Fishing in Real Life
Fishing is like eating M&M’s. It’s a truly non-satiating activity. Give me a little, and I want more. When it’s time to go home, I can’t help but think of the next time I will be able to steal away to the river.
In an attempt to slake my thirst when I couldn’t get out this past winter, I read dozens of blogs and books and watched probably hundreds of videos about fly fishing. I suspect that’s when all the trouble began.
While we can learn a lot from reading and watching, sometimes we learn all the wrong things.
Yesterday my friend Eric and I headed north for the trout opener to fish some of the seasonal streams that have been closed all winter in Michigan. Subsisting on a heavy diet of Orvis’s Friday Fly-Fishing Film Festival, Gink and Gasoline, and John Gierach stories all winter, I had wild fantasies playing in my mind about catching huge trout while in fishing stunningly beautiful locations. The weather would be a perfectly sunny 70 degrees with nary a mosquito or gnat in sight. There would be hundreds of mayflies emerging from the stream followed by thousands of spinners falling under a magnificent, polychromatic sunset.
That’s the way it happens in the videos. I know because I’ve been watching them all winter. Now it was our time.
Unlike in the videos, the access points at the first river were anything but remote and sparkling with sunlit dew on spiderwebs in the morning mist. Instead, we found hoards of opening day campsites complete with expired beer cans and last night’s smoldering campfire. In one case, the compound of fifth wheelers, dogs, bikes, kids and sleepy men dressed in camouflage made me wonder if we were on a blue-ribbon trout stream in northern Michigan or at some RV show in an urban civic center.
The next spot we explored got the weather right. Everyone we encountered remarked on the promise of a beautiful day. Caddis were emerging from the river at a dramatic rate and, once away from the trailhead, we had the river to ourselves. Things started to look up.
But unlike the blogs and books, we came up empty-handed. After a solid effort, all that was gained was the need to tie a few more streamers to replace those lost to the river bottom or surrounding vegetation.
The day was not panning out as promised. Over lunch we decided to head yet further north to a third location where for sure we would find some super-sized fish in abundance. It’s a place I routinely fish in August where wild brook trout eagerly accept attractor patterns and terrestrials with vigor, and where my dog Capone and I are unfettered by by the need to honor the fly angler’s ethic of not fishing within the site of another.
There too we found an abundance of eager opening day dreamers. Eric and I picked our way in and out of the river, trying our best to be ethical.
Soon we found our first fish. They were few, they were not large, but they took our flies with gusto.
It was also there that I began to think about how my approach to opening day was all wrong. The problem was that my approach was fueled by the fantasy of videos, blogs and books. It did not reflect reality.
Who blogs about fish not caught? Or flies lost to trees? Or a broken fishing net the result of a misplaced sit? Okay, maybe Josh Greenberg does, but he’s a rare exception. All winter I had been subsisting on a heavy diet of the most fabled stories about brave fishermen (yes, most all of them are men) bringing enormous creatures to their nets.
There’s a reason they call it “fish porn.”
Instead of channeling the sugarcoated reality of someone’s online braggadocio, I should have been learning from the reality around me. Indeed, the sun was out, the birds were singing, the wind in the pines kept a constant chorus, and one by one dozens of hendricksons were emerging from the surface of the stream.
My mind was torn. I thought about the compressed reality of those grand 90-second fly fishing videos – complete with dramatic soundtrack, ubiquitous drone shots, five-pound fish, and high fives. Then I thought about the dreamingly slow pace of searching for wild trout that might, if lucky, actually exceed ten inches in size.
There’s fantasy, and there’s reality.
I’m not sure which is better, but after yesterday’s excursion I know my feet are firmly planted in the latter. Surely I’ll continue to aspire to find that magical five-pound trout. Yet I’ll also remind myself that real life happens in the present and is the result of my personal actions combined with the objective way creation unfolds around me.
Somedays that means rain, biting bugs, lost flies, broken nets, and the occasional swimming expedition in your waders. Other days it means being blessed by a handful of small but miraculously colored wild trout. And occasionally, it means finding a large fish of mythical proportions.
Driving home in the rain, I realized that none of the pictures I took that day were of fish. I remarked about the need for a camera that would take pictures of the fish you catch without distracting you from the experience of deftly bringing that fish to hand, gently removing the hook, and watching in awe and reverence as it swims away.
Real fishing is not about nailing the big ones in rapid fire action. It’s about being open to the mystery of the future as it unfolds.
Next time I go fishing, I’ll heed the advice of two friends. I’ll live slow and have a mighty day.
Evening on the Holy Waters of the Au Sable River.