the accidental angler

“Set!” yells the guide, and then patiently explains again why the fish escaped and what I must do if I am to catch a fish. Intellectually, I understand that my rod needs to come up as I simultaneously put tension on the line to set the hook into the fish’s lip. Sensing precisely when and with how much force still eludes me; the guide points out that it is a feeling, and feelings are difficult to teach. As with so much in fly fishing, I fall short of putting theory into practice. I have yet to catch a fish.

Surprisingly little of my rural childhood has prepared me for fly fishing. I have vague memories of overhearing men discussing bait and lures, of falling into the lake while watching my dad fish, of watching with horrified fascination as he cleaned the fish that would be our dinner. Until recently, I thought of fishing, when I thought of it at all, pretty much as I think of golf, which is to say mostly as an easy way to spoil a perfectly good day outside. But I married into fly fishing, and fly fishing is, to its practitioners, nothing less than a way of life. It is also a measure of character, and so I gamely cast my fly in the direction I think the guide is pointing. I ask questions about fish habits and habitat, about what my rod and line should be doing, about different kinds of flies. It is a beautiful sport, but one so filled with strange vocabulary and arcane practices that I struggle to understand the basics. My father-in-law enthusiastically answers my questions with technical detail and scientific reasoning. My husband replies that the aim of fly fishing is always the imitation not only of the food itself, but its approach to the fish.

Therein lies the difference between my husband and his father, but it occurs to me as I stand in the river skittering my fly across the water to mimic a struggling insect, that such an artfully meticulous sport also approaches something akin to theater. Fish need to be convinced, drawn out with a realistic imitation of life, from tying flies to casting to managing the line in the water. As my husband likes to observe, fly fishing is a world where the fake beats out the real. If a grasshopper were tied to a hook, it would plop unconvincingly into the water and give away the illusion. Instead, to fly fish is to animate an imitator with skill, timing, and luck. What actor doesn’t hope to achieve the same? Fish, it turns out, seem to want what so many of us want, which is to believe in skillful imitation, in art, and occasionally, in things we know to be too good to be true.