Chorus and Verse
Fly Fishing Season is Here Baby!
I was standing on a thick slab of sedimentary rock on the banks of the Battenkill River when it happened. I felt the trout strike my nymph and pull with the force of a raccoon on amphetamines.
I had been casting to another spot for an hour without luck, so I wasn’t expecting the fishing to swing from noun to verb. I was so shocked I nearly lost my footing on the shale. Fish always seem bigger when they are out of sight, under the river’s reflection. This one was fighting against my 5wt fly line and tiny hook with force. It was on.
I let it take my line until it stopped pulling with fear and switched to pulling with confusion. You learn to tell the difference after a while, feel it in your cork handle. Only then did I start to attempt reeling in.
This dance of slack and pull, we did this maybe three times? I let him have 10-30ft of line and then reel him back until I felt the panic in the lines again. When a fish takes off running, let him. Tiring them out was the point, to bring the fish in when it didn’t have the energy to fight anymore.
I knew the chances of me landing him by brute force were slim. Yanking river trout like you cast a grappling hook and not a tiny bug puppet always ends with a broken line, a slipped fish, or both. A lot of bait anglers fight with their whole body. Fly casters fight with their mind.
You can fish with violence, even fly fish, but it never beats the music. I want my practice to be beautiful, chorus and verse. The casting of flies on the water is the repeating chorus, and the verses are what you do between.
I was trying to reel in a trout that felt about a foot long with a tippet so fine you could use to fake ghost videos. That translucent thread holding this fish would be invisible on camera. Time to sing, baby.
There is a lot of thinking in fly fishing, and it’s the kind of thinking that doesn’t allow you to think about anything else. Which is the lion’s share of its appeal, far as I can tell. It’s what I also hear from people who ride motorcycles compared to cars, or prefer bow hunting at a stalk to rifle hunting in a tree stand; it takes more of you, and you can’t wander in your thoughts or glance at your phone unless you choose to stop what you’re doing.
And baby, once I start fly fishing, I rarely choose to stop.
I had an audience for this reeling in, which was rare. There was another angler casting on the same section of bank. (I did ask him for permission to fish the same general area, the polite thing to do. It may be a public river, but fishing holes are sacred and so are dibs. You ask. And if they so much as quiver their lip with a hint of resistance at your presence, you put up your hands and slowly back away. This is basic decency.)
He was fine with me being there. We chatted briefly earlier when I passed him walking to another spot. He was retired, from Long Island, and an experienced striped bass guy. He knew fishing, but he knew bait fishing. So far he had no luck fly fishing despite getting to the the river before I did that morning. I didn’t get there till 7:30. He was already casting when I waved as I walked by.
He was a new fly caster. I could tell he was by the look of his gear, fresh out of the box. It might even be the first time he used it. I could also tell this because he told me as much. He said he had zero luck all morning.
I wasn’t surprised because he was throwing a two-inch woolly bugger into a swirling pool near the bank. Might as well tie a beanie baby onto your line and chuck that in, same result. A big foreign-looking bright fly like that would probably scatter the fish in every direction. I was not casting woolly buggers today. Those were for late June and for stocked trout with bad foraging skills and poor impulse control.
Three or four casts in beside this man and I had a fish on the line. He was incredulous, if not pissed, at the audacity of these trout to oblige me after all the time he put into the same hole. He looked like he was ready to take his ball and go home.
I have seen that look before. It’s the look of “fuuuuuck this yuppy shit…” I can understand the attitude. If you are used to pulling in 3ft hogs on wire lines with bait bigger than many of the native trout in this river, it must feel ludicrous.
This is hard for me to defend. Like trying to convince someone a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle is better than a framed print of the same picture. One took so much of yourself to see the end result. The other did not, and is arguably better looking. But puzzle people are doing the work because that’s the part that is rewarding to them.
This man may have a different nature, a preference for speed and convenience. Doesn’t make it him bad. It does make him a bad candidate for fly fishing.
He may try a few more outings, but if he doesn’t get the hang of soon, or get very lucky, most of that new gear he was using will end up on Facebook Marketplace by July.
