The Compleat Idiot...

"Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did "; and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling." (from The Compleat Angler, 1653-1655)

Izaak Walton was rolling over in his grave yesterday, when I decided to chase the elusive farm pond dwellers of Denton, Texas.

My brother-in-law, Nate, who genuinely knows what he is doing, carefully and skillfully tied several beautiful flies for me to use, along with my (VERY) expensive Orvis fly rod and reel which I very optimistically bought before my 10-day fishing trip to Alaska several years ago. If I really needed to dress the part, I have the waders, a trout net (hardly used at all), and a humongous backpack for all my fishing gear that is exactly the color of Yoda.

Here's the truth: I don't deserve any of this. Nate could have given me empty hooks with green yarn tied in a granny knot around it--that's really what I deserve. And, if life was strictly fair, I would be using an old broomstick with some twine wrapped around the end with one of those big red and white bobbers--karma should deliver my beautiful rod to a more deserving, more practiced angler (but life's not fair, is it?).

I've been stoked up after reading Thomas McGuane's "The Longest Silence" (Brief commentary: This book has an immense amount of a quality I think of as "word density", meaning that each sentence has a lot to say--it reads very slowly but richly and has a lot of subtlety and depth--just the perfect thing for me right now), which is more a philosophical book but has great descriptions of the mechanical motions of fishing that gave me delusions that, since I understood a good 70% of the terms he used about fly fishing, I actually knew how to do it to a respectable degree.

For example, when he describes sending a tight bow underneath the limbs of a low-hanging tree along the far bank directly in front of a rising rainbow trout, I think to myself "Yes! Of course! That's the way it should be done!" I envision myself shooting yards and yards of line effortlessly across a flowing river into that same shaded pool.

Then there was yesterday. The Day that Reality hit.

I have this suspicion that my rod isn't rigged up correctly--I only know one fishing knot and I use it for everything--if I'm tying backing to a reel, two pieces of line together, leader to my fly line, and a fly to my tippet (thin line at the tip of the rig--it's what the fly is tied to). I once read a book describing like ten different knots for all of these things, so I suspect these things alter wind resistance and other factors--not that it matters to me, Mr. One-Knot.

Then there's my 7 1/2 foot rod. I wish I could say that I effortlessly tossed a tight bow into the farm pond yesterday, but I managed to whip the fly in the air for a couple of casts, lucky to send the line spiraling 15 feet with the line landing in a coiled pile on top of the lure, as if to snare any fish in the vicinity with a Texas lasso. I must correct myself--this is the technique I used before snagging the whole thing in the only tree in the vicinity, whipping a leaf out into the pond and probably convincing all the fish in the place that they need to run for cover!

Trying to get the leaf unstuck, I accidentally pulled the line the wrong way and buried the razor-sharp hook into my left thumb very deeply (probably injecting pondwater into my circulatory system)-- all the way past the barb, which hurt like hell to pull out (At this point, collectively, the ghosts of every fish I had ever treated to this experience cried "Ha!"). Now, with my bleeding thumb, I looked down and realized that all my line was completely twisted into a mass of brambles that was underfoot--it took about 15 minutes to untangle the line, then somehow I realized that in rigging the pole I had missed a couple of the loops in the rod--so I had to cut the fly and re-run the line through.

Great--yes, the big-game fisherman strikes again.

Instead of a tight bow, my casting was a mayhem of line coming and going and not knowing which of the two it was supposed to be doing at any moment. At one point--some of the "going" line met the "coming" line in midair and resulted in the fly fishing equivalent of spontenous combustion--except this was more like spontaneous condensation of all my line in a huge tangle which collapsed limply over my head.

At this point, my wife's sister came out to observe. Fly fishing is a rarity in our area because there is little moving water, trout, or need for a fly rod in general. People that fly fish are thought to be kidding themselves, acting like a "big shot city slicker", or showing off. This is exactly what my sister-in-law was thinking.

"Mike, the fish in my pond like weenies! Should I go get some? You would do a lot better if you put that crazy thing away!" she called from the other side of the pond, half-mocking and half-seriously. I looked down to my bleeding thumb and my rod--I untwisted a newly-caught bramble from the fly line before casting again. The sun was going down and I had tied a very realistic-looking grasshopper fly to my tippet. I did a beatiful cast, this time right across the deep part of the pond (I know this because I was around when it was dug several years ago). I then, with utmost care and the best imitation of actual skill ever, twitched the line enticingly across the pond, through the "sweet spot". Then again. Then again for the next 20 minutes. Finally, the lure went under, but I had been lulled into a stupor and missed setting the hook.

That was the only evidence that whole evening that any fish in the pond had survived the Texas summer. I joked with my sister-in-law that the fish had mooned me for doing such a bad job of casting.

I thought to myself "But wait! This is supposed to be a hallowed experience! Aren't I supposed to be completely relaxed and at peace with the world, like some Zen-Buddhist experience?" But I wasn't--I was frustrated with my lack of skill and lack of results. Intellectually, I could rationalize to myself that I had just been fishing to enjoy myself, but in reality I had exposed the difference in my perceptions (that I had some fly fishing skills) and reality (no way).

The sad part is: If I started out tomorrow and had to choose between fishing and going to work,
I would really have to think about which one I would tackle.

But I would still like to give that casting another go...