So it is the new year, and in four more years it will once again be the roaring twenty. Only I fear it will be without the Jazz and Culture of the last century. Last year I took the plunge into a an activity that I have not been wholly unacquainted with. Fly fishing.
I fully blame Hatch Magazine (http://www.hatchmag.com) with my resurgence in fly fishing. Wonderfully online publication, with the best articles. So last year I picked up Orvis's Superfine Glass fly rod in 4wt, with a length of 7'6". It was not the St.Croix PRO Graphite (PF8667) that I learned fly casting for bass on during summers after high school. Which I suppose should not be unexpected. However, if fiberglass is anything like bamboo (as is suggested by the manufacturer) than this as far into slow action fly rods I will be going into. Unless of course I am gifted one.
But, I digress.
Fishing is important to me, and a wiser man than I once told me "We make time for the things that matter". Fishing matters to me, and on the anniversary of my maternal Grand Father's death fishing has once again taken a prominent place in my life. Life is short and it is too uncertain not to do what you love. I know this as well as anyone. I had two pulmonary embolisms Autumn 2012. Eight days in a Hospital bed, not knowing if you are ever going to leave it will imprint this fact on you.
But what is it that makes fishing so special? The first novel my Father read to me was Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. Thus, I learned of the great strugle between watery levithans and brave men armed with tiny sticks. To this day I can picture Ishmael and Queequeg aboard the Pequod. I was four years old, and it was shortly after this that we started fishing together. It may have been bait fishing, but it was still fishing. Every spring we would make our way, over hills and between them. Under barbwire fences and across logs we would travel, be it to the neighboring pond or the river behind our farm. We always would have a grand time. There we would be, he would walk infront of me as we walked along some old cow path. Given the slope of the hill we would be dealing with we would steady ourselves ever so often against the bank. Just trying to not slide down the hill often was a challenge.
He would be armed with a rod and a shovel, and we never had to buy worms. The local cow paties were always hot spots for 'Lumbris Terrestris', better known as the common Earth Worm. That was what the shovel was for, flipping over cow pies. I on the otherhand was only armed with a small blue and white Coleman thermos filled with apple sause and prehaps a small tacklebox. These early springs and summers where filled with memories of adventure and exploration, and of course fish.
It was not until I was almost ten years old that my maternal Grandfather took me fishing. I have memories of his house in St. Micheal's Maryland at a very young age. He had a dock and from it hung a white cord and at the end a bucket of bait fish and beer. After pulling the rope up for what seemed like forever I would have the bucket up and would stair at the weird creatures within. But again I digress, I was ten years old and he along with my Grandmother were living at Lake Monticello, Virginia. The family and I had come down for the weekend, from Northern Virginia. The air had that cold wet feeling that you find between storms. the gray sky spotted with patches of blue and the occasional burst of midday sun. My Grandfather and I arrived at the lake having purchesed our night crawlers from a local Ma & Pa shop along the way.
We went to the back of the brown station wagon, where my Grandfather produced a small wooden cutting board and his pocket knife. He would cut the worms into parts and we would each fish with a section. Till this day I disagree with fishing this way. We did not catch a thing that day, but that was not the point of going. I learned many good lessons from my Grandfather. Not the least of which was the importance of keeping your rod pointed down as to not spook the fish with the movement. Until you need to set the hook that is.
It was not until I was in my mid to late teens that I developed an interest , or a better word might be obsession, with fly fishing. Now in my thirties, I like many of my generation first became aware of fly fishing while viewing Norman Maclean's A River Runs Throught it as children. Like most children (or maybe not) I was captivated by the fly fishing. It is only now as an adult that I truely appreacate the writting and stories of Norman Maclean.
Currently, my fishing arsenal consists of a 7'6" Orvis Superfine Glass 4 WT with a Battenkill II reel, a 9' Scott Radian 6 WT Fly Rod with a Hardy LRH Reel, and of course the aforementioned 8'6" St. Croix PRO GRAPHITE 6/7 WT which at the current time has no reel. Rather than buying a fishing specific sling pack or vest I am using my Chrome lieutenant rolltop messenger bag. Which aside from being the perfect size and wonderfully water proof and or resistant depending on where you put something.
I am prehaps blessed to call Virginia home. With so many small rivers and brooks (which sometimes border on shallow creek) I truly have enjoyed the experence of growing up here. It is prehaps ironic that as a child and young adult I looked at the area with distane. Only to find out in adulthood a new sense of appreaction. Now that is not to imply that I did not take advantage or was not shapped by the environment. I have had Mentors and many summers spent in creeks and forests at nature camp. To say that the experiences did not shape me would be a lie. But they were limited, and it is only in adulthood that I have had the freedom to indulge my sense of wonder.
I often reflect on the writtings of Rachel Carson, specifically when she talks about the sense of wonder. She wrote "If a child is to keep alive his onborn sense of wonder, He needs the companionship of atleast one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in". Prehaps this is why old men teach young men to fish. The simple act of rediscovering wonder.
Speaking of wonder I have always found the science behind fly design to be a Naturalist's dream. The subtle arts involved with fly fishing have past the test of time, and while we might say that it does not have the following it once did Anglers are no less passionate about it. Prehaps the current following is even more so, with what could be called a religious observation to hatch calanders, and finely made vices ranging from thirty dollars to some when properly setup come in at more than five hundred dollars in price.
Good fishing,
~ Sean R.
