FLYFISHER

THE FLYFISHER

A Short Story

By Hal Jones

I like to flyfish, but I'm no purist. There was a flyfisher who used to come up to the lake every summer when I was a teenager, and I guess you could say he was a purist. Sometimes he came by our cabin to talk to my sister, and one year he offered to teach me his art. I'd always heard how good he was, and I was surprised and flattered that he'd take the time with me, although I guess I wasn't the real object of his attentions. My father let me use some of his fishing tackle, and for a month almost every afternoon the flyfisher and I went up the river behind the lake to practice.
Sometimes we hiked a long way up the canyon, because he liked to try different places. When he found just the right spot, he'd break out his carefully packed equipment. His rod was a long, heavily varnished bamboo pole with a handle covered in finely woven twine. His reel was the old-fashioned kind you had to pull the line out of. The line was thick and yellow, and he waxed it so it would float. On its end he attached a long leader and the fly. He tied all his flies himself, and he studied the insects that were out each day before selecting the one to use.
He used waders and would go way out in the water. If he was in a place with some room, he'd pull out line and work it sideways over the water with an effortless whipping motion. If there were a lot of trees, he'd work it over his head, sometimes piling up two or three layers of loops, the fly whipping back and forth on top, until a flick sent it out like a ray of light directly over a chosen eddy where a twelve-pound trout was lying waiting to rise two feet out of the pool to take it before it even hit water. Then there'd be a long fight - maybe five minutes or more - the fish breaking the water furiously, its tail curved back to its nose, its eye glaring defiantly - before it was finally netted. It didn't always happen, but, when it did, it was the most perfect thing I've ever seen.
I never asked him what he thought about during all that. If I had, he'd probably have said something like what he was doing was everything. There was nothing else to think of.
I worked at it all that summer and the next, but all I ever caught were branches and bushes, my own pants and, once, a pretty angry bat who was out looking for his evening meal. I finally gave it up.
I still like fishing with flies, though. It's a lot neater than messing with bait, and you don't have to rent a boat and sit with a noisy, smelly motor like the guys do who troll lures.
I use a spinning reel that lets out a lot of line fast. And I tie on a plastic bubble, half full of water, that carries the line almost across the river. I buy my flies at the store.
Twelve-pound trout don't laugh, I guess. If they did, maybe I could grab a few when they went belly-up over my technique. I'm not even sure they're still out there, but I guess they just hide from the splash the bubble makes. Not one has ever risen to my fly. That's OK. I'm not after those purist trout, anyway.
What I do is, I slowly reel the fly back across the current, trying to imitate the natural movement that a store-bought wad of feathers, thread and hook might make if it tried to cross a river. All this gives me plenty of time to think about dumb stuff like why the fir trees produce such black-green needles inside when their tips are so silvery in the sunlight. And why a solid granite batholith, like the one that rises hundreds of feet above the other side of the river, finally gives in to water and wind and ice and sends down the heaps of rocks that make up the river bed on their way to dirt. And why those rocks make the water rise above them in a standing wave that stays the same hour after hour except for its surface, like a glass sculpture in changing light. And why dragonflies hang just above the water, flicking it forward with their tails while a pair of them, hooked together, do their dance at midstream. Does sex make them thirsty, too? And what do they feel when they're like that? Is it anything like I feel when my girl holds me in her arms and curls her leg over mine?
And then there's a strike, then a pull, and after a little flip-flap a nine-inch rainbow lies on the sandbar. It's scales shine and change colors like its namesake, but it'll only make a few mouthfuls. So I cast again, and in an hour or so I have four or five, and that'll make a good meal for two.
Small trout from a cold mountain river have meat that's firm and flaky and, if it's cooked right, tastes a little nutty and sweet. It's really very good, and I bet a twelve-pound trout's a pretty tough chew, anyway.