Gone Fishing
Imagine, if you will, a peaceful body of water at dawn.
The surface of the water is flat as a mirror at this time of day, pewter-hued under the pale horizontal light of dawn.
The only thing to disturb the surface is the occasional ruffle of a fish coming up to snatch an insect; at such times the water sends out quiescent waves evenly in all directions.
They love to feed at this point of the day, you know, something about the delicate balance among the denizens of this thriving ecosystem ensures that this time of the morning will always reward the fish that surfaces.
The great circle of life, as it does in so many ways, shows itself intact and robust.
It’s the perfect time for you, the fisherman, to tie a delicate handmade fly onto the end of your fishing line, eye a likely spot, and in a series of graceful moves send your line further and further out from you, so that it lands in a natural motion close to where the big fish lie in wait.
It is a magic moment, still almost as a painting until…the lure disappears from the surface in a single motion, you yank expertly to set the hook, and your line goes taut. It will not be long now until a magnificent creature breaks the surface of the water, glittering in the sun.
Hold onto this thought you have imagined, my friend, hold onto it!
Because it will never happen!
What will happen to you if you take up the sport is that you will:
(1) Get wet. Well of course you will! You’re standing in the middle of a stream instead of onshore like a normal human being!
(2) Tangle your line inextricably. By this I don’t mean you will tangle your line executing a delicate maneuver that you’re not exactly sure even you can pull off. I mean that you will tangle you line walking from the car to the water. Hell, you’ll tangle it getting your pole out of the car. Hell, you’ll find a way to tangle it walking from the sporting goods store to the car while it is still in the sack.
(3) You will, as mentioned, catch no fish whatsoever.
(4) You will spend a good deal of time looking around to see if anyone is watching you make such a fool of yourself.
(5) You will tangle your line some more.
(6) You will embed at least three hooks of a size somewhere between one of those hooks they use to pull failing vaudeville performers off the stage and the size used by the harpooners in the classic novel Moby Dick into the plump fleshy parts of your palm, thigh, upper arm, shoulder, and calf.
(7) You will now and again rise to the occasion by tangling your line, breaking your rod, and embedding a hook in the fleshy part of your palm all in one seamless motion.
Scientists who study such matters cannot say for certain, but there is a sneaking suspicion in these circles that no one ever, anywhere, has caught a fish using fly-fishing gear.
People talk about it, sure, but people talk about crazy things all the time.
There is a distinct lack of photographic evidence showing the act as it takes place. It is considered wise in these circumstances that when someone does show you such a picture that you should examine the fish in question for evidence that it didn’t come from the fish counter at the grocery store. Anything in the way of a sign saying Sale! or $9.95/lb, should stir skepticism.
It makes a fellow wonder, or this fellow at least, why he took up fly-fishing in the first place.
Well, you look great for one thing. Those waders, that vest where you have attached any number of lures just waiting for you to select the right one for the right occasion, the tackle box, the pole and line and spool rigmarole, the hat which also looks great and is also just about the only hat in the modern world that a man can wear and not look ridiculous, all speak to a serious sport for the gentleman of a certain age, one who has seen much of life and is content now to engage Nature on her own turf, let the outcome be what it may.
Well, as mentioned, as to outcomes, Nature wins these contests with one arm tied behind her back.
One of the best things about fly fishing, it may be the only thing, is that between one thing and another the farce I mean the sport takes place in relatively isolated spots.
This not only puts you in touch with Nature and the great cycle of life in a way that you just can’t get pent up in the big city staring at a computer screen but much more important, there is a scarcity of people around to see you.
As we have discussed, as you mangle this sport to just about the degree that any sport can be mangled, it is the type of thing that you would just as soon keep between you and Mother Nature.
And what of the fish themselves, down there in their fishy environs? How are they managing this ordeal?
Never have a tribe of fish had such luck.
Their natural predators have been stampeded away by your presence, as your galumphing progress through the water and along the mud at the bottom of the stream sends shock waves through the system, in the manner of a bullhorn that more or less says: “Keep Away! Turn Back for Your Own Good!”
The fish then are now largely free of the ecological pressures that have kept their population in check to date. Absent any real threat to their well-being — you certainly don’t count as one — the fish are free to evolve into ever more elaborate societies.
At this very point in time they may be forming committees, signing petitions, electing representatives, and writing Constitutions.
Critics will say that this paints a rosy picture.
Are they not as likely to develop modern art, establish coffee shops that charge for a single cup what you used to buy a ten pound can with, grow goatees, and strum folk songs on the guitar?
Perhaps, perhaps. But this is their right as they search for their own destiny, they will likely right themselves eventually.
Fly-fishing, unaccountably, has a rich place in literature. A River Runs Through It, a very highly regarded work, is by summaries I have read all about fly fishing.
By the same token, if memory serves, and again by summaries that I have read, the troubled fellow in Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River spends the bulk of that story fly fishing.
In both cases and in these many others I note that there is something off with the protagonists, some narrow seam of something dark that seeks out failure and humiliation.
Well, there would be, wouldn’t there? We’re talking about fly fishing after all.
It is hard to get into the mind of the writers and filmmakers who find inspiration in watching a man throw hundred dollar bills at a sports store, throws in an unusually poor manner an unusually poor lure towards an unusually unrewarding spot of water, and who at the end of the day throws himself into his car, punctured, bruised, and self-battered in a way that would suggest, if he hadn’t done it to himself, that he has an implacable enemy.
Any respectable filmmaker or poet or novelist, in quiet conversation with herself, is much more likely to say, ‘no, I think not. On the whole, I think not. Perhaps my next film will be about something respectable and rational, say carnival barkers, instead of fly fishing.”
I cannot speak to those authors and filmmakers who are Existentialists and for whom the emptiness of the universe and its overall absence of meaning are the daily objects of their contemplation.
For them, fly fishing might be just up their alley.
