A portrait in miniature: Driftless trout streams

We slow down as our footsteps take us into the woods and up the valley where the stream gets smaller and more intimate. Stepping quietly, our senses detect the little music; tinkles of bells, murmurs of woodwinds, swirls of flutes, brush strokes both bold and exact.

It focuses the eyes and concentrates the senses. We are one in harmony with the stream. We are part of it. We stepped into its realm one foot in the element of water, one foot on earth, our minds in the air above and eyes in wonder, searching… heightened senses… spot a wild orchid, a water spider, watch a tiny brook trout explore a riffle in circles unaware you are now a part of its world. We feel welcome, not an intruder. The gallery opens for us…

They are intimate because we enter the portrait. We are part of it for a fleeting moment…

 

The streams are introspective. Dancing lights of water sparkle like little flashing mirrors and highlights provide the lighting to make the portrait glow. We are reflective now among the tunnels of valleys hidden among hills. We pause to strive to understand… to interpret.

We even seem to breath in miniature in order not to disturb this quiet song.

This art exhibit was not promoted, and the portraits so hidden that the show does not begin until we stop to smell a flower, or turn the artwork on its side to reveal its colors: Brown trout… toasted Amish bread with honey and raspberries with halos of ripe blueberries. Brook trout so colored that they seem out of proportion to size. How can such a bright canvas be hidden here? They are tubes of paint rolling along the cobble-palette at the bottom to be uncovered for a mere moment in time, splashed across our memory in bright strokes like a Van Gogh.

Is it a portrait or a landscape? Only the artist knows, and we may think we know his or her intentions, only to be confronted around the next bend, as the gallery changes anew.

The streams are awash with color and shadow, their features thrusting forth proudly in personalities captured in a mere sitting. A moment in time ageless now as they move from birth to death, from spring to confluence, only to sit again for a new portrait the next time we step into their studio and smell the colors of the foliage and water on the artist’s brushes sweeping gently like trees across the canvas of nature.

They will be there next time we visit, differently intimate and small, but with such art to kiss the senses each moment, around every curve, every cheek, lip, and riffle.

A Still Life with Fly Rod

I am fortunate to have recently acquired a new hand-made cane rod by the master Joe Balestrieri. It is a modified Paul Young Princess taper, a 7' for a 4 wt with a wet fly tip and a dry fly tip. It has a lovely parabolic action that casts beautifully! I thought a little photo montage was in order with a few of my thoughts on the subject. Enjoy! Joe's rods can be found here: Redwing Fly Rods
Quotations Copyright 2015 Erik Helm 

 
 
 
 
 
 


A bamboo fly rod is unique, like a fine musical instrument. One must smell it, touch it, listen to it, and get to understand what it is in its essence. Only then when one casts in graceful symbiosis with the rod, will one make the most exquisite music.

Cane rods are like a fine wine. They are not intended to be consumed in quantity, but sipped and savored. The line rolls off the tip with the same personality as a wine rolls off the tongue and thus stimulates the taste buds. The shape of the line going out can be compared to the aftertaste of a wine, each having hidden aesthetics.

Plastic rods of the same model all look the same and cast the same. Imagine how boring the world would be if women were the same way.

There is something about a rod made from natural materials of bamboo, walnut, silk, and natural oils. The rod seems to have more depth, as one can look at it and almost see through to its soul. It has a richness and luster lacking in any materials made by man.

Art is not to be found in commodity. It is found in the personality of the maker which is infused into the finished product, of which he or she is proud, and almost doesn't want to let go of. Art comes in small and quiet places. It cannot exist where there is noise.

There is no other joy in angling as satisfying as when we catch a trout on a fly we tied, with a hand made rod, in a place where we had to find by ourselves, with our eyes and feet and mind.

If angling is the contemplative sport, as Mr. Walton would have us understand, that contemplation should not be on the final destination, but upon the path that led us there. Let that path not be the easy one nor the commonplace, but one of inner discovery and learning, for that much the better when the fish is finally brought to hand.

