The Situational Optimist
“Nick took the cork out of the grasshopper bottle and a hopper clung to it. He picked him off, hooked him and tossed him out. He held the rod far out so that the hopper on the water moved into the current flowing into the hollow log. Nick lowered the rod and the hopper floated in. There was a heavy strike. Nick swung the rod against the pull. It felt as though he were hooked into the log itself, except for the live feeling.
He tried to force the fish out into the current. It came, heavily.
The line went slack and Nick thought the trout was gone. Then he saw him, very near, in the current, shaking his head, trying to get the hook out. His mouth was clamped shut. He was fighting the hook in the clear flowing current.
Looping in the line with his left hand, Nick swung the rod to make the line taut and tried to lead the trout toward the net, but he was gone, out of sight, the line pumping. Nick fought him against the current, letting him thump in the water against the spring of the rod. He shifted the rod to his left hand, worked the trout upstream, holding his weight, fighting on the rod, and then let him down into the net. He lifted him clear of the water, a heavy half circle in the net, the net dripping, unhooked him and slid him into the sack.” – Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River”
A few times a year, I like to head to upstate New York and fly fish for trout. Here in the Northeast, the fishing season is short, at least the really productive one. Of course, you can go year-round, but the best time, the time when trout behavior is distinctly favorable compared to any other time, is May and June. It also happens to be a magical moment upstate – the air has softened, the days are endless, and the rivers are vibrant and clear. A riot of wildflowers explodes on the roadsides. In the mountains, the trees go from bare to Kelly green, and lush ferns cover the forest floor. There’s an ambient hum of new animal activity – after the dead silence of winter, you can feel life quickening all around you.
I grew up fishing, but not really fly fishing. For the uninitiated, fly fishing is a similar idea to normal fishing, but the rod and reel are different, and therefore casting is different. With a fly rig, instead of just throwing the bait out, like a baseball, you have a good bit of line already out, and you sort of rhythmically sway it back and forth over your head to generate momentum to cast. Technically, you’re casting the line, rather than the bait, since a fly rig’s line is much heavier and its bait much lighter than that of a normal spincasting setup. What you’re trying to do (especially in May and June) is mimic the behavior of a fly softly landing on the surface of the water. If you’ve ever seen A River Runs Through It, that’s fly fishing.
There are three main varieties of trout in upstate New York rivers: brown, rainbow, and brook (although the brook trout is actually a char). Only the brook trout is indigenous to the area. The brown trout hails from Europe; it was first introduced to the US in 1883 from Germany. The rainbow is from the American West, as are other varieties that you don’t see at all back east, like cutthroat, or the rare golden trout of the California Sierras, or the even rarer Gila trout of the Southwest. Like the brown trout, rainbows were introduced in the East, and brook trout were introduced out West – each introduction has hurt local species, whether by predation, competition for food, or hybridization. Brookies were already in decline in the Northeast when the brown trout and rainbow trout were introduced, and they remain the most tenuous trout population here. Presumably in response to the presence of brown and rainbow trout in rivers, brook trout tend to (as their name suggests) remain in smaller tributaries and brooks. It’s a pretty rare thing to catch a brook trout at all in the Catskills, much less a large one in a big river.
As you can imagine, there are infinite nuances to fly fishing. The old timers upstate have forgotten way more about it than I’ll ever learn. And I can’t say that I’m the ideal student. A lot of fly fishing knowledge is about bugs, which I admit don’t particularly interest me. For example, a big part of the reason why the trout are more active in May and June is because many bugs that they eat are hatching at that time. A savvy angler then, would do well to study every aspect of relevant types of bugs - their life cycles, their changing appearance in each stage of the life cycle, the time of year when each part of the life cycle occurs, etc. – in order to determine the perfect flies (baits, which are artificial imitations of the bugs) to use at a given time in a given location. Me – I’m not an entomologist, and I never will be. Honestly, I’m hopeless at remembering the names of the flies in my fly box. I know how each one behaves in the water, and I know which ones have brought me luck in the past, but that’s about it. The most legwork I’ll do is go to a fly shop and ask what the fish are biting on, then buy that.
