Fishing Alone
Some people think that fly fishing is a social activity, and it is true I've made some friends among the cranks who fish my home waters - but really fly fishing is a very solitary pursuit. Even on those occasions when I head up to the river with a friend, it is rare that we fish together. Sometimes we meet for lunch, or share a camp.
Over the past few years, I've taken a few days to a week to travel and fish and camp completely alone. I can't explain why I find this periodic solitude so compelling, but I look forward to it each year.
On Saturday, I'm driving to Sault Ste Marie, crossing into the US and heading west on the Upper Peninsula, fishing a number of the streams on the Superior side. A few of my weekly trips have been to this area. I like the streams there, and the fact that there is good access to many streams. On the Ontario side, there are some great streams but overall, access is more challenging. I also like the fly fishing literary history of the area. Hemingway wrote about the Fox, calling it the Big Two Hearted River, which is actually north and east. Robert Traver wrote Trout Madness about his home water, the streams around Gwinn and Ishpeming and Marquette. If you are ever curious about fly fishing and why some people are drawn to it, read Trout Madness. It was written in 1960, the year I was born. Traver also wrote Anatomy of a Murder, which became the great Preminger film starring Jimmy Stewart.
Successful fly fishing for trout is an act of high deceit; not only must the angler lure one of nature's subtlest and wariest creatures, he must do so with something that is false and no good - an artificial fly. Thus fake and sham lie at the heart of the enterprise. The amount of Machiavellian subtlety, guile, and sly deception that ultimately becomes wrapped up in the person of an experienced trout fisherman is faintly horrifying to contemplate. Thus fiendishly qualified for a diplomatic career he instead has time only to fish. So lesser diplomats continue to grope and bumble and their countries continue to fall into war. The only hope for it all, I am afraid, is for the Lord to drive the trout fishermen into diplomacy, or else drive the diplomats to trout fishing. My guess is that either way we'd be more apt to have peace.: the fishermen-turned-diplomats would hurriedly resolve their differences on the trout stream so that they might return to their fishing, while the diplomats-turned-fishermen would shortly become so absorbed in their new passion they'd never again find time for war.
1 comment:
Never thought about it - but you are right. Solitary trout fishing is best. Now, deep sea, I think is better with friends. But there is something about trout fishing (I've never done fly) that you become nature as well - silence to "deceive" the fish into safety - (ever hear of a bear yelling across the stream at a buddy, "hey, not so hot fishing over here, I'm moving upstream!) When not using live bait but the lure of a tricky dainty, I wonder is it curiosity (or hunger) that brings him/her to bite!
Being alone in nature, doing something that is basic to mankind's need to eat, therefore to fish and hunt, there is the feeling of being one with nature, do you think?
Solitude is also a great thing to build the inside of one's self back up to face the every day again. Some of us need more than others.
My youngest and I used to trout fish in dams and streams - I used worms - but she saw the bright rubber worms in the store - being a child I humored her and put them on her hook. She always caught the most, the best trout.
I can clean a trout, catfish, or whatever with the best of them. Then as Grandma taught me, I like to cook them in cast iron after they are rolled in cornmeal. Yum!
Fish are fun, when I used to snorkle, they would get curious - then want to play - they would swim underneath my body, sometimes tickling up against me.
"Curiosity killed the fish?"
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