The Lit Angle (cont)
You fish long enough,
and you get to write about it. And you might even get paid for it.
Recently, the
screenwriter Edward Taylor has taken up the rod and although we've only made a few initial
forays on the Bitterroot together, I expect that we'll be jointly lashing the eddies in
future summers. Down the river I've floated and flogged with Tommy (T. Coraghessan) Boyle,
James Hall, Tom Meschery, James Galvin, David Cates, and ... surely with Jim Welch, on the
Big Hole? I can't quite be sure.
But what, after all
does it mean to fish with someone? It isn't like playing golf or tennis with
someone, where you are engaged in a joint activity and one guy's score is dependent on the
other's actions. Fishing isn't a competitive sport, at least not for me. When you're in a
boat with someone there is conversation, a running commentary on conditions, opinions
about efficacious flies, the trading of cigars .... But when you're walking the banks,
there isn't much reason to be with someone -- unless he/she has the matches.
Jon A. Jackson
(photo by Jeff Wetmore)
Jon displays a 2 lb. rainbow
trout and smokes an H. Upmann petit corona, which is explained in greater detail on
the Smokin' w/ Jon page.
Still, a few weeks ago I went up on
the Blackfoot with David Duncan and there was real interaction. I got to watch him stalk
and capture several fish and I learned a lot. I always learn something from fishing with
David. He is probably the best I've ever known.
Duncan without a fish on the line is
Duncan incomplete; he gets very intense. On the Missouri River it is common for big fish
to be rising all around and yet be totally uninterested in your fly. They shoulder your
#18 pale morning dun aside, although there are millions of PMDs in the air and on the
surface. You try a Rat-face Dougal, a soft-hackle something, a red squirrel dropper, a
grasshopper for cryin-out-loud. Nothing. But then Duncan starts whoopin and hollerin.
"Holy Cow! There's another one! Must be four pounds! Watch out! He's on his way to
Great Falls! Whoa! Another one!" I call him Opie, because it's like going down to the
fishin' hole, whistlin' and havin' a good ol' time ... except that this is Opie as
Gandalf, or vice-versa.
On the Blackfoot, he quickly
abandoned one technique (fall caddis) for another (sculpin.) He led the streamer to the
lying trout and waited patiently for it to take, teasing it. It took my breath away. He
sees the fish long before I do and he seems to know where it goes when it suddenly
vanishes. He's much more into the world of the trout than I ever get. He's generous, he
wants me to understand, to acquire his involvement. I want to, I do. But I can't quite
step through the looking-glass. I lack his wisdom, the wisdom of Salmon, I guess.
Greg Pape is a very thorough angler.
It takes him forever to get ready. Everything has to be done, quite methodically. I'm
ready to shoot him, standing in the water by the raft, willing him to tie on the right
fly, put away his box, straighten his hat, clean his glasses ... come on! But then, as he
did the first time I ever took him over to a favorite waterhole on the Bitterroot, he
makes a first exploratory cast and says, "Ah. Very good." The @#$%^&* fellow
has one on! I don't believe I have ever caught fish when Greg didn't, but he has
caught them when I haven't.
Fishing with Matthiessen is
different. Peter does not intend to catch every fish in the river, as Duncan does. Nor is
he a slave to method. But, he will catch a fish. Me, I'd like to catch a fish, but
if it doesn't happen ... well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. Yet, Peter is a spiritual
man, much more spiritual than me. He believes, for instance, that there is a purpose to
the universe. He is a Zen master.There is no shrugging, no careless acceptance of defeat.
And strangely, I have never seen how he does it. I don't know just why this is, but every
time it looks like Peter might get skunked, he somehow manages to cloud my mind (a
technique he learned while in the Orient, with Lamont Cranston) so that I cannot see him. |
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The author catching rainbow
on the Yellowstone
(photo by Jeff Wetmore)
Then he conjures the fish out of the water,
somehow. When I regain full consciousness, there it is: a modest trout, usually about
fifteen inches long, dangling from Peter's upheld hand. I don't know that he can walk on
the water but I believe that he can talk to the fish, that he knows their language and he
can silently bid them to impale themselves on his hook. Perhaps he gently argues that it
is their karma, after all.
Richard Ford after a day of
waterfowl hunting
(photo by Jon A. Jackson)
Richard Ford always catches fish.
He's thoughtful, serious, and determined, studying the water with a narrowed, cold eye as
we drift. Even if he doesn't hit on the right fly and approach at once, he will sooner
rather than later determine what's happening and he'll be successful. I hold my breath,
wondering, trying my own foolish arsenal of flies: what worked last time on this stretch,
what worked any previous time, what I may have overheard in the fly shop; whatever fly
popped into my hand when I opened my over-stuffed, messy box. Finally, Richard discovers la
mouche de jour, les technique juste. We're all
happy. We catch fish. Duncan, doubtless, would have discovered it much earlier, but then
Duncan is of the river, whereas we are just on it.
Anyone who has read Raymond Carver's
short stories, must know that the late and much-lamented writer was deeply attached to
fishing. "So Much Water, So Far From Home," for instance, takes place on the
Deschutes River, one of Ray's favorite places. I never fly-fished with Ray, but we did
have a couple of days with spinning gear on the ponds of Iowa. A guy has to be totally
committed to get up in the early morning with the kind of hangovers that Ray and I shared
in those days, to go stand around a farm pond in a drilling rain -- "like stair
rods," Ray said -- casting to voracious small-mouth bass. We even caught some catfish
together. Feet soaked, sniffling, hungry and dying for a shot of booze. What were we
thinking of?
Long before I ever waded into a
stream or even considered owning a rod, I had read Izaak Walton's The Compleat
Angler. In fact, in college a wonderful professor, Chester Cable, taught a course
called "Seventeenth-Century Prose," and used to begin every class with a brief,
two or three minute reading from Walton's work. Dr. Cable believed that it settled us
down, that it opened our minds. He was right. I can still hear his quiet, measured voice,
reading: "... Solomon for an example, who before his conversion was remarkably
carnally amorous; and after ... wrote that spiritual dialogue, or holy amorous love-song
... in which he says, his beloved had eyes like the fishpools of Heshbon." That would
settle a school of restless coed spawners, frantically feeding in the literary currents of
a big city university. Fishing was ever after indelibly connected to literature. I never
asked but it seems to me, just now, that Dr. Cable must have been a devotee of the flyrod.
By now, of course, I have added my
own scribbling to the long, seemingly endless reams of fish tales. That's part of it, too.
You do it long enough -- thirty years, already! -- and you get to write about it. And you
might even get paid for it. Now how does that tabulate in the calculations of my north
country yokel mentors? Did Harrison and McGuane have that figured, too?
Reprinted from the BIG SKY JOURNAL
FLY-FISHING 1999 Issue |
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