ultimate fresh water game fish, and when hooked on a fly, gives all of itself in an unselfish joy ride of fear and power. Our joy is in the pursuit of these fish, not in their consumption. Feeling a soul connection as the fish burns off backing faster than a forest fire leaping up a slope keeps us in awe.

The rivers:
Steelhead would be nothing but inanimate objects without rivers. Rivers are timeless. They whisper and roar. They have personalities as wide ranging as we do. They have structure. They move. They are beautiful. To feel the raw power of a river as it sucks and pushes at your legs is like feeling the life force of a steelhead. After all, the steelhead is part of the river, and without the steelhead, the river is diminished.

Valleys filled with pines, mists on the river, basalt canyons: they all call to us, each with their unique smells, colors, and even tastes. If the steelhead is our spiritual worship, the river is our temple.

Scarcity, difficulty, etc.:
Steelhead are hard to come by, especially today as runs of wild fish are depleted, and entire river systems are vacant of chrome beauty. The simple scarcity of the fish, and the fact that we most often cannot see them, leads to our swinging flies with hope and yes, even faith. We have to believe the fish are in the river, even if for days on end it seems that we are just going through the futile rhythms of cast and swing. Fly fishing for steelhead is not a game of numbers. If it was, it would lose all interest for many of us. Instead, it is a game of patience. With every hour on the water and every run fished without a grab, we celebrate a sort of self denial, even a type of masochism which makes the eventual grab of a fish that much sweeter. This leads non-believers to condemn us as ‘nuts.’ “A whole two week trip, and you only landed three fish?” Yes…. What a fantastic trip it was!

There is a Zen quality to all this self-denial. We build up a sort of fish karma as we concentrate on the swing, confident that at any second, a fish will grab… right about NOW. Then, since nothing happened, we step and cast and swing again, even more confidant that this time it really will happen. The anticipation and frustration builds and builds until some anglers end up back at camp skulking around with long faces. Like the phoenix, they are ready the next day with renewed confidence and smile.

Steelhead fly fishing should be difficult. This is what makes it the zenith of our sport. The thrill of the chase by nature is by far the most fun. The appreciation gained through time and dues paid is a truer appreciation. No short cuts here. A single fly, a fly rod and line, and you. Our weapons should show restraint and respect.

Bill McMillan wrote in his introduction to Dec Hogan’s book A passion for Steelhead: “…Furthermore, fly fishing (for steelhead) is supposed to be an anachronism – a tradition of antiquated tackle choices to otherwise test mental ingenuity.” He goes on to point out that the difficulty is inherent, and that modern efforts to make it much easier and ‘dumb it down’ are an anathema. “The sport would not have the same fascination if it came easily…” he wrote.

The finest book on steelhead fishing ever written was not even about steelhead, nor was it about fly fishing. It was Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea. Think about it: Self-denial, exhausting delirium, the grab, the joy of success, the heartbreak, and the whole existential quality of the life struggle.

Perhaps the most powerful reason we fly fish for steelhead is freedom. In our fishing, we are free for but a moment in time, the rest of our lives are fettered to money, chattel, fears, and dreams deferred. For that one brief slice of time when we are connected to a wild running steelhead, we can feel what it must be like to be truly free. Free as a steelhead. We may escape to freedom, but it is the fish that is really free, and we can take a bit of this back with us into our world when after the fight, we release them again to go on their life’s journey, as we go on ours.

The Taming of the Mouth

The Taming of the Mouth
Original short story copyright 2009
Erik F. Helm

(I know nobody reads these, but perhaps they will someday be collected in a book that nobody will read.)

------------------------------------------------------------

The lodge was quaint, cozy, and warm. In short, it was everything I hoped it to be for this weekend getaway to fish the Clark Fork near Missoula Montana. I usually eschew staying at fishing establishments due to their rather annoying habit of concentrating more on wine and seven course meals rather than quality fishing, but I had been assured by my angling friends that the hire of a guide from this lodge and the stay was well worth the time and money.

I arrived on Friday in time for cocktails and dinner, and after changing out of my rumpled travel cloths and giving myself a quick going over with a wet washcloth, I walked to the main lodge building armed with a powerful appetite. After meeting the host Mr. Everson, and his busy and lovely wife Grace, I was introduced to the guides, Paul and Stew, two young locals who would be accompanying us on our quest for trout. When I say us, I am referring to the other guests that weekend which I met in short order: Jim, a quiet businessman from nearby Butte, and Major Gallstone, a retired officer from Great Britain now living in Canada.

We were seated around the fire enjoying an aperitif as the hosts and guides left to attend to the dinner. The Major, speaking to Jim, or possibly three feet above him, was holding forth on his trip to Ireland for sea trout, and how he “Showed the peat diggers” how it should be done. “I caught all the large fish of the trip, and the damn locals could only manage a meager catch of a few sardines” he said through his thick mustache, his face tilted slightly but annoyingly upward. Jim and I only got a few words in edgewise as the conversation turned first to eastern Catskill trout, and then to Atlantic Salmon, both of which the Major was an undoubted expert on, according to his own pronouncements. In each instance, he derided the guides as “Dolts”, the locals as “Troglodytes or Knuckle draggers”, and held himself forth as the protagonist that always, despite adverse conditions, managed to catch the most and largest fish anyone had ever seen.

In general, I like the English. Their self-deprecating sense of humor, wry wit, and stiff upper lip has always endeared me. With the Major, however, my tolerance was being sorely tested. It was tested further, and indeed stretched to the breaking point at dinner when his constant bragging spoiled an otherwise excellent fillet mignon. He seemed not to be interested in anyone else’s stories, and when he did lower himself to ask us a question, he always interrupted us soon after, as if our answers bored him.

Now, I am not the best fly fisherman out there, but I am a professional angling writer, have seen my share of the country’s waters, and am honest enough to know that my skill level is quite good. The Major had no doubt read some of my articles, but had no interest in acknowledging me or even my writing.

