I’d never fly-fished. I’d done other kinds of fishing. I’d fished for bass. That’s where I’d get far enough away from the dock so that people couldn’t see there was no line on the pole, then drink myself blind in the rowboat. And I’d deep-sea fished. That’s where the captain would get me blind before we’d even left the dock and I’d be the one who couldn’t see the line. But I’d never fly-fished.
I’d always been of two minds about the sport. On the one hand, here’s a guy standing in cold water up to his liver throwing the world’s most expensive clothesline at trees. A full two-thirds of his time is spent untangling stuff, which he could be doing in the comfort of his own home with old shoelaces. The whole business costs like sin and requires heavier clothing. Furthermore it’s conducted in the middle of blackfly season. Cast and swat. Cast and swat. Fly-fishing may be a sport invented by insects with fly fishermen as bait. And what does the truly sophisticated dry fly artist do when he finally bags a fish? He lets the fool thing go and eats baloney sandwiches instead.
On the other hand, fly-fishing did have its attractions. I love to waste time and money. I had ways to do this most of the year—hunting, skiing, renting summer houses in To-Hell-and-Gone Harbor for a Lebanon hostage’s ransom. But, come spring, I was limited to cleaning up the yard. Even with a new Toro every two years and a lot of naps by the compost heap, it’s hard to waste much time and money doing this. And then there’s the gear needed for fly-fishing. I’m a sucker for anything that requires more equipment than I have sense. My workshop is furnished with the full panoply of Black & Decker power tools, all from one closet shelf I installed in 1979.
When I began to think about fly-fishing, I realized I’d never be content again until my den was cluttered with computerized robot fly-tying vises, space-age Teflon and ceramic knotless tapered leaders, sterling silver English fish scissors, and thirty-five volumes on the home life of the midge. And there was one other thing. I’m a normal male who takes an occasional nip; therefore, I love to put funny things on my head. Sometimes it’s the nut dish, sometimes the spaghetti colander, but the hats I’d seen fly fishermen wear were funnier than either and I had to have one.
I went to Hackles & Tackles, an upscale dry fly specialty shop that also sells fish print wallpaper and cashmere V-neck sweaters with little trout on them. I got a graphite rod for about the price of a used car and a reel made out of the kind of exotic alloys that you can go to jail for selling to the Soviet Union. I also got one of those fishing vests that only comes down to the top of your beer gut and looks like you dressed in the dark and tried to put on your ten-year-old son’s three-piece suit. And I purchased lots of monofilament and teensy hooks covered in auk down and moose lint and an entire L.L. Bean boat bag full of fly-fishing do-whats, hinky-doovers, and whatchamajigs.
I also brought home a set of fly-fishing how-to videotapes. This is the eighties, I reasoned, the age of video. What better way to take up a sport than from a comfortable armchair? That’s where I’m at my best with most sports anyway.
There were three tapes. The first one claimed it would teach me to cast. The second would teach me to “advanced cast.” And the third would tell me where trout live, how they spend their weekends, and what they’d order for lunch if there were underwater delicatessens for fish. I started the VCR and a squeaky little guy with an earnest manner and a double-funny hat came on, began heaving fly line around, telling me the secret to making beautiful casting loops is …
Whoever made these tapes apparently assumed I knew how to tie backing to reel and line to backing and leader to line and so on all the way out to the little feather and fuzz fish snack at the end. I didn’t know how to put my rod together. I had to go to the children’s section at the public library and check out My Big Book of Fishing and begin with how to open the package it all came in.
A triple granny got things started on the spool. After twelve hours and help from pop rivets and a tube of Krazy Glue, I managed an Albright knot between backing and line. But my version of a nail knot in the leader put Mr. Gordian of ancient Greek knot fame strictly on the shelf. It was the size of a hamster and resembled one of the Woolly Bugger flies I’d bought except in the size you use for killer whales. I don’t want to talk about blood knots and tippets. There I was with two pieces of invisible plastic, trying to use fingers the size of a man’s thumb while holding a magnifying glass and a Tensor lamp between my teeth and gripping nasty tangles of monofilament with each big toe. My girlfriend had to come over and cut me out of this with pinking shears. Personally, I’m going to get one of those nine-year-old Persian kids that they use to make incredibly tiny knots in fine Bukhara rugs and just take him with me on all my fishing trips.
What I really needed was a fly-fishing how-to video narrated by Mister Rogers. This would give me advice about which direction to wind the reel and why I should never try to drive a small imported car while wearing boot-foot waders. (Because when I stepped on the accelerator I also stepped on the brake and the clutch.)
I rewound Mr. Squeaky and started over. I was supposed to keep my rod tip level and keep my rod swinging in a ninety-degree arc. When I snapped my wrist forward I was giving one quick flick of a blackjack to the skull of a mugging victim. When I snapped my wrist back I was sticking my thumb over my shoulder and telling my brother-in-law to get the hell out of here and I mean right now, Buster. Though it wasn’t explained with quite so much poetry.