Scotch and bamboo rods should be well aged, and enjoyed together.

Let the fly that graces the end of your line not be an insult to the fish.

Each bamboo rod has a unique resonance, like a cello. It can be felt in the cast as the cello sings to Bach.

Don't fight a bamboo rod. After all, the bamboo is a grass, and all grass is impervious to wind. As the wind sings, the bamboo bends. reflect on a gentle breeze on a warm summer evening offering a coolness with a slowly rising and falling breath, and the rod will be yours to command.

Haiku Steelhead

My friend Ken Campbell has revived his blog 'Haiku Steelhead'.
Ken is an artist in his appreciation for those things sublime and beautiful, and is one of a small brotherhood of those of us that attempt to find a deeper meaning in our fly-fishing adventures. Please check it out here.

An historical and inspirational poem

Old Time Salmon Fishing

Written in 1925 by John Cossboom, renowned American angler and originator of the famous ‘Cossboom’ series of flies.

Did you ever cast for salmon in the spring,
For the big bright shining fish fresh from the sea,
With the leaping strength and vigor that they bring
To the swollen flood-fed river running free?

Did you ever feel the fever in your blood
When a dirty cold Nor’easter threatened rain,
And you smelled the river clearing after flood,
And you sensed the salmon in the pools again?

Did you never wield a rod of eighteen feet –
A Leonard, old, with handles wound with cane –
The “Church of England” rods we used to meet,
Swung by anglers of the old school without strain?

Did you ever use a cast of Hebra size?
Did you ever cast a sixty-thousandths line?
Did you ever tie on Durham Ranger flies –
Big 5/0 flies, and cast them in the wind?

Did you ever see a wave behind your fly
And know it for a fish of monstrous size,
And when that wave exploded two feet high,
Feel your great rod bend near double to the rise?

Did you ever have a guide yell in your face,
When your salmon surged across the heavy pool
And dragged your rod down level with your waist,
“Keep your tip up, or you’ll lose him, you dumb fool!”?

Did you ever race along the slippery shore
With your rod held high and bended to the fray,
While down across the rushing pool he tore
And jumped two hundred feet and more away?

Did you ever feel your rod and line go slack,
And cry, “He’s gone!”, in disappointed pain,
And when you found he’d only started back,
Did you madly reel the strain on him again?

Did you ever think you had him tired out,
When his tail began to show above the stream?
Did you ever think him yours without a doubt
Till he rushed and made your old reel fairly scream?

Did you ever back up slowly on the beach
And draw him gently toward the waiting guide,
Then have him stop and stay just out of reach,
And chug those scary chugs from side to side?

Do you recall that long last surging plunge
That took him up and out across the tide,
And how you swung him back down to the lunge
That sank the gaff into his silver side?

Do you recall your fervent thankful prayer,
As his forty pounds lay shining at your feet,
To the Red Gods who had smiled on you so fair,
To the Red Gods who had made your joy complete?

That’s the fishing that they called a “Sport of kings” –
When thet fished in swollen rivers’ springtime flow
For the big bright shining fish of other Springs,
With that heavy rugged gear of long ago!

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.'

A little poem I found

This little poem hung on the bulletin board of the flyshop I used to run. I have absolutely no idea where it came from, or who wrote it, but it sure is profound, deep, and reflective, which is why it hung where it did. Please let me share this with you. Sit back, pour a nice merlot and enjoy...

Casting Reels

You find them at flea markets
and yard sales,
old South Bends and Pfluegers,
with fancy engraving,
knurled knobs and pearl handles,
spooled with the fraying line
of long stories snarled into silence,
not just exaggerated tales of walleyes, bass, and catfish,
but of hardworking men who on Saturdays sought out
the solace of lakes, who on weekdays at desks,
or standing on ladders,
or next to clattering machines
played out their youth and strength
waiting to set the hook, and then,
in their sixties, felt the line go slack
and reeled the years back empty.
They are the ones that got away...