After dinner, we adjourned to the common room for a nightcap. I managed to excuse myself from the Major’s company and ended up talking to Paul, the younger of the two guides. Asking him about himself and his family I began to peel away the layers of shyness that I perceived. Paul would be guiding the Major tomorrow, and was less than happy about it. “Last year I had to guide him too, and it was the single worst day of the year.” “ He treated me like shit, and everything that went wrong was my fault.” “He insisted that I follow behind him by fifty feet, and when he hooked a fish, he would simply steer it over to me to release.” “He was too good to touch it.” “He also would not listen to anything I said, which meant that instead of being his guide for the day, I was his lacky.” As Paul spoke, I began to get an idea. I took him aside and onto the porch of the lodge, and after a short while and the present of a bottle of single malt scotch, he was amenable to my plans. “Just as long as I don’t get in trouble” he said, “I need the job, you know.”
“Don’t worry about it, if anything goes astray, I will take all the blame.” I told Paul through a mischievous grin. “The Major will get his comeuppance, and if we pull it off smoothly, he will never suspect a thing.”

I took myself and my glass of neat whiskey back into the lodge, where the Major was now pontificating on the proper method of setting the hook on a trout. Walking up to him, I said “So Major, given that your line stays dry, your fly alights on the water perfectly, and the fish cannot help but hook themselves while you walk on top of the water, how would you like to place a wager on tomorrow’s fishing?” Taken a bit aback, his face slowly coloring, he answered “What do you have in mind young man?” I explained to him the rules of the contest: that each man measure the length in inches of each fish he catches and releases, adds them together, and that the individual with the greatest total measurement at the end of the day is declared the winner. “Splendid, I shall look forward to showing you the ropes then.” “Now for the wager, shall we say, mmm… a hundred pounds?” “Sorry Major, I said with mock regret, I am not a man of means.” “However, I do have an alternative idea.” “Shoot away!” invited the Major. “It is simply this, that the winner has the privilege of watching the loser fish on Sunday in a woman’s dress and sun hat.”
“What?” he roared. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” “I will have no such thing!”
“A pity, I proclaimed with a smile.” “I was looking forward to showing you how trout fishing is done properly in America.”

The Major stared at me with narrowed eyes through the silence of the challenge. The entire room had heard the proceedings and one could hear a pin drop. His ears had turned bright crimson when he answered “You’re on, and may the best man win!” Turning with a flourish, he left the lodge to make his way to his cabin. I thought it a good idea to turn in early as well, and as I left, caught the eye of Paul and slyly winked. He returned the gesture.

The morning broke bright and sunny, with puffy white cumulus clouds scattered across the sky. Breakfast was unusually silent, excepting the Major’s insistence that he be given proper marmalade for his toast and not the homemade blackberry jam that Grace was famous for. His bellicose orders regarding the jam just sealed my opinion of him, and I smiled at what was in store for him on the river.

The Clark Fork is full of riffles. It begins just west of the continental divide near Butte, and flows westward toward Missoula where it is joined by the Bitterroot and the Big Blackfoot. We would be fishing in sight of the Sapphire Mountains, so named because of the thickly forested pines and the way the evening light catches them, reflecting an especially verdant green.

Stew led me to a nice riffle and pool, but I told him that I would rather fish much closer to the Major, explaining that I wished to observe his legendary technique. We took up residence in a run just upstream of where he was standing in the water shouting to Paul to “Get a move on, and tie on that little size 18 caddis.” I pretended to fish while Paul tied on the fly and signaled to the Major that all was ready. His casting was everything even his braggadocio could claim. The line whistled overhead in perfect loops and sent his fly delicately into the riffle. Immediately his line was tight and his rod was bucking as he led a nice trout downstream to where Paul was waiting.

“A cutthroat” Paul shouted. “Sixteen inches fair.” “Seventeen roared the Major.” “Seventeen, damn it!”
Paul dried the fly off, and shouted to the Major “Hold on a second, I forgot to pinch the barb down.” He grabbed his forceps and made the tiny adjustment. “O.K.” he proclaimed.
Stew looked at me kind of funny as if to ask if there was something up my sleeve, and asked why, given the wager, I was not furiously fishing.

“Keep watching, you are going to be in for a treat’ I said.

The Major spotted a rising fish directly behind a series of boulders sheltered by overhanging grass. His cast was incredible. The fly curved through the air and swung around enough in a reach that the fish would never even see the leader. Once again, the rod bounced and line was tight as what was obviously a large brown trout gave a ballet-like leap. Then the rod simply sprang back and the line went limp. “Bloody Hell!” the Major shouted, “That was a good fish.” He soon found another riser high in the riffle and as before, made the perfect cast and presentation, hooked the fish, and quickly lost it. He glanced towards where Stew and I stood for a second, and then began to berate Paul. “What kind of fly did you give me… I can’t hook fish properly on this one, change it at once!” he said. “Yes sir” said Paul while clipping off the fly, opening his sheepskin wallet and tying another caddis to the end of the Major’s leader.

Major Gallstone then made another cast, hooked a nice jumping cutthroat, and promptly lost it. The word “Bugger” reverberated around the river.

“Let’s go Stew, I said.” “Get me into a fish.”
Ahead in the slow water behind a bend, Stew pointed to a fish rising close to the bank. I cast to him and he rose eagerly, inhaling the fly. “Six inches” Stew declared as he released the little cutthroat. I turned back to where the Major stood, face turning purple, and waved.

I think it is time patient reader, to let you in on my little joke. In addition to pinching down the barb, Paul was instructed to bend the point of the hook back as well.

You may well imagine what the rest of the day was like. I slowly but almost diffidently hooked, landed, and measured twenty-seven trout for a combined total inch count of 243. The Major never landed another fish. Paul took the brunt of the abuse, but I hoped that the knowledge of the secret itself, the awaiting bottle of single malt, and the anticipation of guiding the Major the next day clothed in a dress and looking like something out of a charity vaudeville act would be some slight compensation.

Major Gallstone looked rather dainty in Grace’s blue gardening dress with the little polka dots I decided, as I watched him fish on that most holy of Sundays. He never uttered a single word.

The Footprint

The Footprint
Copyright 2009, Erik F. Helm

The Tomorrow River had been fickle that morning as I picked my way up the boulder strewn pocket water casting a dry fly and enjoying some of the most spectacular cloud formations the Wisconsin sky could conjure up. The brown trout were there somewhere, even if I could only intercept or tempt them sporadically. I was hoping for a definable hatch of mayflies or caddis, but the mixed batch of varied insects made for a challenging outing. I had managed a few small fish, and spooked an old boy around seventeen inches from beneath a root cluster.

