An Act of Small Rebellion

It is SO time for a fishing column.
Problem is, there ain’t been no fishing. Not for me, anyway. This winter has all the inhaling properties of a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Cold, rain, misery…sound like a Hee-Haw skit or something, don’t I?
I’m so ready to be out there. I’m building a boat. I have all my rods ready, my lines ready, my flies ready. I got some new gear this winter that I’m just dying to try out. While I am eager to get into Grand Avoille Cove and the lake and basin, I’m especially anxious to get into those hills up in Kisatchie National Forest.
In short, I am going stark raving mad over here. What you see is a crazy man, slowly slipping away into the dark, dank depths of insanity. I am as close to a straight jacket as I am a fishing vest, and like the proverbial man on the fence, can fall either way at this point.
Yeah, I know it’s hard for some of you kind folks to understand, so I once again resort to borrowing from one of my literary heroes, Robert Traver, who penned one of the finest explanations of my plight:
I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful and I hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly; because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape; because, in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion.
Ah, yes. The Judge had it goin’ on, friends and neighbors. Judge John Voelker wrote under the pen name Robert Traver. He was a Michigan Supreme Court Justice until he wrote and published Anatomy of a Murder, a phenomenal best seller which became a film with Jimmy Stewart and allowed the Judge to retire and pursue his fishing full time. Lucky stiff. You can see why he’d give up an influential powerful career as a justice when Voelker continues the he fishes…
Because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience; because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don’t want to waste the trip; because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness.
The Judge gives me comfort, in the cold wet winters, that I am not going crazy after all. That I’m in the company of a select few in need of a testament. Those of us who understand what Thoreau meant when he said, “Many men go fishing all their lives, without realizing it isn’t fish they are after.”
They’re talking about a wet spring and summer too. That’s not what a fisherman wants to hear.
But I’ve had years like that before. We find ways to survive. My fishing has changed a lot in the last decade. I’ve come to understand the Judge more than before, and I had a pretty dang good comprehension already because of my dad and I, fishing was indeed a way to be closer to the natural world, nearer my God to thee, and pick up some tasty fried fillets!
Still, over the last few years, I’ve come to mellow in my fishing by exorcising myself of many of its annoyances. At least, those things that annoyed me. A big method of doing that was by becoming a fly fisherman.
Listen, I ain’t no fool, despite what you may have heard. I know that fly fishing is largely a handicap to catching when compared to a big glob of juicy earthworks on a hook under a bobber, a fancy spinner bait or a grub infused with high-tech scented fish attractants.
I picked up a fly rod again in nostalgia, a longing for the past when my father and I fished them. Then it grew to an infatuation, then an addiction, and at last a passion, though a gentle and soothing one. While I still do pick up a casting rod now and then only when absolutely necessary, I find my fly fishing to be less an act of brute force and more one of…well, I can only compare it to music. It is a rhythm and a beat, and, just as Voelker said trout do not respond to power, neither do fly rods. You can’t manhandle a fly rod, it’ll fold up on you and pout. No, casting a fly rod is one part science, one part art and one part pure magic.
“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe,” Norman Maclean wrote. “To him, all good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”
And that’s when I began shedding things that prevented me from my testament being fulfilled. The big, noisy fiberglass bass boat that would do 65 miles per hour and about four gallons per mile left first and I went back to the little wooden boats and small outboards I grew up with and love so. The thrumming of a small boat engine is soothing, not the roaring of a beast tearing through water like a mad narwhale. I often reach for my bamboo fly rods rather than the graphite ones, when I really need to regain my senses and shake away the chills running up and down my spine from too much time in the company of strangers. I find fly tackle quieter, less intrusive, and less likely to break the thin veil of my daydream.
Because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there; because maybe one day I will catch a mermaid; and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant-and not nearly so much fun.
That’s also why I often wish I lived somewhere that had more wade fishing. I probably wouldn’t ever get in another boat if I lived in such a place, except to occasionally recapture that little bit of my nostalgia again. There’s no gasoline and oil fumes in my nostrils; I am forced to be minimalist in what I lug up and down the streambed; there’s no noise to drown out the sound of the water, wind and animals; the sound of the line shooting through the guides is comforting, satisfying and the sudden take of a fish to a well-placed fly under an overhanging tree branch makes it all complete.
“One day, standing in a river with my fly rod, I’ll have the courage to admit my life,” author Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall) wrote. I understand him completely, too. Often called “the contemplative sport” fly fishing takes me to the precipice of understanding myself, the road I’ve traveled and the path ahead. I know it sounds trite: But out there, without all the noise, the water rushing around my knees or the comfort of a wooden boat beneath my feet and cypress canopies over my head, it just all seems far more clear.
And in the climate of the world and nation today, President Grover Cleveland offers this bit of wisdom for what ails our politics, our economies and our souls: “In these sad and ominous days of mad fortune chasing, every patriotic, thoughtful citizen, whether he fishes or not, should lament that we have not among our countrymen more fishermen.”
So it is high time for a fishing column, because here in the last throes of winter – or so I pray – I am consumed with being baptized again. The winter has been far too long, my spirit and psyche are frostbit and my courage frail.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.