An Open Letter from a Dirty Nympher: Redux

I first published this as a response to the article contained at the hyperlink. I still believe every word, and I think it appropriate to republish given the onset of yet another steelhead season.

An Open Letter from a Dirty Nympher

I'm filthy. I'm unwashed. I'm a piscatorial heathen. I should be ostracized from the clan; banned forever from the faithful fraternity of fly flingers. I'm a highsticker. I'm a shortliner. I'm a dirty ass nympher, and apparently, I'm only half a step removed from bait dunkers on the angling evolutionary scale.

Bug chuckers are an odd bunch. Many of us consider ourselves a step removed - if not a step above - other anglers. We like to think that our preferred manner of angling involves more skill than most other methods of putting fish in the boat. It is for this reason, and the propensity for bug chuckers to pass judgment on other anglers, that we are often labeled as elitists. I sometimes think that the term elitist - suggesting that one is of the upper echelon, the hierarchy, the elite - must have been coined by a fly fisherman who reveled in his own snobbery. Any normal person would have used simpler words.

And make no mistake. It is snobbery and pretension to assume that one's way of doing things is the only proper way of doing things, especially when discussing something as subjective as fly fishing.

This pretension has of late resurfaced and come to the forefront of a seemingly perpetual debate about steelhead angling, and the variety of methods employed in chasing this fine sport fish. Some argue that the noble steelhead should be pursued solely with two-handed rods and sparsely hackled spey flies. To do otherwise, these folks contend, isn't worthy of either the fish or the fisherman. Nymph fishermen like myself - especially those of us who use indicators - aren't really fly fishing at all. We're bobber fishing.

Of course, this argument is all so much nonsense. While swinging a fly is certainly less productive than nymphing, it is no more difficult a skill to master. Regardless of the method, one must cast, mend, and drift his or her fly in such a manner as to elicit a pull from an otherwise lock jawed winter fish. This is the essence of fly fishing. On each drift, we hope to raise a luminescent, acrobatic ghost that will burn our drags and run us into the backing. More than anything that separates us, it is this incessant hope that should bring steelhead anglers together, but it does not. Nowhere is this divide more evident than between those folks who are fortunate to call the Olympic Peninsula home, and those of us who cut our teeth on the Great Lakes.

Mind you that the divide separating these warring clans is more philosophical than it is geographic. Both parties claim an allegiance to tradition, albeit disparate, opposing traditions. Northwest steelheading is about the experience. It's about long lines, slow drifts, and a fanciful school of tying that claims Syd Glasso as its progenitor. Great Lakes steelheading is about the blue collar efficiency that characterizes the region, its industry, and its people. Short lines, short drifts, high sticks, and simple flies are the rule.

A cliche perhaps ... but beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Neither method is more valid than the other, and this is especially true now that the lines are being blurred between factions. Left coasters are increasingly turning to the techniques, which have been commonplace on tributaries to the Great Lakes. Right coasters are often arming themselves with spey rods, and boxes full of the long sweeping hackles and bright colors that were the trademarks of Glasso's flies.

Ultimately, it's all about the fish. A steelhead is special regardless if it's caught on an Orange Heron or a pink Sucker Spawn. It is special regardless if it's taken from shore or from a boat. A steelhead is special regardless if it's the fish of 100 or 10000 casts.

What If

An hour passed, and still I couldn't rid myself of the shakes. My hands trembled, and my fingers found impossible the act of threading tippet through the eye of another hook. My breathing was - for lack of a better, more appropriate, and less cliched adjective - ragged. Yes. My breathing was ragged.

It happened too quickly, and when it was over I was reminded of what those grizzled, old vets at the VFW would say - almost universally - when asked of their war experiences: "long moments of boredom, interrupted by glimpses of pure, unadulterated terror." Was I terrified? Perhaps. The shaking of my hands would suggest as much, but I was experiencing something else too, something much more than fear.

I was awestruck. I was exhilarated, and I knew from that moment forward I would never be quite the same. My thoughts would reinvent and realign themselves with this new passion I had only moments before discovered. Beyond all probability and in spite of doing everything the wrong way, I had hooked my first steelhead.

That first hook-up came some twelve or fifteen years ago. Regardless of the distance of time and memory I can still relive with perfect clarity, every second of my attachment - through rod and fly - to that first fish. I can see my pale yellow line drifting slowly from right to left, carried on currents I had yet to fully explore or understand. I feel pursed lips turn to a grin as my fly - an unthinkably small thing given the stories I had heard of the river's fish - finally found its way into the slot. The pause - what must be a take - almost imperceptible, but there nonetheless. A strip-set and a lift of the rod, which is met in kind by head shaking and an explosion of violence unlike anything I had ever before experienced.

And now, fifteen years after the fact I am reminded of the way the light shone on that steelhead's broad back as she somersaulted some three or four feet above the water. I can see the breadth of the animal's tail, perhaps as wide as both my hands when placed side by side, fingers splayed (at 6' 3" tall and near three hundred pounds I am a big man with big hands). My stomach clenches in an all-too-familiar way as I revisit the moment when she turned downstream into the rapids, forever severing our connection with a burst of speed that was as remarkable for its suddeness as it was its ferocity. 

The first steelhead I ever hooked was likely the largest I've ever hooked. At the time, my friend and guide suggested the fish was at least 18 pounds. I suppose it might be that time has a way of distorting memory, but in hindsight I'm left to think the fish was closer to twenty. Of course, I'll never know.

I'll never know how big she truly was. I'll never know just what she would have felt like had I held her in my trembling hands. I'll never know how my life might be different had I caught that first fish rather than merely watched with mouth agape as she ran for the lake. Perhaps the only thing I've learned in the years between that first fish and the last, is that losing is sometimes the best thing that happens to us. Losing keeps us hungry. Losing keeps us looking forward, gives us hope, and teaches us a genuine appreciation for winning.

As summer turns to autumn and leaves begin to fall from the trees, I find my nights are not spent dreaming of the fish I've brought to hand. Instead, I go forward into this steelhead season filled with imaginings of what might have been and what could be. I go forward into the season armed only with a few boxes of poorly tied flies and a question.

What if?