Of course, countless other factors come into play when fly fishing: time of day, weather conditions, water temperature, water clarity, water flow rate, whether the fish are hungry, not to mention how exactly your line is rigged. Some anglers check flow rates at rivers before determining where to go. Others have electronic gauges to measure water temperature; like me, trout prefer cooler temps – a rainbow trout’s optimum temperature range for feeding is 52 to 64 degrees, a brown trout’s can be a bit warmer, and a brookie’s is several degrees cooler. Some anglers wear powerful polarized glasses, which allow them to spot fish in the water. Others don’t fish if it’s a bluebird day. Still others tie two or three baits onto their line, for better odds. But I keep it simple, and my rig usually just consists of a single fly. I was never very good at complicated knots, and I find that the more flies you add on a line, the harder it is to cast anyway.
Unsurprisingly, I often don’t catch fish! And maybe there is a bit of self-sabotage going on, for reasons obscure to me. But I like to think that it’s a kind of ethic too. Like I’m deciding at the outset of the trip that I’m going to enjoy it, regardless of what happens. It’s a weird sort of stoicism – like a combination of Boethius’ Wheel of Fate and Weird Al’s Wheel of Fish.
The fickle fishing gods will either smile on me or not – it’s mostly out of my control. And of course, I would prefer to catch fish every time. But in this case at least, I like a bit of mystery. My girlfriend will disagree vehemently, I’m sure. 😊
Fishing is supposed to be a sport, after all. And if there’s no chance of losing, it isn’t very sporting. I know that there are people for whom fishing or hunting is a way to put meat on the table, and I respect that. But I don’t need the meat. In fact, I invariably release the fish I catch, even though I do like a nice trout dinner. Maybe I feel guilty, with ecosystems collapsing and the trout population being so fragile. Maybe I like the idea of my trout living to fight (or avoid) another angler on another day. Maybe I’m lazy and don’t feel like cleaning fish.
If I did need the meat, I would probably force myself to learn more about the relevant insects. Or maybe I’d just get a cast net. Or build a dam and a fish pond. Or go to a hatchery and pilfer a few. Fly fishing must be the least efficient way to procure fish. It’s a challenge, which is the point. In any sport where technology is involved, a juncture can be reached where the technology is so effective that what you’re doing is no longer a sport. Whether it’s a meat fisher spotlighting at night with live bait or a fancy aesthete with the latest $2000 Orvis combo, both are taking extraordinary measures to increase success, without improving their skill at all, thus moving along the spectrum from sport to grocery shopping. I’ve written about “siege tactics” of the first generation of mountaineers, versus the newer, streamlined “alpine style” – there are versions of this tension in every sport or hobby, I’m sure.
As with any good sport or hobby, fly fishing has a knowledge component and a skill component. I’m a mixed bag with both, but the latter is the more appealing one for me. Casting can be hard to learn, but when done well, there’s an elegance to it, a deceptive simplicity. This is part of the reason why people like to watch sports – it’s a pleasure to see people do things well. A master makes hard things look easy. This old Italian master has honed a complex art into its platonic essence:
He carries on a 500-year tradition, fishing with basically a cane pole and no reel. He ties his own flies, even braids his own line out of horsehair. But the flies are extremely simple; most of the variety in what he offers the fish comes from his technique – subtle, almost imperceptible flicks of the wrist. He’s like a puppeteer, breathing life into an inanimate collection of materials. Lots of anglers talk about “matching the hatch” – basically, figuring out which bug is hatching where you are and fishing with the equivalent in one’s fly box, or the closest approximation to it. And this is helpful, of course. But it’s appealing to think that skill can compensate for a less than perfect match, that the flies can be rudimentary, indeed that you don’t actually need many flies at all, and that the important thing is the “presentation.” In other words, better skill, rather than better tools, can be enough.