Coming to the belated conclusion that flailing the water with a dry fly with no fish rising was an exercise in futility, I sat down on a large granite boulder at stream-side and unbuckled my canvas tackle bag. Unwrapping my bacon sandwich, I began to eat my lunch. Accompanying lunch was a paperback of Robert Frost’s poetry. The perfect compliment to the wild countryside and a fitting distraction from the uncooperative trout. I found “Hyla Brook’ most enjoyable. This, I realized once again, was why I fly fished. Something about the flowing water, drifting clouds, and the infinite green colors of the foliage erased things from my mind which had crept in like silent mosquitoes to suck and dine upon my thoughts. Here I could be truly free. Had I been an artist, I could have tried to capture that moment in time, but a river never sleeps, and to try to paint a little snapshot in time could never capture the way that everything felt alive with movement.

After an hour or so of daydreaming and contemplative dozing on my stream-side rock, I felt it was time to begin my foray for trout again. The next bend of the river offered new possibilities, as it was shaded by numerous cedars. I had picked my way to the top of the little bend, missing one fish and landing another six-inch brown the color of country butter and honey, when I saw him. He was at the top of the next pool casting into a shallow riffle. Crouched down by the water’s edge, his straw porkpie hat angled slightly on his head, he wore an old red and black check lumberjack shirt as he puffed a pipe and peered into the water. As I watched, he quickly fired a cast into the riffle, hooked, played, and released a nicely sized brown. A minute later he repeated the performance. This guy obviously knew what he was doing. As I was getting up to continue forward, he landed a third fish, this one larger than the other two put together. Watching him fish and wading upstream at the same time led to my stumbling on an unseen rock. Regaining my balance by staggering for footholds on the gravel and sand bottom, I was less then quiet. The water splashed about my boots and cascaded onto my face. Looking upriver through the droplets of water on my glasses, I noticed to my surprise that the man was gone. He had disappeared without a trace. If he had waded the river, or burst through the tight brush, I did not know, but he was gone sure enough.

The trout however, were still rising in the riffle he had been fishing. A bug buzzed clumsily into my face, and as I grabbed it with an open hand, it was revealed to be a large spotted sedge or caddis. Fumbling around in my wallet for the appropriate fly, I found a fairly close imitation tied with a bucktail wing. Trout rose carelessly in the riffle often splashing water onto the bank in their enthusiasm. The first cast I made received a surface roll by a fish, but no take. The next cast received no interest at all, as did the following two dozen drifts of the fly. I began to change flies every other cast, and had worked through my entire arsenal of caddis imitations both dry and wet without a single positive result.

There is a time and a place for everything, and as frustration set in, I decided that I needed a mental break. I did not want to wade through the riffle and spook the fish, so I made my way to the bank and slipped through the cedars and ferns. The soil was black and rich, and sucked at my boots as I struggled along making my way up the river. Not twenty feet from where I came out of the river I spotted a footprint pointing into the woods. Wanting to follow what must have been the path taken by the other angler, I looked for more footprints. I consider myself a decent tracker, having spent the better part of twenty years as a bow-hunter, but try as I may, I could not locate his path. It was as if after making that single imprint, he vanished completely. Coming back to the footprint, I noticed a large caddis like the ones hatching that moment in the river. It was perched at the end of a blade of grass arcing over the footprint. When I grabbed at it, a funny thing happened: it never tried to fly off, and didn’t even flutter. Then I noticed the hook protruding from the bottom. This was an artificial fly. A fly tied so convincingly that it had fooled me. It had a slender cream body, antennas made from what looked like moose hair, and a tent wing which appeared after some examination to be a triangle of pounded deer skin which was waxed. Why it was here, perched above this single footprint, I could only speculate.

What I was certain of was that this fly was the one that fooled those trout in the nearby riffle. To prove my hypothesis, I tied it to my line and went back to the riffle. On the first cast I rose, hooked, and landed a fourteen-inch brown. The second cast produced a foot long fish, as did the third and fourth casts. In wonder, I hooked the fly to the keeper on the rod, and began to make my way upstream when a cautionary thought occurred to me. What if this fly was too perfect? What if that lone fisherman had placed it there for a reason? I imagined a scenario in which every cast I made with this fly would catch a fish, and realized that all the mystery and challenge would vanish forever. It could have been simply dropped by the other angler, offered up as a courtesy, or placed as a curse. I did not intend to find out. I made my way back to the footprint, hooked the fly into the blade of grass where I found it, and tearing off a sheet of paper from my little fishing log notebook, wrote the words “Thank you!” and placed it next to the footprint. The way I came to see it as I made my way back to the truck was that what happens on the water stays on the water. Whether skill, magic, or curse, that fly belonged along side that riffle, and I belonged at home where a lonely dog and warm fireplace awaited me.

The Anachronism

The Anachronism
An original short story
Copyright 2009 Erik Helm



I discovered it again by accident while rooting around in the cellar through a pile of old fishing tackle and memories. Wrapped in its old oil cloth, the little wood rod and line had lay on a corner shelf for a good half of my lifetime. As I unwrapped it, the memories of youth came flooding back with startling vividness.

I was somewhere in my mid-twenties, the indestructible years, and was exploring a backwoods section of the Little Cherry River in central Pennsylvania. Backpacking my lunch and tackle, I had made my way through the thick dark deciduous forest lit by moving rays of sunlight cascading through the leafy canopy. I hoped to find the seclusion I needed and a few trout to round out the day. I was feeling organic as hell. I crossed the Cherry several times until I came to a series of plunge pools. The river here sang like a choral work as it tricked and poured. The trees leaned over high ahead and met over the river, creating a tunnel not unlike the nave of a medieval church. An ideal place to worship nature by fooling a bespeckled trout with an artificial fly. I rigged up my little seven-foot cane rod given to me by my grandfather, tied on a fly, and started to make my way up the series of pools. By the time I had arrived at the uppermost pool I had caught and released five tiny brook trout. They were so full of color they seemed more like blossoms in the stream. Purples, reds, and blues exploded like fireworks against background rich enough to make King Midas jealous. The river above the pools was a long riffle, and as I quietly read the water, I realized I was not alone.

Along the bank of the river near the head of the riffle sat a strange figure. He was old yet lithe. His long gray hair hung down from beneath a grass hat so crude it almost seemed that it was a part of the forest itself. His shirt was either gray or dirty white, and his pants looked like black pajamas. He had not noticed me, but simply sat staring at the water with nary a movement. I crouched down to watch, unaware at the time exactly why I was watching, or what I expected to see.

