I Wanted a Perfect Ending

This time was different.  A few days before I'd returned from making a long cast to the other side of the country, and metaphorically speaking, I'd raised a big trout - only to have it throw the hook and sink away out of sight.

Driving west on highway 66, there was a feeling in my gut that I hadn't had in a long time.  Pounding pavement at breakneck speed, there were pangs of desperation and longing coupled with the stinging reality of my situation, but also the comfort of knowing that before long I'd find myself in an environment as familiar to me as anywhere else in the world - the moving water of a trout stream.  I was alone, and although I would almost always rather share the water with a  friend, this trip needed to be exactly the way it was.  

I try to be mindful of my motivation whenever I fish alone.  If I'm weary, sick, fed up, overworked, angry, frustrated, need to think things over, or need to stop thinking things over, I've found that I should probably go fishing; when progress is important, it's best when I'm alone.  On a solo fishing trip, there are no obligations other than to fish and do whatever comes into your mind - you can turn your phone off, leave your watch in camp and discard any sense of obligation you have to the rest of the world.  In an increasingly connected world, personal progress is hard to find among a constant bombardment of emails, phone calls, texts, and other modern day catch-22's.

Fishing alone, especially in unfamiliar waters, it's possible to learn more about yourself than you could probably ever predict before you do it.  Uninfluenced by crowds, other guides, and friends for better or worse, you're free to be yourself, to live as you like for the time being, and to fish the way that suits you. Although it might not be apparent at the time, a reflection a day of solo fishing can yield impressive insight into who we are as fisherman, but also as people.  Like it or not, many of us live like we fish, and vice versa; and as famous fly-fishing author John Gierach says, "for some it's a blessing, and for others it's a curse."

I started fishing standard fare for this river, a small Sulphur dun, and a Griffith's gnat and was almost immediately rewarded with a fine trout.  However, after working through a beautiful pool for the next hour with a handful of rising fish, and God-knows-how-many waiting patiently under the surface, yielded nothing, it was time for a change.  I sat down on a midstream rock and poured through a half-dozen boxes, considering everything from size 24 midges, up to a size 2 streamer.  I settled on a fly that I have more confidence in for trout than probably any other, and over the next few hours my confidence in this bug was justified, over, over, and over again (although I still can't figure out what this piece of rubber, dubbing, foam, and yarn represented to these wily and seasoned tailwater fish).  Therein lies one of the other charms about fly fishing - how you can be dead wrong, but somehow right enough to get the job done better than you could have possibly imagined.

 

 

So I hit the river really the only way I know how, with a smile on my face, and contentment in my heart - ready and eager to accept whatever, good or bad, the river had to offer me on that particular day.  In all the changes I've gone through in my life, and in particular this last chapter, fishing is one of the few things that has a feeling of permanence to it, which is a very comforting thought even at the most convoluted times.   

I'd by lying if I said that I expected to catch a fish on every cast, but every time I throw a line I do it with hope.  Every cast is a flirtation with uncertainty, and to be honest on most days it's more than likely that most casts won't end up interesting a trout.  I guess in some ways that's the mystique and also the silliness of fly fishing - if it was all about kicking ass and taking names you'd be crazy to do it with a Sage and some feathers and dubbing - an Ugly Stik and a hunk of power bait or a spinner would seem to be a much more suitable and effective choice.  So instead, I fly fish because it's the activity I want to do, done the way I want to do it.  It's the way I've chosen to live an incredibly large and important part of my life.  Now, on that day I was losing myself in just casting, wading over mid-stream boulders, doing my best to sting a few trout, but mostly keeping my fingers crossed for the serendipity I'd so narrowly missed during my last "fishing" trip. 

I've had more great days, and also more tough days on a river than just about anyone I know, purely because of the fact that over the past 6 or 7 years of my life I've been incredibly lucky to spend an enormous amount of time on the water with a rod (or in many cases, a net) in my hand.  During that time I've developed my own style of fly fishing - as all anglers are apt to do - which was described by an old fly fishing friend of mine in San Francisco as - "you just fish, you just love it, and you never stop."  Sometimes this means that I fish on days when I shouldn't, when conditions aren't ideal, or the drive doesn't seem worth it, or I get on or off the water earlier or later than is best (or at times, healthy), it means that I do nonsensical things like traveling through the middle of the night in order to be on a piece of prime water come morning, and it means that even when I see a trout lie shrouded by branches, snags, and difficult currents, I'm going to make a couple damn casts in there anyway.  It means that I don't know how to give up on a big fish, and once I know where it is, I'll settle in and buckle down.  In many ways, this life is like a big trout, and I can only hope that I'm a cagey angler with all the time in the world.  

