My wife and I were having an evening on the town, taking advantage of the opportunity to listen to a friend’s showcased musical abilities. Though I don’t profess to be a gentleman myself, my upbringing has taught me to recognize one if they wander too close.
One such person and a familiar face stopped by with a smile and to catch up on recent events. Let me just call him Doc.
During the course of our conversation, the topic turned — as it often does — to one of our shared hobbies.
First, you need to know that Doc is a bit of an admitted perfectionist. He excels in the workplace, swings a golf club like he should be on the circuit and likes batting a ball across short fences. Doc is also well known in professional circles, and I’m pretty sure the local clergy call him for moral steering. The second thing you need to know is that I’m not any of those things.
If you knew me at all, you’d likely think I’d be a fish out of water when talking to someone of such good character. In Doc’s case, it was exactly the fish he wanted to talk about.
After a lifetime of being active in less consumptive outdoor sports, he’d taken up in recent years, fly fishing — a frustration I share.
Lightweight
During the course of the conversation, he confessed to actually joining a trout club and has been using a 2-weight rod to land rainbows and browns. Having fished that club as a guest on a few occasions, I know of the bragging-size fish he was potentially netting.
For the uninitiated, 2-weight fly rods are … well, in the fly-weight category. Often hovering well under 2 ounces, give or take a few tenths, these specialized rods are at their best on small water and handling average trout and panfish.
They can cast very small, weightless flies on exceptionally light leaders and tippets, the thin, nearly invisible line connected to the fly line.
The careful, precise, and — dare I say — the perfectionists of the sport can do very well with these rods and can lay out surgically precise casts. I envy the users, but I don’t own one. I admit thinking about it, but so far, it’s been relegated to wishes and wanderlust while I stick with the middle-of-the-road 5-weights.
I was actually at first surprised at Doc’s choice as it can be a tough way to start on that fly-tossing learning curve, but then it all made sense.
First of all, I know that he likely only chose it after getting solid advice, that he would practice and work on his proficiency, and that he would certainly relish the additional challenge it creates when connecting to larger fish. That’s just how guys like Doc are made.
Then, he said something that hit home. To paraphrase, “If I don’t catch a fish in the first few minutes, I get bored and am ready to quit.”
Of course, he added that this was angling at the club where fish are more plentiful than those swimming in the streams he knows that I usually haunt. He said that fishing in those areas must be frustrating.
That made me smile, and his comment stuck with me enough that here I sit writing about it. But, as usual, Doc is once again correct on so many levels.
While fishing at his club does offer the availability of more fish, those trout are still pretty smart and know something about avoiding the skillet. They’ve seen their share of careless casting, novice mistakes and bad flies, creating a wariness of any unexplained shadow, bubble or splash. That delicate 2 weight of Doc’s and his practiced skills are what join forces to land fish.
But, on the waters of Michigan’s Au Sable, Boardman and Manistee; Pennsylvania’s Kettle Creek and Little Sandy, and Ohio’s Mad and Clearfork, the fish aren’t stupid there, either.
They’ve seen people like me often enough to recognize trouble — or to prepare themselves for a good bubbly laugh. Those trout are spread out into long stretches of water, which require interpretation and study to discover favorite fish-holding spots. They can also be pickier than a 7-year-old at the dinner table. Mayflies may be landing on your nose, but if the fish have spotted some larval worm or bug that has managed to catch their culinary fancy, your perfectly presented Adams fly has a better chance of catching a creek chub.
As Doc recognized, that can lead to frustration, especially if your personality dictates a quick return on your effort.
Welcome distractions
Fortunately, like a dog sidetracked by every squirrel rustling an autumn leaf, I tend to allow myself to become distracted when fishing — as well as in life — when things slow down a bit.
It doesn’t mean I quit trying to land a fish. I’m always in favor of giving those trout a little piscatorial embarrassment. It’s just that if the fish aren’t cooperating, I’m stumped at what I might be doing wrong, or I’m having some trouble with my knot-tying, that proverbial squirrel can suddenly skitter into view.
It may come as a flight of woodies, a snapping turtle riding the current, a great blue heron searching for dinner or a deer crossing the stream just a few yards away. Sometimes I find myself just finding a big rock and sitting down to daydream a bit while watching the rhythm of the water pushing its way around a river’s bend while enjoying the curious song birds moving ever closer. I imagine angels in a magical ballet with the dragonflies as they perform pirouettes above the water as a breeze hypnotically lulls the trees into their preparation for a winter’s nap, often causing my own eyelids to become heavy.
Maybe that’s why I tend to fish alone. It’s not that I’m a patient person by nature, it’s that it creates in me a patient person within nature. When I prepare to leave the streamside, I somehow feel emotionally refreshed and renewed, even if I spent the time fishless and my feet are dragging just a bit as I walk to the truck.
Unfortunately, now Doc’s got me thinking about a 2-weight again — or maybe a 3 or 4 would be better. I guess I’ll have to think about it … I might need to find a rock to sit on.
“Soon after I embraced the sport of angling, I became convinced that I should never be able to enjoy it if I had to rely on the cooperation of fish.”
— Sparse Gray Hackle (aka Alfred W. Miller)