After a few minutes, the air over the riffle suddenly came to life with the delicate flights of a few small rusty mayflies. Immediately a splashy rise shown at the surface of the water as a trout dined on nature’s morsel. This seemed to be the signal for the man to slowly move into action. He disappeared into the brush and emerged carrying a sheath knife and a newly cut thin branch of some slender tree. Sitting cross-legged on the forest floor, he used the knife to strip the bark from the branch. With the bark removed, he waved and bent the switch backwards and forwards, nodded to himself, and set it beside the stream.

He now went to the base of a small pine tree, and began digging with his knife until he had uncovered a small root branch of the conifer. This he cut and with subtle effort pulled all its ten feet out of the black loam. Seated again, he separated the root into multiple strands with the knife, and holding the fibers between his toes, began to braid them together. In no time at all a twenty-foot long pile of supple line lay at his feet.

The lone figure now stood up slowly and fastened the line to the tip of his slender little branch rod. I was paralyzed with fascination as he walked up to the river like he was a tree swaying, and cupped a hand in the air to capture a mayfly. Out from his pocket he took a single small hook. He set the mayfly on the top of his shoulder where it obediently stayed. Removing his hat, he plucked several strands of his long gray hair and placed them between his lips. Delicately, he tied one strand of hair to the end of his root line, while the other served to attach the little mayfly carefully to the hook.

He crouched on the bank with extreme patience and deliberate movements, slowly bringing the little wand up to hover over his head while the hook and its mayfly cargo were held in his left hand. He reminded me of a heron the way he stood still or moved with such deliberation that one was not absolutely certain if he was moving at all.

A short charged silence followed before, in the middle of the riffle, a trout made a little ring as it sipped in a mayfly. ‘Swish-shush’ went the rod, sending the line arcing beautifully over the water to place the mayfly with utmost accuracy and delicacy directly upon the now still spot where the ring was still expanding. Suddenly the water exploded in tiny droplets, and the slender wand began to dip and dance in the man’s ropy arms.

He smiled then; a slowly spreading smile that began at the corners of his mouth and grew to encompass first his entire face, and then spread through the whole forest. Crouched in my little perch behind a red dogwood bush, I felt his smile as if I could touch it.

I watched while in the next ten minutes he took five more brook trout, lay them reverently on the bank, fashioned a crude creel or basket from birch bark lined with fresh grass, and placed the trout in a row in the basket. Stooping to drink from the river his lips muttered unheard words I could only take as a thankful offering. Then he did something odd. He kissed his little rod and tossed it into the riffle, turned, and walked into the forest, vanishing into the dark foliage as if he had never existed at all. The rod and line came slowly bouncing down the stream to rest at my feet.

So… this is how I came to have this switch rod wrapped in an old cloth among the chattel of the past in my cellar. I had saved it because without its physical presence I never would have trusted my memories of that day. Who or what he was I never will know, but to me he will always be a being out of place in time. He was both native to the forest and yet not native to the time and day. It seems to me he slipped between time. One thing is certain though, He was the finest angler I have ever seen.

Picking up fly fishing and the $nob factor

Fly fishing can be daunting, confusing, and downright unapproachable for many of those who want to take up this wonderful sport. The gear alone is pricey, and the terminology is a mix of antiquated measurements, technical terms and names not found in any language. The often confusing and conflicting advise newcomers receive does not help.
If one is a doctor or a lawyer or otherwise endowed with a large disposable income, one could attend an Orvis fly fishing school at some destination resort, but what do other 99% do? Where are they to go for advise?

In talking to non-fly fishers about some angling subject or another, I often discover that they have a fly rod in the closet somewhere that has never been cast. Some present from their wife or grandfather or other caring soul, it has sat there for years gathering dust instead of making memories.

I feel for these people, and have made it a mini mission of mine to encourage people to enjoy the great outdoors through fly fishing.

One of the largest hurdles to get over for a beginning fly angler is the sheer cost of the equipment.
I was in need of a new fly line for a specific rod, so I opened up the Cabelas catalog where I discovered to my shock that the price of a fly line is now roughly the equivalent of an average mortgage payment. Here is where fly fishing gets the 'snob' reputation. There are quite good rods and reels and other gear out there that do not cost an arm and a leg, but they are often buried under pages of $700 flyrods, $600 waders, and $500 reels.
I had customers come to my flyshop specifically because they felt they had been sold down the road and had their wallet fleeced by other fly shops. I had manufacturers reps that denigrated cheap equipment, and at all times exhorted me to push the most expensive rods and reels. I have no problem appreciating and using the best in life, but for the beginner, perhaps a wee bit of restraint is in order.
Sometimes the most expensive equipment is marketed to the angler that wants to improve his or her fishing but buys into the 'Magic Bean" concept that a better gadget will help them along the way, and solve their problems for them. The easy fix has accounted for millions of dollars in sales. I once had a customer that couldn't cast past his shoelaces buy a $700 dollar fly rod so that he could cast farther. The cost for a casting lesson with me would have set him back about $50.

So, to come back to the topic at hand, how does one take up fly fishing?

1. Visit a fly shop and talk to a professional. If the professional steers you toward the $750 pair of ivory forceps find another fly shop. Buy a book on fly fishing. There are many good ones out there. Take it home and read it. Then read it again. Talk to any friend you have that fly fishes. He or she will give you loads of advise. Some of it will be good and some will be bad. Refer back to the book to be able to tell the difference.
   
2. Think about what type of fishing you are going to be doing most and be honest with yourself. You are best off fishing for panfish, stocked trout, or some other easier quarry at first. Under no circumstances pick a famous trout stream for a first destination. That will be just setting yourself up for a fall.
   
3. Based upon where and what you want to fish for, determine the correct tackle (weight of rod and line, etc.) Begin exploring fly shops and talking to the people who work there. You will encounter snobs, fanatics, and people who will either not speak to you or will talk your head off. If you want to get rid of them, ask them where the "Worm poles" are.
4. When you are certain of the right rod and line weight, select a good entry level rod that has a solid warranty. long sticks of graphite tend to break after all. Buy a reel that balances the rod and does not break the bank, and the correct fly line. The line is quite important here. You don't have to buy the most expensive one, but listen to the advise you get. You may need to buy a 6 wt line for your 5 wt rod. See? I told you it was confusing...
5. Once you have the rod, reel, line, several leaders, a spool of tippet material, and a flybox loaded with a couple of dozen general purpose flies such as attractor dries, wooly buggers, and small poppers, it is time to learn how to cast. But what about the waders and creel and vest, and and, and...? Forget about it until later. Learn to cast. Buy a video on casting, get a simple lesson, and practice on the lawn for a half an hour every day. Write down what you learn. Tell the neighbors to stop asking you what you are fishing for. Use a piece of yarn tied to the end of your leader at first so as to avoid body piercings in strange locations.
6. Find a gazateer or other good map, put on a floppy hat, pack a sandwich and a water bottle, don the mosquito repellent, grab your gear and start exploring!