As the day was winding down, I made a series of casts into a particularly promising backwater.  It was deep, dark, and full of boulders - a perfect home for a big brown trout.  On the third or fourth cast into this pocket, a shape moved off the bottom, and slowly ascended through the water column, opened its mouth, and engulfed my fly with unflappable confidence and laziness.  I set the hook, and after a brief but eventful fight over boulders and across the swiftest part of the current, brought one of the most beautiful fish I've ever caught to the bank.  After snapping a couple quick photos, I removed my special fly, and watched the fish glide away back to where he came from.  It's funny the moments when a moment on the river really hits you, and this one certainly did.  I sunk to my knees midstream, in disbelief of what had just happened.  At that moment, I realized that the feeling in my gut had, over the course of the day, been replaced with one of satisfaction and comfort. Despite recent disappointments off the water, this fish was exactly what I had been looking for that entire day.  I wanted a perfect ending, and on this day, I got it.

No matter what the outcome of my last cast, or my last fishing trip, or my last anything -  the next event is all but decided - another cast, another trip, another anything.  Perhaps the only certainty to fly fishing, or life, is that there really isn't any, and there isn't much else to do but embrace it and keep casting and fishing on, fingers crossed, hoping for some serendipity. 

   

Get Your Mungo Jerry On

Memorial Day marks the "unofficial" start of summer, but the recent weather pattern should be all the validation you need. Indeed, it's shorts and t-shirts and leave the waders at home time. It's fishing before and after work time. It's drink 'em fast before they get warm time. It's poison ivy and mosquitoes and get that God-Damned-mother-effin'-horsefly off me time. It's keep that six-weight rigged and a change of clothes in the truck, just in case time. It's lush green leaves and full forest floors time. It's brush-bustin' and snake jumpin' and tresspassin' 'cause they can't see you through the leaves time. It's leave the bobbers and suckerspawn and split shot at home and bring the biggest nastiest God-awful ruckus-makin' popper you've got time. It's put that popper under the tree and around the snag and on the far bank time. No, not just close, on the bank, time. It's hold your breath and strip time. Strip again... it's toilet flushin' time.

It's summer time, and the livin's easy.

"What a long, strange trip it's been..."

                                      

Nearly 7 months ago, in what to that point had been just a friendly game of "Go Fish," I was dealt the Cancer Card seemingly out of the blue. At first I stumbled around in a haze of confusion, wondering what my move would be. When it became clear that nobody was going to take that card off my hand, I decided to borrow a line from Jerry Garcia and the Do-Dah Man, who "once told me you've got to play your hand... sometimes your cards ain't worth a dime if you don't lay 'em down."

So playing the hand I was dealt with a little help from my partners at the table, I faced it head-on and took a business-as-usual approach. Fishing when I could, never missing a day of work, and conceding rest when I needed it. The formula worked (we hope), and tomorrow will mark one full month since I rang the bell commemorating my last chemo treatment.

Finishing treatment seemed as good a reason as any to take a fishing trip, so the boys and I packed up and headed for the hills. Maybe it was just me, but this year the greens seemed greener, the brookies bigger and brighter, the food and drink a little more savory. On the Savage, a notoriously difficult river to wade, a fog crept over us like clockwork each day, bringing with it a quietness and opportunity for reflection. The smoky haze forced us to sharpen our focus and take it one step at a time, hoping that when it lifted there would be rising fish waiting for us.

The trip wasn't quite long enough - they never are - so as we hit the road for home Alex and I were already hashing out fishing plans for the rest of the week. Again, maybe it's just me and my rose colored glasses, but the bass seem bigger, more plentiful... and happier this year.

The carp on the other hand are just as ugly, slimy and downright tough to catch as they've always been.

For not being thought of as a fly fishing destination, I am constantly amazed at the quality and variety of fishing available to anglers in our region. One of my favorite parts of my job is sharing those opportunities with new anglers, and this summer we've been at it again with our fly fishing 101 and 201 classes. While there are plenty of windknots and tailing loops to sort out, there are moments that make it all worth it. Watching this little guy holding the oversized rod with both hands, laying out a perfect cast and then panting with excitement as he reeled in his first ever trout on a fly, was definitely one of them.

