Well, Spring Is Here...

[bloom]

So a few thoughts on fly fishing by AK Best. The whole 'philosophical' and 'quiet contemplation' is a big reason why I usually fish alone.

 

"From Fly Fishing with A.K. by A.K. Best, copyright 2005 by Stackpole Books, www.stackpolebooks.com"

 

 

The winter of 2002 seemed to last forever. It was too cold most days to venture out with a fly rod. On those days when it might have been bearable to stand in ice cold water up to my knees, there was always some pressing matter, like tying an order of flies, that needed my immediate attention.

 

That winter in Colorado we had very little snow. By the middle of May there was so little water in many of our streams that some of the fisheries people were worried that many of the trout would not survive in streams that were already flowing at less than 25 percent of the normal August levels. It wasn’t until the end of the month, May 23, that we finally had the first measurable precipitation since the previous September.

 

My mind tends to wander during the tying jobs, thinking about what might happen to the trout, will the bugs survive, remembering fishing a particular fly on a certain stream, how the day went, a difficult trout, and how the stream has changed over the years. I begin thinking of questions I’d like to ask someone, anyone. I want to find some answers and try to figure out who might have them. And then I wonder what I would do with the answers once I found them.

 

I’ve been at this fly-fishing thing for enough years that I’m now to the point where one question keeps popping into my head with increasing frequency: Where in the hell is fly-fishing headed?

 

There was a time when fiberglass rods were all the rage. Then graphite took over our minds and the market. Lighter and shorter rods were supposed to provide us with thrills we only dreamed about before their invention. A few years later, we were told we should be fishing lighter lines on longer rods, and that idea evolved down to the 0-weight rod. That really bothered my logical mind because I figured if a 1-weight rod weighs something, then a 0-weight must weight nothing. I toyed around with the idea of writing a piece about a ‐1-weight rod. A person could plug it into a computer and go fly-fishing virtually anyplace! I’m glad no one invented the 1⁄2 -weight rod. It wouldn’t be too slow or too fast, and soon will be known as the …… well you know where I’m headed with that one.

 

Now spey rods are all the rage. People will look at you as if you are really a dunce if you don’t own at least one 14-foot two-handed rod. I learned to fish as a kid with a 14-foot bamboo pole. I was so small it took two hands to hold it. The chalk string on it was about the same diameter as the fly lines used on spey rods. My first experience at fly fishing was when my dad and I would impale a live grasshopper on a bait hook and roll-cast it out onto the stream with our bamboo poles. It vaguely resembled a spey cast. Maybe my idea of the ‐1-weight rod isn’t such a bad idea. It’s the logical next step. How did we catch all those fish before the latest new product came along?

 

But getting back to the question that keeps me up all night. Where will fly fishing be for your children and grandchildren? If you don’t have any children, who is going to pass the torch you were handed? Who taught you stream ethics? Barbless hooks? Catch-and-release? Resting a pool? Sharing a pool?

 

Who is teaching the love of the sport these days? Whose responsibility is it? Is it something that can be taught or are certain blessed souls born with it? Is it merely a love of fly-fishing or awe and respect for nature and all its marvels? Does a newcomer need a mentor to drop little gems of wisdom? Little seeds of thought? Like how to wade silently and avoid stepping on wildflowers or redds, how to give the other guy his space. How to walk well away from the streamside when passing a fellow angler. How to lovingly land and release a fine trout. What is a fine trout?

 

Can a new fly fisher enjoy catching only one trout in a day of fishing? Can an experienced fly fisher? Should you? How can you? Should you quit fishing when your first fish of the day is the largest fish of your life and it’s only 9.00 A.M.? How many fish per day do you need to land to call it a successful day? Do numbers of fish per day really count for something? What? At what number do you lose count of the fish you’ve caught? Do we need to catch “enough fish” to begin thinking about this? How many is enough? How much do you enjoy watching your fishing partner catch more fish than you do? Are our actions governed by some primordial instinct to capture, dominate, or prove manhood? Is it really a viable thought today? Why do tackle manufacturers use only photos with big fish? Or why do SUV manufacturers show video clips of their powerful four-wheel-drive vehicles grinding through foot-deep, crystal clear mountain streams with macho voice-overs? Don’t women drive SUVs?

 

Is it the manufacturers’ responsibility to be concerned about all the above? Are they doing enough to educate the public to respect their fellow fly fishers as well as what nature currently provides? If it isn’t their duty, whose is it? Should the responsibility be shared with retailers and their customers? Should fly-fishing magazines and their writers spend more time and space on these questions? Would anyone read it if they did? What about Trout Unlimited and the Federation of Fly Fishers or state fish and game management agencies? Have they done all they can? Are they merely taking care of today’s needs or tomorrow’s? What more can they do? Are we doing enough?

 

Anyone can find detailed instructions on where to go, which guide to hire, what tackle to use, what clothes to pack, which boat to buy, which motels to go, tidal charts, stream flows, which line shoots best, and on and on and on. Oftentimes, these recommendations are accompanied with scientifically documented charts and graphs. I’d guess about 98 percent of the information available on fly fishing has only to do with catching fish. Catching fish is the main goal, but that can’t be all there is to fly fishing. And that thought brings yet more questions.

 

What does it matter if conservation groups and some manufacturers buy up or lease land and water rights and make them public, if the public doesn’t respect the resource or the ownership? If you owned two hundred acres with a spring-fed stream on it, would you allow others to fish it? How do we get those who don’t care to begin caring? Do those who say they care really care enough? Are the purchases and leases governed to any degree by advertising, memberships, or future sales? If you had a spare two or three hundred dollars, would you join a private fishing lease?

