The Requirement of Rethinking

It is a no brainer to say that most anglers have days when they just want to find a pod of stupid fish.  One of those days when you don't have to think about it, you don't have to work hard, you just engage the river and start catching.  This is the situation you find on most southern tail waters.  Stocked fish who are so naïve that they will hit just about anything you put in front of them.

That is not the case in the Smokies however.  If you want to be super frustrated and go fishless for the day, take your stupid trout tail water method to a freestone full of wild fish and you will be schooled.  These fish are fast, picky, and spook so easy that I sometimes wonder if they have some sort of sixth sense that lets them know when you are within a half mile of them.

This past Saturday I had in mind a spot that I wanted to fish that is going to be in my book.  I had the right flies, I knew the technique, I was ready.  However, when I arrived at this location, there was a gentleman standing right in the middle of the run casting as far as he could.  He had on a red shirt, and a bright orange hat (University of Tennessee Orange to be exact).  While I readily admit that I have a sizable collection of hats, shirts, sweatshirts, and other items that are that particular shade of orange- I would not be caught dead in them on the river.

This guy was flailing away at the water and needless to say he was 100% fishless.

In the park, in most situations, if you cast more than 10 feet you are overdoing it.  Also, if you are wearing anything that has a color not common to the surroundings it would be no different if you dressed up like Bozo The Clown or Dame Edna. 

Stealth, slow moving, and accuracy are what the freestone requires.  Anything else and you are just rolling the dice for a stupid fish.  And there are no stupid fish in the park.  Up there, stupid means dead and the wild fish I have encountered don't do dead very well.

Here is a good example of how it is done by Ian and Charity Rudder of R&R Fly Fishing.

The Life Of An Outdoor Writer

The journey of a thousand miles is said to begin with a single step. One small motion in a forward direction followed by another until you reach your destination.  But what if, for the sake of conversation, those steps are on an incline that places a burn in your thighs as if someone injected your legs with some exotic hot pepper that will stop a charging rhino at thirty paces?  What if each step held rocks that shift and pivot beneath your feet causing you to teeter and flail like two lumberjacks on a log?  And what if, for the sake of conversation of course, you were on the lookout for bears, copperheads, wild boar, coyote, yellow jackets, and rabid bats as you engaged in said activity?  If this were the case...you would no doubt be writing a book about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Thus far in my journey I have encountered a bear mama and two cubs, and a bat that chased me off the river in the middle of the day.  I have dangled precariously over a rock the size of a VW minibus as I attempted to drift a fly into the mouth of a huge and very wise brown trout that took said fly and proceeded to spool me (a first for me in the park) before breaking off in water so deep that it probably had a high and low tide.  I have dealt with a family from another country who stood on the bank and yelled what they no doubt assumed was English, asking me to move so they could get a better shot of a flower.  I had to do a brief fly fishing lecture to four teenage boys who looked as if they had emerged from a Slayer concert.

And photos.

Ask my wife and she will tell you...I struggle with photography.  Shots with a finger, moving the camera as I press the button, not focusing...you name it...I've done it.  Shooting underwater photos with the camera turned at the wrong angle so that all you can see is a bright spot where the sun is hitting the surface of the river.

Yep...I'm walking that thousand mile journey with every step being an adventure.

But I am having the time of my life.

I am blessed with the opportunity to fish (love it) and write a book (love it) while bushwhacking through some of the most beautiful woodlands you will find.  I fish a while, shoot pictures for a while, take down a few notes...and repeat till time to go home.  Once back a The House of Payne I download the pictures, dump most of them because they are so bad, pull out my notes, and write a chapter.  To most of my friends and family this seems like a very strange thing to do and enjoy at the same time.  But for me?  It was what I have wanted to do my whole life...I couldn't be happier.

And as for that big brown?  I know where he lives and I fully plan on a grip and grin with that guy before this book is finished. Unless the rabid bat gets me first.

A river by any other name.

A question that I get asked a lot as a writer who ply's his craft around fly fishing is, "how can you write so much about fishing".

Good question.

A run, a seam, a pool, a rainbow trout, a mend, stained water, a brown trout...the list is endless...and on the surface a very repetitive supply of information.  But what lies below the surface of these items is where you find the magic.  However, to find the magic, you have to do two things that are paramount to being a writer.

First, as much as you can, you need to know what you are talking about when discussing the river itself.  A person who is skilled with words but who knows zero about fly fishing may be able to weave the text, but he or she won't sell the reader at all.  Secondly if you know a lot about fly fishing but do not know how to pull the undercurrent to the surface you may as well write a manual for building bird houses. 

