Barbarians!

“Barbarians!” I said.  And I went on to explain, ”Compared to what we see on TV shows and read in the magazines, as flyfishermen, you and I are barbarians.”  My father chuckles in agreement as we go on to discuss the state of flyfishing today.  Its all fine and dandy to have the latest equipment and techniques, but neither guarantee a fish landed.  Its also very nice that the flies in the box are so perfectly tied that they really do look like the real ones they are trying to mimic, but, again, they, too, do not guarantee a fish in the creel.  The professional flyfisherman of screen and paper show us the greatest spots, with a guide of course, and the greatest equipment and condense a week or two of hard fishing into a 20 minute television program or a three page story line and make it seem like all one has to do is go to your local fishing hole, put that fly with such and such a tippet on a particular line with the latest and greatest graphite rod and you, too, can be as they, fish in hand.  But it’s a lie, well, at least not quite the truth.

My father and I do not hold to the overly romanticized idea of a trout as a quarry worthy of heroic description – beautiful, yes, heroic, no.  It is, in reality, more about us going down and understanding their level of existence rather than raising them up to ours.  Lets face facts; fish are a few steps down from amphibians, which walked out of the water and lived.  The fish didn’t.  It seems crazy to give superpowers of reason and observation to a creature with a brain not much larger than a large grain of sand and has not changed for millenia.  Fish don’t think, they ‘do’, and so are vulnerable to erroneous action leading to negative results and we as flyfishermen rely on that fact.  But they, the professional flyfishermen, have taken to extremes this knowledge and reliance of the vulnerability of fish to be fooled.  Perhaps it has been twisted a little bit as well for the fishing industry’s benefit.  At the very least the sport has been mystified which then requires ‘mystics’ to interpret and be able to make it accessible to the lay man, by buying, literally, into perfect flies, perfect gear, perfect water.  Very neat, somewhat logical but totally unnecessary.

The experts “match the hatch”, make sure the silhouette of an artificial fly is nearly exactly as the real thing and carefully present this fly, in hushed tones, as though they were stalking the great lion of the African plains.  They ignore the fact that, seen from below, all objects floating on the surface of water are black non-descript shapes bumping along on flowing or windswept waters.  Many types of windblown seeds, like thistle and dandelion, look no different than a Mayfly pattern from below the surface of the water.  The ‘mystics’ pump the stomachs of the trout they do catch to see what critters they are eating and ignore half of what they see, the small stones, wood bits and spruce needles that accompany the bugs and worms.  And not very many ever describe the environment in which their quarry lives and in particular how that very stupid creature, the trout, lives within it and survives.

My father and I discovered many things long ago:  The first was to ignore what the books and magazines tried to tell us. They are mostly fanciful stories with beautiful pictures for cold winter reading.  The ideas contained in them rarely worked and were often ridiculously wrong and outright hogwash. 

Secondly, we passionately observed our quarry, the trout, and to our amazement found they were not super water gods. They were cold and lazy, and in streams sit instinctively in feeding lane troughs next to where the current brings the food train to them.  Expending as little effort as possible, they sit in troughs, or lies, near larger rocks at or near the bottom where the current is weakest, watch what the faster current brings and they dart out and eat everything that comes along. In lakes, trout cruise, slowly, conserving their energy until a possible food source is spotted whereupon it races to get there first for they are not the only one cruising for food.

Thirdly, in streams of good current, a fish in its lie does not have the time to actively discern if what is floating by is in fact a Pale Morning Dun or a perfectly tied imposter, or a seed, little stone or a spruce needle – sometimes they spit out inedible things, sometimes they don’t.  I have had many fish with these things in their stomachs.  Remember their brain is fractionally larger than a grain of sand, Einstein’s they are not!  And dinner is passing by quickly, an instinctive reaction is required, not a deliberate one.

Fourth, much like people, one can fool trout all the time. They are, actually, easily fooled at all times of the day, certainly some hours better than others, and in all weathers. In preparation for the long winter they will eat anything.  Being picky is not a survival instinct, eating is.

Fifth, sometimes too much attention is paid to perfect presentation of the fly.  When the water is hit hard the first instinct is for the fish to flee, we feel as if we have botched the cast, curse our clumsiness, pick up and try again.  Rarely have I read or heard what we have often seen, that very quickly after the fish have fled they return to see if there was anything left behind to eat.  Imitation grasshoppers smashed onto the surface of the water will get a much more immediate and violent strike than a perfectly and softly delivered one.  After all real grasshoppers are crummy fliers and usually fall from 10 to 30 feet and hit the water’s surface with a substantial splat!  I suppose, in that case, a messy presentation is actually a good presentation and it often applies to many more scenarios.

So, when my father and I fish, we fish as barbarians.  Beings who know our quarry’s habits and who use the fish’s instinctive desire to eat anything that even remotely looks like it may be food (how else does one explain cheese balls, Red Devil spoons, Len Thompson spinners, Stimulators or the Royal Coachman?). 

Our fly boxes are not chock full of half a dozen of each pattern, in five or six sizes, floating or sinking.  At best we catch fish with 6 flies of perhaps two sizes each.  Our flies are often tragic looking and fulfill not one imitation but many simultaneously, as needs be on the stream where often the best fly is the most spectacularly chewed upon and bedraggled specimen in our box.  For example, an Elk Hair Caddis doubles as a small grasshopper, or an emerging stonefly, or a mayfly, or a small moth, and can be fished above and below the surface of the water.  The point is it catches fish in spite of what the ‘Mystics’ say.  

My father and I have good gear, but not the best.  After all we need to save money to buy gas to get to the stream, nothing is close by in our country.  We quietly compete with each other and with ourselves in judging where a fish will be and drawing him out to be caught and landed.  We don’t ignore the little stone bits, or wood chunks and spruce needles as they tell us something about our quarry, how they eat and live – in a hurry. 

Yes, indeed we are flyfishing barbarians, but we almost always have fish.