 

What is your ultimate goal when you fish your home water? Why do you think that? What is your ultimate goal when you travel to some fabled water to fish? Why do you think that? Is there a difference? Should there be?

 

Does one need to fish alone to begin to find some of the answers to the above questions? Have you ever stopped fishing during a hatch with rising trout to sit a while to consider the wonder of it?

 

Can a person with a 50-year-old J.C. Higgins fiberglass rod and an old Pflueger reel enjoy a day on the stream as much as a person fifty yards downstream with equipment that’s worth $1,200 or $1,500? I’d like to think there is some kind of connection or bond between the two, because at the end of the day each fly fisher will clip off a $1.85 fly and save it! If there is a connection, is that where we begin to look for answers?

 

Do we need to get out in the woods (lost maybe?) to begin to understand that there is a difference between man’s rules and nature’s? Do you pick up a two foot length of tippet, cigarette butt, plastic wrapper, or beverage can someone else left behind? Ever leave one? If you toss a length of tippet into the grass, how many people will see it? Would you like them to know it was you who tossed it? How many people do you think will walk by before it’s picked up? Do you care? Can one person make a difference? When you kill a fish to take home for the occasional meal of fresh fish, do you get more pleasure from the food or showing it to your friends and neighbors?

 

I once fished with a man who had just returned from Alaska, where he had caught hundreds of huge salmon, char, and steelhead. There was still a gleam in his eye as he told me about it while we were stringing up our rods to fish a small Colorado mountain stream. We decided to leapfrog the pools and stay together as we worked our way upstream. I was soon sorry I had come with him because every time he landed an 8- or 10-inch trout, he tossed it back into the water from waist high as if, because they were small fish, it didn’t matter how they were treated. Is that all there is to trout fishing? I never fished with him again.

 

When you fish a lot, you invariably fish in many different places near and far from home. I’ve fished in enough near and far places now to begin to spending a little more time looking. Not so much at the water, but at what is near it. I learn a little about where the stream is born and how it grows as it reaches its ultimate end. Which in a way is similar to my own life. I don’t like much like anyone messing around with either one.

 

I fished Labrador over July 4, 2001. While there, I fished a stream that to anyone’s knowledge before my visit had never had a fly cast on it. It’s a sobering experience. Ancient logs were covered with a thick carpet of lush green moss. Foot-deep caribou moss covered every inch of ground, and I had to be careful not to stumble over it. No fishermen’s or hiking trials; just caribou trails that had been in use for centuries by countless herds. It would be a good place to meet one’s maker.

 

As I approached the streambank, I stopped and thought that this must be what much of the continental United States looked like before we arrived. Unspoiled, unchanged, unimproved, untrespassed, unfenced, pure raw wilderness. The stream was crystal clear, and I could see huge wild brook trout, pike, and whitefish finning in their holding places. It was a scene as pristine as a Disney movie studio could produce. Only this was all so true that even the most imaginative artist couldn’t come close to creating the perfection of it.

 

As I made my first cast and watched the size 8 Royal Wulff float jauntily along a current crease, I realized I was probably the first white man to fish these waters. And I was interrupting the delicate balance that was so evident everywhere I looked. I thought about all the streams in the United States that aren’t wild like this one, streams lined with cabins, boat docks, groomed lawns, enhanced holding pools, carports, fire pits made of brick and steel, leveled and graveled campsites, RV parks with twenty-foot spaces, and plastic picnic tables with signs that say “ Don’t Feed The Bears.” I thought of how much of our own good earth we’ve turned into paved parking lots, how we’ve worn down our hiking and fishing trails and put up signs that warn “ No Parking,” “ No Overnight Camping,” “ No Fires,” “ Stay On The Trail,” “ Have A Nice Day, Enjoy Your Wilderness.” And what comes to mind is the Jerry Leiber/Mike Stroller song made famous by Peggy Lee, “ Is That All There Is?”

 

I play and land the huge brook trout that has eaten my fly on the first cast. I release it with a burst of laughter and some tears and secretly hope that no one will ever find this place. I’m both grateful to have found it and sorry that I intruded. And I smile because suddenly I realize I have found the answer to Peggy Lee’s question. This is all there is, and we all d**n sure better begin to do more to keep what remains before another song is written whose title is: “ Is This All That’s Left?”

 

I have fished with some guides who make every effort to protect the resource, almost to the point of covering our footprints in the caribou moss. It’s heartwarming to watch that kind of tender care. On the other end of the scale, I have heard of a guide who stands on top of his vehicle with a hailer directing as many as five clients at a time on where to stand and where to cast.

 

Maybe fly fishing today has more to do with expectations than it did some years ago. Fly fishers expect to catch more fish when they buy new and expensive equipment. The shop or lodge owner who is advertising magnificent fishing expects return customers and repeat sales. The guides expect to keep their jobs and receive tips, so they do nearly anything they can to put clients into fish. The manufacturers produce equipment that they expect customers will purchase in order to be more successful when they hire guides or go to their favorite streams. And the fly fisher goes to the stream expecting to catch 22-inch trout that weigh 6 pounds and more, the ones they have seen in all the advertisements. I know; I’m one of them.

 

But where do we draw that thin wavy gray line between expectations and reality?

 

In spite of all the litter, rules, overuse, encroachment, high-tech equipment, glitzy ads, and ignorance, each spring brings new promise. The birds sing, and the swelling buds tell us, “ It’s not too late yet, I will help you if you let me. I do have the answers if you don’t expect too much.”

 

Or as the song says, “ If that’s all there is my friend, then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball.”

 

It’s a short song.