A Fishing Tale

As all of you know doubt know by now, I like to fly fish.  In fact, to say that I merely like to fly fish may be an understatement.  So, it was with much excitement that I arrived back in Bozeman after an unplanned trip back to Minnesota to fish with my good buddy Dave.  Fishing trips with Dave are always special because, if it weren’t for Dave, I wouldn’t actually fish.  It was nearly ten years ago that Dave casually said to me: “you know Jay, a I am taking a couple of my sons to Alaska this summer on a fishing trip.  You should take a fly fishing lesson and come along.”  Well, I did and my life has never been the same since.  I have chased everything from trout to bass, tarpon to salmon, and many other species in between in far too many places since.  One might even say I am a bit obsessed with this “hobby,” but I wouldn’t listen.

If any of you have other fly fished more than casually, you will know that there are days when things just don’t go right.  These type of days generally start out bad and just keep getting worse.  It generally becomes a “what can go wrong, will go wrong” kind of thing.  Well, suffice it to say, today was definitely one of those days.  If you were I Buddhist, you would hopefully recognize on a day like today that you were paying a heavy karmic debt for past transgressions and accept the situation dispassionately.  If you were smart, you would recognize such a day and call it quits early.  I, on the other hand, tend to fall back on a healthy dose of fuming and cursing.

Despite carrying the knowledge in your head that these kinds of days happen, we fly fishers tend to bury the possibility deep in our subconscious, shoved there by dreams of blue skies, big trout, and dry flies.  Given this denial, we often fail to recognize the signs early enough to abort.

Well, Dave and I departed this morning before 8:00AM with a plan to stop a friends, pick up a drift boat, and head off to the Yellowstone river for a day of float fishing.  About 10 minutes into the journey, I looked over at Dave and said: “it sure would have been good to bring the trailer plug, so that we could plug in the trailer lights.”  Oh boy, here we go.  Did we notice?  Did we listen?  Absolutely not.  We succeeded in rationalizing this one away by reminding ourselves there was a hardware store close that would carry them.  Strike one.  The first hardware store was out. But, they told us their sister store in Bozeman had them, so on we forged.  And as luck would have it (perhaps our only luck of the day), indeed they did.

With taillights ablaze, we forged on to Paradise Valley and the Yellowstone river.  After driving nearly 65 miles, we arrive at the section of river we are planning to float.  We had arranged a shuttle to transport our truck, had all of our gear, and we were ready to go.  But did we?  No.  You see for some reason, that section of river just didn’t look quite right.  While it looked really good, it didn’t feel perfect in that cosmic sort of way.  This was surely a second sign, one we absolutely blew right past on our way back down river.  Then up river.  Then down river.  Then up river.  Then down river.  As it turned out, the put in for the new section of river, the one that would answer all our prayers, was not readily apparent.  We should have seen the third sign when we phoned the shuttle driver for the fourth time in 45 minutes trying to figure out exactly where we were and he said: ‘You the boys from Colorado?  Yup, I was expecting a call from you.”  Strike three, your out.

By this time we were on the water and no doubt committed, so we soldiered ahead with twelve miles of river and 90 plus degree heat awaiting us.  In fact, we were dumb enough to crack a beer, raise a toast and haughtily proclaim that the worst of it all was rapidly fading in the rear view.  Not so.  Within 30 minutes of shoving off I was holding the first bamboo fly rod I had ever made in two pieces after it broke in my hand with a sickening snap.  Fifty plus hours of painstaking work reduced to chop sticks…

The most insidious thing about these bad days is that they tend to throw just enough good at you to keep you coming back.  It is just like golf for your golfers.  You go out and hit the ball between 80 and 100 times (for most of us average to less than average players) and you remember the three good shots, while rapidly forgetting the 85 bad ones over your first après beer.  Today was no different.  About three hours in to the float (with only a few fish to show) I lifted my rod and was tight to a big, big brown trout and all the bad to that point was washed away.  Things were looking up when it came to rest in the net.  Right up until the time I hooked another big fish and Dave stomped on the floor pedal to release the anchor, and then stomped again, and then watched the anchor line go right out the back of the boat, depositing our anchor on the bottom of the river.  Not good.   What followed was several hours of hot, windy, fishless floating as we silently prayed that we would see the take out around the bend.

We even asked several people how close we were to take the take out.  At this point, we were well aware we were suffering through one of those days, but it is nonetheless disappointing when the first person tells you: “about 3-4 miles to go,” only to have the group of three you come across nearly an hour later say: “about 3 miles or so.”  Dear God, please help us.  But at that point, you have to just put your head down and take your lumps. 

Eventually, the take out did come.  The truck was there waiting for us, and we made it home without incident.  After a cocktail, a great dinner, and some good conversation, I found myself on the phone with a good buddy of mine who is very in tune with the local fishing conditions planning tomorrows fishing.  I have a good friend who is a very accomplished climber and mountaineer.  One time he described to me a trip he took to Nepal, where he and some partners attempted a 25,000-foot mountain.  He said that the entire time you are up there, you sit in your tent, suffer in the altitude, and freeze in the cold.  By the time you get down, you swear to yourself that you won’t do it again.  But after a couple of days, or maybe weeks, or maybe months, you are planning your next trip.  Today was a microcosm of that phenomenon.  So, off we go tomorrow to do it all over again.

When I look back on it, I have come to believe that these bad days are part of the cosmic plan.  Part of the middle path of balance that is fly fishing.  When you have these types of day as a dedicated fly fisher, you truly do have to just put down your heard, take your lumps, and persevere, knowing that everything is as it should be and equilibrium will prevail.  I believe that these days are the penance we pay for the great days: the days trout rise willingly to your fly in every run, the days 5 pound bass storm from their weedy hideout to savage your fly, and the hot, sunny, cloudless day on the ocean flats when your first tarpon turns, inhales your fly, and jams your heart from its normal station high into your throat.

At least that is what we need to keep telling ourselves, because if we didn’t, we would probably just give it all up, and then what would we do?