Cost of rod, reel, line, fly box, flies, leaders, etc. @$325.00 - $450.00
Ability to get out of the house and off the couch, share the outdoor experience with friends, explore nature, and catch your first fish... priceless.

My Favorite essay

I am bringing this 2008 post back because I like it so much and I think it fell beneath the radar. It just sums up what I love about this wonderful sport.

A philosophical look at fly fishing;


Awhile ago, while watching a spin fisherman walk far too quickly down a pretty stretch of my local smallmouth bass river, carelessly throwing 200 foot casts in every direction and hauling in the occasional fish by cartwheeling it back to him at lightning speed, I began a slow and long meditation on why I flyfish. Just what is it about flyfishing that seems to captivate my soul? Why have I given up all other kinds of sport fishing? I had a lot of ideas, most overlapping and difficult to categorize. Some were more feelings than ideas. I feared it would like trying to describe fine music with mere words. Perhaps poetry would be more appropriate, but I feared that I would produce something overly romantic and sentimental. In my thinking I had began to fuss and over-analyze the sport, when at dusk I made a beautiful cast, sending a pretty loop of line across the river and delivering a popper under the branches of a fallen willow, which in turn was engulfed by a beautiful and strong smallmouth bass. It was perfection. “Aha” I exclaimed aloud, “Thank you for reminding me.” Moments like this are epiphanies. Therefore, with all humility, I give you my take on flyfishing.

A good point of departure is to examine what the world envisions when it imagines flyfishing. If one reads any mainstream news or magazine article over the years regarding flyfishing they all have common themes. Flyfishing seems remote and mystic, practiced by older gentlemen wise to the way of fish and river. Gentlemen who we can imagine engrossed in a good book at the hearth-side and enjoying a pipe. They might be a bit misanthropic, preferring the company of a good dog and an eight inch brookie to that of common society. The fly angler often is depicted as a bit tweedy, like a college philosophy professor with addition of rod and creel.
Flyfishing is depicted as different and elevated beyond the other forms of sport fishing. Fly anglers are depicted as serious; serious and traditional.

The sporting Tradition:

So, letting the magazine images and portrayals guide us, let’s go back in time. Flyfishing came to America via Europe, specifically England. Flyfishing was a diversion and sport of the leisure class. Only they could afford the time and effort needed to catch a fish on horsehair lines and small feathered creations. The common working man would never have enough time for pleasantries. Common men fished with bait and nets, while the upper classes were the practitioners of flyfishing; thus we also see the origins of the snobbery effect. The sporting tradition in England demanded that the animal or fish supposedly be given a sporting chance. (Except driven shoots, which although considered sporting were the hunting equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.) Fly anglers dressed in the finest country clothing, took pride in the aesthetics of their equipment, and fished in beautiful places for beautiful fish. Not a lot changed in the American inheritance and adoption of flyfishing. The dryfly was still considered the only way, and although the chalk streams gave way to the Catskills, the trout still lived in beautiful places, and the persons chasing them with the fly rod were still the leisure classes. Anglers dressed in their Sunday best, and flyfishing was still considered an elevated way of sporting against the fishes. Modern flyfishers are not all upper class snobs. We come from diverse backgrounds. We no longer wear ties and collars, and have traded bamboo for graphite, but we are still bound together by a tradition of a fish caught in a sporting way. Given this background, let’s look at some of the inherent qualities and themes in this sporting tradition.

A quiet sport:

Above all, flyfishing is a quiet sport practiced in beautiful natural surroundings. It is a sport practiced alone, where one can hear the murmur of the brook and the wind whistling through the trees. Gone are the sounds of the city and civilization. Gone are the screaming children and barking dogs. Gone are the roaring engines and sirens; gone are the worries and stress. Fly anglers are apt to stop fishing at some point, and simply sit and watch an eagle or a sunset. Most flyfishing is done while wading, without boats. When boats are used, often they are canoes or drift boats and non-motorized or only equipped with a motor sufficient to get them out of trouble. Many fly anglers are so quiet that you would never see them if their reels didn’t click. They silently glide into the water and disappear into the mist. The rhythm of casting is slow and quiet too, as is the way the fly enters the water. Quietness is important to us as it allows us to think. Remember, music is the space between the notes.

Nature and beautiful places:

Trout live in beautiful places, as do other fish we fly anglers pursue. Nature is simplicity and a force. We try to capture essences of nature and the natural world in art and music, the smells and sounds in poetry. Nature and its language and silence are part of each of us. It is where we came from. To practice a quiet sport among such beautiful and diverse surroundings as mountain streams, big freestone rivers, and northern forest brooks is a privilege and our worship at our temple. Nature’s spiritualism is a large part of flyfishing. At the end of the day, we are as likely to lock into memory the moment the sun burned off the mists on the river at dawn, as the fish we caught. This attention to the aesthetic qualities of nature leads us to care about our treasured places, and to become concerned with the forces that threaten them. There are few true fly anglers that are not closet tree-huggers, if not outright members of conservation organizations. We care because we love, and we love because of beauty. We are connected to the natural world by the footprints we leave and the loops we make.

