As a kid at the tender age of 7, I picked up a fly rod. I was almost instantly hooked, as they say. Not that I caught a lot of fish at first, but I felt like I had joined a highly selective fraternity of grown-ups, and I felt like a million bucks when one of them took me fishing. You see, at that young age, my father suddenly died, leaving my mom and two very young sons with no rudder. We were adrift.
My father was not a fly fisherman per se, but a fisherman that used a variety of methods. Before he died, I remember getting to go on a fishing trip with him, and while I did not catch any fish, I never forgot the experience of seemingly being equal to a small cadre of men I thought knew some secret or had such a wealth of experience that catching fish came easy for them. Maybe it did, or looking back at it now, I see that it was the late 50’s or early 60’s and not a whole lot of people were out fishing, so I suspect that the fishing WAS easier then.
As I said, I did not catch a lot of fish in those early years, but I kept at it, even when my mother remarried and we moved from California to Arizona. That was 1965 or 1966. Those were some dry years (pun intended). And then in 1968 or 1969 we moved to South Central Missouri onto a huge cattle ranch that had on it a gushing spring that fed a sizable creek. I could see that there were fish in there, I just couldn’t hook any of them. I spent a lot of time on that creek by myself. I kept at it.
Then we moved back to Arizona in 1971 after my stepfather went broke in the cattle business. That’s when I started high school and I was able to buy my first actual fly rod. Until then, I had a fly/spin combo with a Pflueger fly reel and a Mitchell Garcia spinning reel. I fished that rod pretty hard throughout high school and even college in Flagstaff. And I was steadily catching more and more fish. I graduated college in late 1979 and took a job in Seattle, and you would think that being in the Northwest would have spurred me to fish more, but it didn’t. I was into rock climbing then, almost to the exclusion of everything else. I fished now and then, but I didn’t really take it seriously until I moved back to Arizona in 1981.
Upon my return to Arizona, I immersed myself in the climbing community and I climbed a lot. I still fished fairly often, but as I aged my climbing skills began to wane and my fly-fishing skills continued to get better and better. That’s when I had an epiphany. Why not take this fly fishing thing more seriously and see where it takes me.
I built my first fly rod about then and since then have built dozens more. A few of them I still have but most were for family and friends. In 1983 I took a job with the Central Arizona Project that lasted for some 25 years and during that time I continued climbing and fishing, all while getting married and having a son.
So, in 2008 I finally pulled the plug on my career at age 52. I have not worked since, so over the past 13 years or so, I have fly fished a lot. And as I have aged, I have found that the reasons I fish have shifted. At first, I just wanted to catch a fish, any fish. I think I just wanted to catch fish, like those old timers that took me fishing when I was so young. I wanted to be in that fraternity.
Eventually, I tried to see how many fish I could catch. Yes, I counted the fish I caught during each outing. And then I wanted to see if I could catch large fish - numbers didn’t matter so much anymore. And now, I fish for entirely different reasons. I fish primarily for the comradery, but every once in a while I like to fish for the solitude. Occasionally, I get both. Like when I went up to Montana to horse pack into the Bob Marshall Wilderness with two friends. We spent a day in the saddle and then floated on our pontoon boats for a week, sometimes together, but mostly we floated independently until someone decided it was time to camp. Most of the time, each of us would float past a likely looking spot, beach our boat, fish the spot for a while, and then continue downriver. We would share a camp, but we fished in solitude mostly.
I no longer count fish, but I still like catching a large fish now and then. But what I really enjoy is being where fish are, sharing that with someone, sharing what knowledge I have gained over the nearly 50 years of fly-fishing experience, and then fishing on my own once in a while. It’s not even about catching fish anymore - I’ve caught many, thousands probably - but about the places fishing takes me and the people I fish with. I do enjoy a bit of notoriety since I have fished for so long and have consistent success now, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you have to fish a lot to get any good at it. You absolutely must continue to improve your casting. You don’t have to be able to double haul a 90 foot cast, but you do have to be able to plop your fly accurately at about 40 to 50 feet. You must study currents and where the food fish eat is getting funneled. You must be able to tie your own flies and be able to tie them at camp if necessary. Conditions change so often, and rapidly, that you cannot rely on that one fly you caught 20 fish on 3 years ago. Lastly, and maybe the most important, is that the really successful fishermen are laser focused. They do not allow any outside influences to alter their attention. An argument at work? Lost your job? Concerned about making the house payment? The political climate got you riled? None of these can enter your thoughts while fishing. At least put them away in the background and really become present, become mindful, become ultra-observant of the natural world. It is this ability to push everything aside and fish with purpose that is the major difference between catching and not catching. It is a meditation, and it doesn’t matter if you catch fish or not. If you can do this one thing, trust me, you will catch fish, but it won’t matter. And when you don’t, nothing changes in your demeanor. You are still there, focused, mindful, lost in your own world, paying attention to the smallest detail. This is your reward, not the fish. You’re still going to get skunked from time to time, but if you’re learning something (and it doesn’t even need to be about fishing), it is time wisely spent. Be wise and enjoy all of it.