One of the best examples I can think of to explain how good writing and fly fishing go hand in hand is this- if you can read a story about fly fishing and find something in the text that goes beyond the sport- you have found the key.  The direction it takes as it leaves the stream is to the digression of the writer based on their experiences, but a good writer will always give you more than just the facts.  They lay at your feet a part of themselves, a part of the river, and a part of life.

There have been several events that I can use as an example-

1) When I was maybe eight years old, I was fishing (Zebco 202 and worms) and this guy with a thick northern accent and a fiberglass fly rod showed up on the stream.  He wasn't catching squat while I caught bass and bluegill like crazy.  To make a long story short, I wound up selling him two balsa wood bobbers (I guess then they became strike indicators because they were used on a fly rod), and the rest of my worms for two bucks in change.  I walked home feeling like Tom Sawyer who had just duped some Yankee with a fly rod.  Karma came back to me on that one....

2) My best friend talked me into fly fishing.  Seemed like a waste of time.  We went to the river and he had what amounted to a one man kayak, the sit on top kind.  both of us climbed aboard and before the afternoon was over I caught a 16" rainbow. My first trout.  Two men in a craft smaller than a bathtub hooking trout...and as for myself...being hooked on the sport.

3) Hitting a sweeper at 2500 CFS stream flow and being thrown from my toon into the middle of a massive elm tree.  Feeling my legs being hooked by the current around the trunk, somehow pulling myself to the surface.  Being rescued by a boat full of Red Sox fans.  Getting back into the water and catching a bunch of trout.

Each one of these events happened on the river.  Each one of these events involved fishing.  Each one of these events painted a much larger picture than the fishing itself, yet none would have happened without the fishing.

When life meets craft, art is just around the corner.  You just have to know where to place the words.

It should come as no surprize

Writers are an unusual bunch.  So are those who ply the angle with a fly rod.  Esoteric, aloof, perhaps eliteist...but most certainly against the grain.  We go at our craft with what could be stated at best as a mild obsession, plying over words and feathers as if the balance of the free world rested upon our skilled shoulders.

But what makes us?  Not the day to day memories that build who people know, but those bizarre things that make us a writer, or angler?  What makes us tick?  Over the next couple of posts, I am going to open up the wormhole and give you guys a glimpse of what makes me tick.  What builds me as a writer and an angler and the things that fuel the creative fire.

This is going to be a stream of consciousness kind of post, so please be kind.

• When I was a little kid, my Great Aunt Nori (or perhaps it was her twin sister Dori), lived in a school bus.  She didn't drive it around, she just pulled it out into a field beside the old home place (everyone in the south has an old home place), and parked it.  I do not remember if it had electricity, but it is a safe bet that it did not have plumbing.  I remember an old stove pipe jutted out of one window, and she had this overweight Chihuahua.  The dog always had its nails painted hot pink and Nori/Dori wore these bright colored polyester pant suits.  She had beehive hair, cat eye glasses, and smoked those long skinny Virginia Slim cigarettes.  She moved into the bus after an argument with her sister who had fallen in with a funeral director.
• My Grandfather lost his little finger on his right hand when he was six years old.  He and his brother were out chopping wood for the family, he was holding a log, his brother came down with the axe, and the finger was severed.  His mother, who was a Mulungeon (Google it), put it in a jar with some kind of "fluid" and kept it.  Upon marrying my Grandmother, his Mother gave the jar and the finger to her with instructions that he was to be buried with it.  And he was.  My Grandmother guarded over that finger in a jar for over fifty years.
• My Dads Father died before I was born.  He was a diehard fisherman and built a fishing boat out of railroad pallets.  He also played guitar.  When I was maybe seventeen or eighteen years old (at least twenty years after his death), I was in my bedroom playing guitar and started finger picking a song...making it up as I went along.  My Grandmother who lived with us then came bounding into my room wanting to know who taught me that song.  When I told her I was just making it up, she said that it was a song called Railroad Bill and that my Grandfather used to play it all the time...exactly like I was playing it.

I told these snippets to perhaps show that life events and issues within the life of a writer fuel the writer, much as life events and issues can fuel the angler.  My family history is amazingly colorful, full of characters who lingered within my memory.  Our family is a family of story tellers and I always loved sitting around the kitchen table and listening to all these off the wall accounts in the lives of the people who were such a huge part of me.

Listening.  The firstfruits of a writer.  To be observant.  To digest all that goes on around you.  The person who fly fishes is no different.  They observe, imitate, negotiate, and move with an awareness of what is happening as they engage.  I think that is why on average, the fly fisherman is a reader, and in many cases, a writer.  The two are very similar.  And when they meet...it can be magical.

Next post...angling oddities and the words they induce.