Involvement:

More than any other kind of sport fishing, fly fishing is connected and involved with the act of fishing. Fly anglers have to make delicate casts, read water, and manage line and mending. We strip in line by hand in order to prevent drag or give a streamer motion, we don’t just turn a crank. Because of the inherent difficulty of flyfishing, we have to think. We don’t have sonar or radar detectors to tell us exactly where the fish are, we have to explore with our feet and use our minds to defeat the fish, and bring its jeweled form to hand. To me, involvement is essential to the experience. Trolling bores me, as does watching a bobber. Having to present my fly to the fish, whether that is a dryfly, popper or swung salmon fly, involves me with life’s intricacies, struggles, and patterns. That involvement in turn combined with curiosity opens a door to the natural world, and as we study it, we don’t just become better anglers, we become more aware. In essence, we flyfishermen don’t drink beer while aimlessly chucking lures, but instead may savor a single-malt after having discovered and matched a particularly mysterious hatch, or making the perfect cast. We are involved, and appreciate the ability to make discoveries and learn. We want to be more involved in actually catching the fish. We want to say “I figured it out, made the cast, and caught the fish.” We actually want to be the main participant in the little mental and physical chase between ourselves and the fish, not let technology or someone else do it for us. I always get a kick out of people that “fish” by pulling plugs or charter fishing with deep running dodgers and flies. The customer here is not involved at all, merely being the last link on the chain between the fish and a whole lot of knowledge of the guide or captain. After all the guide has rowed the boat pulling the plugs at just the right speed and in just the right place to take a fish, and the captain has the years of knowledge and sonar to locate fish. They are really fishing, not their customers. The customer merely reels in the fish for the glory shot and fish fry.

Simplicity:

Flyfishing at its essence is a simple sport; a single long rod, and single hook used in pursuit of our spiritual quarry. We carry a box of flies that can fit into a pocket, not a large tackle box that weighs forty pounds. Although our rods can be complicated in taper, construction and refined use, they at essence are simply the principle of the willow branch in action; always giving and bending but never letting go, thus letting the fish tire itself out. Our flies are colors of natural furs and feathers and their imitations wrapped on an artists blank canvas of a single hook. Rarely do we need complicated rigging or weight. We need no sonar devices. Just the fly, line, and rod.

Appreciation:

I would make the argument that we who flyfish appreciate our quarry more than other sport fishers. It lies in the inherent difficulties and demands of the sport. Most of us pass through several phases of angling. First, we want to merely catch a fish. Then we want to catch the most fish. After that, we want to catch the biggest fish. Finally, we progress in our angling journey to a point where we are satisfied with being able to fish. We come to enjoy the settings we fish in. We are happy with a small fish. We are happy with many fish. We are just happy to fish. We appreciate the privilege of fishing itself. Numbers are not important any more. We no longer have anything to prove.
In flyfishing, we have to stalk our prey. Whether a steelhead in a big roaring river, or a small bejeweled cutthroat in a mountain stream, our sport demands that we work for our quarry. That work and time spent on the river builds appreciation. I have walked off the water after catching a single memorable fish to eat blackberries or simply to soak in the moment. Some fishermen always have to catch fish. It becomes a game of numbers. When we turn a fish into a number, we have lost a piece of our soul. Perhaps anglers looking for numbers are lost in the river. After all, it was Thoreau who wrote "Many men go fishing all of their lives without the knowing that it is not fish they are after."
Flyfishing is a difficult sport. We have to learn to cast, to wade, and to read water. The limitations of our tackle connect us to the water like no other fishing. We have to think and learn; to evolve as fishermen. We take nothing for granted. The angling experience becomes more than just fishing. When we no longer have ‘bad’ days but merely ‘introspective’ days fishing, we have truly become appreciative of the river, the fish, and the angling experience.

Aesthetics:

In addition to the beauty of the places we pursue our fish, the tackle we use has its own aesthetic qualities. A fly is a beautiful thing. From a well-tied mayfly dry, to a full-dress Atlantic salmon pattern, our flies are tributes to the fish we catch. We spend hours at the bench tying our creations, just to send them on their way into the river with a hope that a connection will be made to a fish. We collect books on flies, and spend winter nights organizing them in boxes. They are small pieces of art. There is little to compare in a plastic lure or metal device. Bait is just bait. I doubt if other anglers spend as much time discussing and treasuring gear as we do our flies.
In addition to the fly, our casting is elegant; a sort of airborne ballet. A loop of flyline gently unrolling over the water to quietly place a fly on the water is something to appreciate in itself. When I practice in the park or the river, people often stop to watch for a bit. Would that happen if I were throwing a crank-bait? I doubt it. Watching a good flycaster can be like watching a gymnast and dancer all rolled into one.
Rods can be appreciated as art as well. A cane rod can be a treasure. With its specialized taper, hand wound guides and clear varnish, it lets us see the essence of a rod in its simplest but prettiest form. Even a well-made graphite rod can be a thing of beauty. Exotic wood inserts and reel seats can match with nickel-silver hardware to create a rod worthy of being photographed.
Many of our reels can be thought of as artistic creations too. Looking at a classic American s-curve handled trout reel with black sides such as a Bogdan or Vom Hoffe one cannot be unmoved. Then there are the old Hardy reels with their own legacies and traditions. Whole books have been dedicated to the art of fly tackle and flies, perhaps more than any other fishing sport.
All fine arts and crafts like these have to be used, and in the use of beautiful tackle in beautiful places, we achieve a sort of aesthetic beauty ourselves.

Quiet, peaceful and alone:
Flyfishing is a sport performed alone. Even if you fish with a friend, you are both doing your separate thing. There is no team, no winner, and no loser. There is no competition except with yourself and your skill. In the end the experience is yours, the memories earned, the fish won fair to hand. Flyfishing can be a meditation; a reflection. Alone we pass through time and the river, ever learning. The mistakes are ours to make alone, and the victories ours alone to celebrate. Quietly we stalk the fish, at peace with the world, and wondering what happened to the worries of yesterday.

A lifetime of learning:

One man’s life is not enough time to learn everything there is to know about flyfishing. Indeed, flyfishing can be thought of as a lifetime journey. It is a sport of reflection and thinking; an intellectual sport. As we progress as anglers, so do we progress as people, growing wise with analogies to life and fishing. If we are ever bored, we can simply change gears. We can learn to cast a two-handed rod, fish in the ocean for stripers, return to the joy of youth by fishing for bluegill, or simply put the rod away, and read a passage of Roderick Haig-Brown. There is so much to do and learn. We have become curious as flyfishers. We ask “Why?”, “What if I do this?”, or “What about that?”, then we spend time on the water answering our own questions.