Fly fishing is emotional abuse until it isn’t. Then it’s music.
I had cast a tiny brass-beaded nymph with some white wings. The whole thing was smaller than my pinky nail. But I knew that was the closest thing I had in my fly box to stonefly larvae and it’s still May. The first hatch might be any day now, but hasn’t happened yet*. These trout are expecting to eat little submerged bugs, so that’s what I cast. Which is why I was fighting a trout and he was feeling defeated.
Had he stuck around, I would have told him this was my 10th year fly fishing, my 8th trip to this same stretch of river this spring, probably my 22nd hour of trying, and THIS was my first caught trout. My fishing journal started in April with many sad entries about how trout may no longer exist because I haven’t so much as seen one, much less caught one. But there’s a reason people who start with bait fishing often quit trying to fly fish: results.
Bait fishing is trapping, not hunting. That’s the big difference. The fish is lured to the hook by its senses, its hunger. Fish have an amazing sense of smell, that night crawler bleeding slime into the water is like blood to a shark. The fish is pulled towards the bait like an addict needing another hit to survive. That’s how food works.
And once they bite down on that bait whole, they basically hook themselves. Not perfectly, slips and nibbles happen of course, but generally, they take the bait, get hooked, and you reel in the fish. And, at the risk of offending some of you, that’s where bait fishing gets boring to me, the ease.
Spin rod fishing is popular for a reason. It works. And it works without having to spend years learning how to do it looking like an ass. You could teach a 9-year-old on a dock how to cast a spin rod, and with the right bait and he’s probably going to hook the same fish you would if the lure plops in the right spot.
But fly fishing is more like hopeful puppetry. I think this is why the more artistic types are drawn to it. I see a dented Toyota Tacoma with a bunch of band stickers on the bumper; I know that’s one of us. Not all musicians and songwriters fly fish, but I am convinced they would love it if they tried.
You need to perform that cast, you need to lie to that fish. Bait anglers are not lying. That bait is edible, eat it at your own risk. If you can steel it without getting hooked, it’s a real meal. But that little fake bug made of thread and feathers doesn’t smell like anything. Fish have to be convinced.
It’s Tai Chi marionette work, pulling on thin strings to make the inanimate alluring. That’s what most of what learning to fly fish is. Once you figure out how to cast accurately and control the line, you need to make sure what’s on the end of it makes trout think it’s worth striking at. You need to do the work of bait as super-focused, weird, performance art. And you can’t buy that skill. You need to learn it. Kind of fruity if you ask me.
It didn’t take that long to net the trout. It was my first brown of the year and I was beaming. I stopped paying attention to the guy while netting and didn’t notice when he walked away. I was focused on a quick picture for the journal and then grabbed my 20-year-old gold forceps, quickly removed the hook, and returned him to the water.
I almost always catch and release. I’m here for the fruity stuff, not the filet.
I hope that guy doesn’t give up, doesn’t return to the bait, not entirely. Not because there’s anything wrong with fishing that way, but because he’s denying himself a whole new way of doing something! Denying the challenge, the dance, the music he could learn! Oh, how good it feels to be a part of the river like that, understand the whole system, seasons, hatches…
When I pull in a bass with a worm it’s fun as hell. I wouldn’t take that from anyone, including me, but it doesn’t feel anything near the rush of catching a trout on a fly. And that’s because once you know enough to get along, know the river and your goal, you can make things happen because of your wits, not your gear. It’s a different kind of charge, but it’s the kind of charge, I think, writer’s crave.
I’m hoping for a musical summer on the river, perfect verses and chorus and lyrics that never stop. It may be my only vacation time all summer—those banks a ten-minute drive from my farm—but I don’t think destinations matter much to us fruity puzzle music people.
We are in it for the dance.
*Hatches have in fact happened, starting in April. I meant none had happened recently on the water while I was fishing. Sorry for any confusion.
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This was the best fishing writing I've read in a long time.
I just started flying fishing this spring, so much fun! Challenging, frustrating, but so peaceful.