With any type of fishing, you have two options: in a boat or on foot. A boat allows you to cover more water, but many of the rivers upstate are too shallow for a boat. I like being on foot though, in keeping with my overall philosophy – it’s a simpler proposition. There’s no organization involved, no hauling or launching, no pickup to coordinate, no running costs, no maintenance, and no noise. All you need are waders, unless you don’t mind standing in cold water. There’s also a delicious freedom of movement on foot. You can examine things closely and at length. You can linger in a spot and exhaust every option. You can move upriver and downriver easily. And you can stretch your legs. And the sense of calm is unlike anything else, when standing stock-still in a river on a June day as the light dances on the riffles. All you hear is the babble of the water and the occasional singing of your reel.
It’s a thrill to hook a fish, to feel nature’s wild power in your hands. The difference in May and June is that you get a chance to witness the whole thing. Normally, trout stay underwater, waiting for the river’s current to bring food right in front of their faces, like a conveyor belt at a Japanese sushi buffet.
In May and June though (and occasionally other times of year), trout become so aggressive that they will surge to the surface and strike.
Obviously, this is a much more exciting way to fish, and of course, it’s much easier to tell if you’ve had a bite. As you play the fish on your line, you marvel at what got you there – a tiny hook with a couple of feathers and horsehairs tied on it was enough. It’s a feeling like you put one past nature, if only briefly. There’s gratitude at being able to participate meaningfully in the universe, pride at being able to survive in a theoretical yesteryear. You can’t help but say to yourself, “If I needed this, I could eat tonight.” It’s not so much a sense of mastery over nature, but of oneness with it – being a small part of a much greater whole, in some way, not unlike the feeling of playing well in another sport against a better opponent – competing well in the arena, but still losing the game. You recognize that you’re badly outmatched, but there’s dignity in a good showing, in making your mark. For a fleeting moment, your existence was registered in the world, and it was deemed worthy, in an undeniable form – a jeweled trout, wriggling in your net.
There’s something else that fly fishing offers, as do other hobbies, in their own way: a sense of possibility. My dad has a fishing boat named Great Expectations. I’m convinced that possibility is something everyone needs to feel in life. Everyone needs to have something they’re optimistic about. It might be a very limited, contained, even situational optimism. It doesn’t need to be a particularly grand or complex feeling; it doesn’t need to be about the world or about humanity or even one’s own life. It doesn’t need to be about the outcome of the hobby or game. It doesn’t even need to be conscious. Participation itself means there’s some form of optimism present. One wouldn’t participate without at least a shadow of belief in succeeding, at any stage of the act. Stepping onto the field means that you believe you can make a play. Stepping into the river means that you believe you can catch a fish, or even just make a good cast. And when you lose yourself in the hobby or game, when time passes unnoticed, this is the sense of possibility taking over, the optimism spurring you on. With fly fishing, the river is a metaphor for possibility. Each successive pool represents a chance for a fish. Still more possibility lies just beyond each bend.
Particularly for those who aren’t used to feeling optimism or possibility in any other sphere of life, this is why hobbies like fishing are therapeutic. You can place your mind in a different psychological state, walled off temporarily from any negative reality. If time is part of the fabric of the universe, as Einstein discovered, then suspending time can mean transporting to another dimension, one where everything is all right.
Like Hemingway, the protagonist of “Big Two-Hearted River,” Nick Adams, was wounded, physically and psychologically, in the First World War, the one for which the term “shell-shocked” was coined. Upon his return to the States, Adams heads to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to camp and fly fish. The bulk of the story is pure description of action. Adams arrives by train to a burned-out town. He hikes to the river, pitches his tent, has dinner, and goes to sleep. The next day, he wakes up, catches some grasshoppers for bait, eats breakfast, and fishes. In occupying his mental energy with the optimism of fishing, Adams manages to momentarily banish the demons of the Great War. He finds himself inexplicably happy. He remembers that there are good things in life. The deep waters of the swamp, the abyss of pain surrounding his day-to-day existence – he puts it all off for another day.