So, let us go back to that evening on the water when all this contemplation started. The other fisherman moved through the water fast because his equipment allowed him to. He threw his tube-jig three times as far as I could cast because he could. He walked through the best water while casting to empty shallow runs because he never needed to read water. In twenty minutes, he was gone, and I would take another hour to move two hundred yards. Because I moved slowly, thinking and observing, I did fairly well. When fish started to be scarce, I changed tactics and cast to a broad flat strewn with boulders. The popper made a “bloop,” and instantly disappeared in a toilet-flush as a 17 inch smallmouth bass took the fly and proceeded to jump five times in succession. I landed it, released it and reeled up to allow a moment of contemplation and to drink in the whole scene. This was what it was all about. A blue heron flew by overhead, and the sunset-sky turned a fuchsia color. Now I knew...this is why I flyfish.

Why.... A philosophical look at Flyfishing

A philosophical look at fly fishing;


Awhile ago, while watching a spin fisherman walk far too quickly down a pretty stretch of my local smallmouth bass river, carelessly throwing 200 foot casts in every direction and hauling in the occasional fish by cartwheeling it back to him at lightning speed, I began a slow and long meditation on why I flyfish. Just what is it about flyfishing that seems to captivate my soul? Why have I given up all other kinds of sport fishing? I had a lot of ideas, most overlapping and difficult to categorize. Some were more feelings than ideas. I feared it would like trying to describe fine music with mere words. Perhaps poetry would be more appropriate, but I feared that I would produce something overly romantic and sentimental. In my thinking I had began to fuss and over-analyze the sport, when at dusk I made a beautiful cast, sending a pretty loop of line across the river and delivering a popper under the branches of a fallen willow, which in turn was engulfed by a beautiful and strong smallmouth bass. It was perfection. “Aha” I exclaimed aloud, “Thank you for reminding me.” Moments like this are epiphanies. Therefore, with all humility, I give you my take on flyfishing.

A good point of departure is to examine what the world envisions when it imagines flyfishing. If one reads any mainstream news or magazine article over the years regarding flyfishing they all have common themes. Flyfishing seems remote and mystic, practiced by older gentlemen wise to the way of fish and river. Gentlemen who we can imagine engrossed in a good book at the hearth-side and enjoying a pipe. They might be a bit misanthropic, preferring the company of a good dog and an eight inch brookie to that of common society. The fly angler often is depicted as a bit tweedy, like a college philosophy professor with addition of rod and creel.
Flyfishing is depicted as different and elevated beyond the other forms of sport fishing. Fly anglers are depicted as serious; serious and traditional.

The sporting Tradition:

So, letting the magazine images and portrayals guide us, let’s go back in time. Flyfishing came to America via Europe, specifically England. Flyfishing was a diversion and sport of the leisure class. Only they could afford the time and effort needed to catch a fish on horsehair lines and small feathered creations. The common working man would never have enough time for pleasantries. Common men fished with bait and nets, while the upper classes were the practitioners of flyfishing; thus we also see the origins of the snobbery effect. The sporting tradition in England demanded that the animal or fish supposedly be given a sporting chance. (Except driven shoots, which although considered sporting were the hunting equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.) Fly anglers dressed in the finest country clothing, took pride in the aesthetics of their equipment, and fished in beautiful places for beautiful fish. Not a lot changed in the American inheritance and adoption of flyfishing. The dryfly was still considered the only way, and although the chalk streams gave way to the Catskills, the trout still lived in beautiful places, and the persons chasing them with the fly rod were still the leisure classes. Anglers dressed in their Sunday best, and flyfishing was still considered an elevated way of sporting against the fishes. Modern flyfishers are not all upper class snobs. We come from diverse backgrounds. We no longer wear ties and collars, and have traded bamboo for graphite, but we are still bound together by a tradition of a fish caught in a sporting way. Given this background, let’s look at some of the inherent qualities and themes in this sporting tradition.

A quiet sport:

Above all, flyfishing is a quiet sport practiced in beautiful natural surroundings. It is a sport practiced alone, where one can hear the murmur of the brook and the wind whistling through the trees. Gone are the sounds of the city and civilization. Gone are the screaming children and barking dogs. Gone are the roaring engines and sirens; gone are the worries and stress. Fly anglers are apt to stop fishing at some point, and simply sit and watch an eagle or a sunset. Most flyfishing is done while wading, without boats. When boats are used, often they are canoes or drift boats and non-motorized or only equipped with a motor sufficient to get them out of trouble. Many fly anglers are so quiet that you would never see them if their reels didn’t click. They silently glide into the water and disappear into the mist. The rhythm of casting is slow and quiet too, as is the way the fly enters the water. Quietness is important to us as it allows us to think. Remember, music is the space between the notes.

Nature and beautiful places:

Trout live in beautiful places, as do other fish we fly anglers pursue. Nature is simplicity and a force. We try to capture essences of nature and the natural world in art and music, the smells and sounds in poetry. Nature and its language and silence are part of each of us. It is where we came from. To practice a quiet sport among such beautiful and diverse surroundings as mountain streams, big freestone rivers, and northern forest brooks is a privilege and our worship at our temple. Nature’s spiritualism is a large part of flyfishing. At the end of the day, we are as likely to lock into memory the moment the sun burned off the mists on the river at dawn, as the fish we caught. This attention to the aesthetic qualities of nature leads us to care about our treasured places, and to become concerned with the forces that threaten them. There are few true fly anglers that are not closet tree-huggers, if not outright members of conservation organizations. We care because we love, and we love because of beauty. We are connected to the natural world by the footprints we leave and the loops we make.

Involvement:

More than any other kind of sport fishing, fly fishing is connected and involved with the act of fishing. Fly anglers have to make delicate casts, read water, and manage line and mending. We strip in line by hand in order to prevent drag or give a streamer motion, we don’t just turn a crank. Because of the inherent difficulty of flyfishing, we have to think. We don’t have sonar or radar detectors to tell us exactly where the fish are, we have to explore with our feet and use our minds to defeat the fish, and bring its jeweled form to hand. To me, involvement is essential to the experience. Trolling bores me, as does watching a bobber. Having to present my fly to the fish, whether that is a dryfly, popper or swung salmon fly, involves me with life’s intricacies, struggles, and patterns. That involvement in turn combined with curiosity opens a door to the natural world, and as we study it, we don’t just become better anglers, we become more aware. In essence, we flyfishermen don’t drink beer while aimlessly chucking lures, but instead may savor a single-malt after having discovered and matched a particularly mysterious hatch, or making the perfect cast. We are involved, and appreciate the ability to make discoveries and learn. We want to be more involved in actually catching the fish. We want to say “I figured it out, made the cast, and caught the fish.” We actually want to be the main participant in the little mental and physical chase between ourselves and the fish, not let technology or someone else do it for us. I always get a kick out of people that “fish” by pulling plugs or charter fishing with deep running dodgers and flies. The customer here is not involved at all, merely being the last link on the chain between the fish and a whole lot of knowledge of the guide or captain. After all the guide has rowed the boat pulling the plugs at just the right speed and in just the right place to take a fish, and the captain has the years of knowledge and sonar to locate fish. They are really fishing, not their customers. The customer merely reels in the fish for the glory shot and fish fry.