So the long, strange trip continues and gets more and more interesting as we go. To make sure of that, just as I was finishing up treatment my fiance decided it was a good time to buy a house. To be fair, I was warned of what this could mean, and in just over a month we've already experienced many of the "joys" of home ownership. This has cut into my fishing and blogging time a little bit, but is certainly nothing to complain about. There's a lot to look forward to as spring turns to summer in this part of the world. The carp may not be getting any prettier, but they should start eating a little better soon!

Trout bummin'

Since my senior year of high school, the annual spring trip to Appalachia has become a highlight of my year.  Although the fishing in May along up and down the eastern United States is usually at its peak, the time spent with close friends and fishing partners is the real treat of the trip.  Our target destination has always been the infamous Penn's Creek of central Pennsylvania, but weather being what it can be this time of year, at times we've had to change plans and relocate elsewhere.  Last year our fallback option was the Delaware, and this year, it was the Savage in western Maryland.  When destinations like those are a "plan b," you're a pretty damn spoiled trout fisherman.

Early May thunderstorms forced us to bail on Penn's again; instead our group converged on the Savage with plans to rendezvous at a wonderful little cabin situated within casting distance of one of the best pools on the entire river. 

The Savage isn't what you'd expect for an eastern trout stream.  A steep gradient, and a uncountable number of large boulders make the creek difficult to wade.  Although the fish aren't as selective as fish on other famous eastern tailwaters, an inhospitable working environment for fisherman can certainly make it feel that way.

By late Sunday night, the crowd had arrived and shenanigans had started.  Although I've seen a lot of jerryrigged gear on fishing trips, this was the first time I'd ever seen a beer can used as a line winder. If this was any indicator of what was to come, we were certainly going to be in for a good trip.

Our group split up over the next few days and tried our luck all over the Savage, the North Branch of the Potomac, and many of the little brook trout streams that carve their way through almost every valley of the area.  Although an unexpected release doubled the flow that morning on our target tailwater, and thunderstorms surprised us with unexpected heavy rain, after some persistence we found what we were after.

The fishing weather wasn't perfect, and conditions were far from ideal - but that's fishing, and it's just the way fishing trips go sometimes.  I don't think there's very much "true adversity" to overcome in fly fishing, but as more and more gets stacked against you, the greater the reward is if you figure it out and fight through it.  The reward isn't always the same, though, and it seems like each day every one of us is after something different.  As much as fly fishermen get tired of hearing other fly fishermen talk about how "it's not just about the fish," it's funny how maybe days it really isn't.  At the same time, when it isn't the fish that I'm really after, pinning down the reasons why I fish is like trying to catch smoke.  They're always changing, and never the same.

Over those few days the fishing was clearly at its best from late morning through the middle of the afternoon.  As dinner time approached, the fish that had risen for the past few hours happily to blue quills and midges, seemed to disappear into nothing.  When you're standing knee deep making cast after cast, and drift after drift, that would have been eaten a couple hours ago going untouched it's pretty easy to find yourself at a loss for what to do next.  The fishing had been good for hours, but once it was over, dozens of rising trout and a couple miles of river seemed to have gone by entirely too fast.  By the time the sun was going down and we'd returned to my Jeep I was already wondering if I'd appreciated the day as much as I should have.  Maybe now, a week or so later, as I stare at the computer screen and try to put words down to accurately describe the trip, am I fully able to appreciate what it was like.  On the other hand, maybe the memories started yellowing around the edges the moment I stepped out of the water and started up the trail into the wood, and that moment of true appreciation is long past.

I guess the simple truth is that there are moments in fly fishing that are impossible to relive or to duplicate. Despite the countless hours and immeasurable effort spent trying, as they say, lightning never strikes the same place twice.  I think this is a good thing.  This lesson probably has a different meaning for everyone, but for me it's relatively simple.  On a river there are lots of little moments, each one is unique, and good or bad, isn't likely to happen again.  So instead of bailing on a drift early and looking back upstream to see where I'm going to cast next I'm going to do my best to make one more mend, and fish that drift out out to the bitter end.  Who knows - even as my fly starts to drag there might be a fish dumb enough to take a shot, and if I look away I'll never see that magic happen.