Then I was told to try these things with a “yarn rod.” This was something else I’d bought at the tackle shop. It looked like a regular rod tip from a two-piece rod but with a cork handle. You run a bunch of bright orange yarn through the guides and flip it around. It’s supposed to imitate the action of a fly rod in slow motion. I don’t know about that, but I do know you can catch and play a nine-pound house cat on a yarn rod, and it’s great sport. They’re hard to land, however. And I understand cat fishing is strictly catch and release if they’re under twenty inches or belong to your girlfriend.
Then I went back to the television and heard about stance, loop control, straight line casts, slack line casts, stripping, mending, and giving myself enough room when practicing in the yard so I wouldn’t get tangled in my neighbor’s bird feeder.
After sixty minutes of videotape, seven minutes of yarn rod practice, twenty-five minutes of cat fishing, and several beers, I felt I was ready. I picked up the fin tickler and laid out a couple of loops that weren’t half bad if I do say so myself. I’ll bet I cast almost three times before making macramé out of my weight forward Cortland 444. This wasn’t so hard.
I also watched the advanced tape. But Squeaky had gone grad school on me. He’s throwing reach casts, curve casts, roll casts, steeple casts, and casts he calls squiggles and stutters. He’s writing his name with the line in the air. He’s making his dry fly look like the Blue Angels. He’s pitching things forehand, backhand, and between his wader legs. And, through the magic of video editing, every time his hook-tipped dust kitty hits the water he lands a trout the size of a canoe.
The videotape about trout themselves wasn’t much use either. It’s hard to get excited about where trout feed when you know that the only way you’re going to be able to get a fly to that place is by throwing your fly box at it.
I must say, however, all the tapes were informative. “Nymphs and streamers” are not, as it turns out, naked mythological girls decorating the high school gym with crepe paper. And I learned that the part of fly-fishing I’m going to be best at is naming the flies:
Woolly Hatcatcher
Blue-Wing Earsnag
Overhanging Brush Muddler
Royal Toyota Hatchback
O’Rourke’s Ouchtail
P.J.’s Live Worm-’n-Bobber
By now I’d reached what I think they call a “learning plateau.” That is, if I was going to catch a fish with a fly rod, I had to either go get in the water or open the fridge and toss hooks at Mrs. Paul’s frozen haddock fillets.
I made reservations at a famous fishing lodge on the Au Sable River in Michigan. When I got there and found a place to park among the Saabs and Volvos the proprietor said I was just a few days early for the Hendrikson hatch. There is, I see, one constant in all types of fishing, which is when the fish are biting, which is almost-but-not-quite-now.
I looked pretty good making false casts in the lodge parking lot. I mean no one doubled over with mirth. But most of the other two thousand young professionals fishing this no-kill stretch of the Au Sable were pretty busy checking to make sure that their trout shirts were color coordinated with their Reebok wading sneakers.
When I stepped in the river, however, my act came to pieces. My line hit the water like an Olympic belly flop medalist. I hooked four “tree trout” in three minutes. My back casts had people ducking for cover in Traverse City and Grosse Pointe Farms. Somebody ought to tie a dry fly that looks like a Big Mac. Then there’d be an excuse for the hook winding up in my mouth instead of the fish’s. The only thing I could manage to get a drag-free float on was me after I stepped in a hole. And the trout? The trout laughed.
The next day was worse. I could throw tight loops. I could sort of aim. I could even make a gentle presentation and get the line to lay right every so often. But when I tried to do all of these things at once, I went mental. I looked like Leonard Bernstein conducting “Flight of the Bumblebee” in fast forward. I was driving tent pegs with my rod tip. My slack casts wrapped around my thighs. My straight line casts went straight into the back of my neck. My improved surgeon’s loops looked like full Windsors. I had wind knots in everything including my Red Ball suspenders. And two hundred dollars’ worth of fly floatant, split shot, Royal Coachmen, and polarized sunglasses fell off my body and were swept downstream.
Then, mirabile dictu, I hooked a fish. I was casting some I-forget-the-name nymph and clumsily yanking it in when my rod tip bent and my pulse shot into trade deficit numbers. I lifted the rod, the first thing I’d done right in two days, and the trout actually leaped out of the water as if it were trying for a Field & Stream playmate centerfold. I heard my voice go up three octaves until I sounded like my little sister in the middle of a puppy litter, “Ooooo that’s-a-boy, that’s-a-baby, yessssssss, come to daddy, wooogie-woogie-woo.” It was a rainbow and I’ll bet it was seven inches long. All right, five. Anyway, when I grabbed the thing some of it stuck out both ends of my hand. I haven’t been so happy since I passed my driver’s license exam.
So I’m a fly fisherman now. Of course I’m not an expert yet. But I’m working on the most important part of fly-fishing technique—boring the hell out of anybody who’ll listen.