Simplicity:

Flyfishing at its essence is a simple sport; a single long rod, and single hook used in pursuit of our spiritual quarry. We carry a box of flies that can fit into a pocket, not a large tackle box that weighs forty pounds. Although our rods can be complicated in taper, construction and refined use, they at essence are simply the principle of the willow branch in action; always giving and bending but never letting go, thus letting the fish tire itself out. Our flies are colors of natural furs and feathers and their imitations wrapped on an artists blank canvas of a single hook. Rarely do we need complicated rigging or weight. We need no sonar devices. Just the fly, line, and rod.

Appreciation:

I would make the argument that we who flyfish appreciate our quarry more than other sport fishers. It lies in the inherent difficulties and demands of the sport. Most of us pass through several phases of angling. First, we want to merely catch a fish. Then we want to catch the most fish. After that, we want to catch the biggest fish. Finally, we progress in our angling journey to a point where we are satisfied with being able to fish. We come to enjoy the settings we fish in. We are happy with a small fish. We are happy with many fish. We are just happy to fish. We appreciate the privilege of fishing itself. Numbers are not important any more. We no longer have anything to prove.
In flyfishing, we have to stalk our prey. Whether a steelhead in a big roaring river, or a small bejeweled cutthroat in a mountain stream, our sport demands that we work for our quarry. That work and time spent on the river builds appreciation. I have walked off the water after catching a single memorable fish to eat blackberries or simply to soak in the moment. Some fishermen always have to catch fish. It becomes a game of numbers. When we turn a fish into a number, we have lost a piece of our soul. Perhaps anglers looking for numbers are lost in the river. After all, it was Thoreau who wrote "Many men go fishing all of their lives without the knowing that it is not fish they are after."
Flyfishing is a difficult sport. We have to learn to cast, to wade, and to read water. The limitations of our tackle connect us to the water like no other fishing. We have to think and learn; to evolve as fishermen. We take nothing for granted. The angling experience becomes more than just fishing. When we no longer have ‘bad’ days but merely ‘introspective’ days fishing, we have truly become appreciative of the river, the fish, and the angling experience.

Aesthetics:

In addition to the beauty of the places we pursue our fish, the tackle we use has its own aesthetic qualities. A fly is a beautiful thing. From a well-tied mayfly dry, to a full-dress Atlantic salmon pattern, our flies are tributes to the fish we catch. We spend hours at the bench tying our creations, just to send them on their way into the river with a hope that a connection will be made to a fish. We collect books on flies, and spend winter nights organizing them in boxes. They are small pieces of art. There is little to compare in a plastic lure or metal device. Bait is just bait. I doubt if other anglers spend as much time discussing and treasuring gear as we do our flies.
In addition to the fly, our casting is elegant; a sort of airborne ballet. A loop of flyline gently unrolling over the water to quietly place a fly on the water is something to appreciate in itself. When I practice in the park or the river, people often stop to watch for a bit. Would that happen if I were throwing a crank-bait? I doubt it. Watching a good flycaster can be like watching a gymnast and dancer all rolled into one.
Rods can be appreciated as art as well. A cane rod can be a treasure. With its specialized taper, hand wound guides and clear varnish, it lets us see the essence of a rod in its simplest but prettiest form. Even a well-made graphite rod can be a thing of beauty. Exotic wood inserts and reel seats can match with nickel-silver hardware to create a rod worthy of being photographed.
Many of our reels can be thought of as artistic creations too. Looking at a classic American s-curve handled trout reel with black sides such as a Bogdan or Vom Hoffe one cannot be unmoved. Then there are the old Hardy reels with their own legacies and traditions. Whole books have been dedicated to the art of fly tackle and flies, perhaps more than any other fishing sport.
All fine arts and crafts like these have to be used, and in the use of beautiful tackle in beautiful places, we achieve a sort of aesthetic beauty ourselves.

Quiet, peaceful and alone:
Flyfishing is a sport performed alone. Even if you fish with a friend, you are both doing your separate thing. There is no team, no winner, and no loser. There is no competition except with yourself and your skill. In the end the experience is yours, the memories earned, the fish won fair to hand. Flyfishing can be a meditation; a reflection. Alone we pass through time and the river, ever learning. The mistakes are ours to make alone, and the victories ours alone to celebrate. Quietly we stalk the fish, at peace with the world, and wondering what happened to the worries of yesterday.

A lifetime of learning:

One man’s life is not enough time to learn everything there is to know about flyfishing. Indeed, flyfishing can be thought of as a lifetime journey. It is a sport of reflection and thinking; an intellectual sport. As we progress as anglers, so do we progress as people, growing wise with analogies to life and fishing. If we are ever bored, we can simply change gears. We can learn to cast a two-handed rod, fish in the ocean for stripers, return to the joy of youth by fishing for bluegill, or simply put the rod away, and read a passage of Roderick Haig-Brown. There is so much to do and learn. We have become curious as flyfishers. We ask “Why?”, “What if I do this?”, or “What about that?”, then we spend time on the water answering our own questions.


So, let us go back to that evening on the water when all this contemplation started. The other fisherman moved through the water fast because his equipment allowed him to. He threw his tube-jig three times as far as I could cast because he could. He walked through the best water while casting to empty shallow runs because he never needed to read water. In twenty minutes, he was gone, and I would take another hour to move two hundred yards. Because I moved slowly, thinking and observing, I did fairly well. When fish started to be scarce, I changed tactics and cast to a broad flat strewn with boulders. The popper made a “bloop,” and instantly disappeared in a toilet-flush as a 17 inch smallmouth bass took the fly and proceeded to jump five times in succession. I landed it, released it and reeled up to allow a moment of contemplation and to drink in the whole scene. This was what it was all about. A blue heron flew by overhead, and the sunset-sky turned a fuchsia color. Now I knew...this is why I flyfish.