I Fish ...

There isn't much I could say that this doesn't say better ...

Priorities

When I was a younger man, few things mattered to me quite so much as fishing. My schedule was decided not by life's most necessary pursuits (education, gainful employment, meaningful relationships, etc.) but entirely by the pursuit of fish with a fly rod. Trout, steelhead, bass, carp - any fish was fair game provided I could coax it into moving to a fly. And when I wasn't on the water I was tying flies; when I wasn't tying flies I was planning my next trip. College courses were scheduled around major hatches. I worked nights so that I could fish during the day. I caught the biggest brown trout of my life on a day when I played hooky from both graduate school and work.

Contrary to everyone's expectations - except for perhaps my wife's - marriage did little to change my habits. Throughout our courtship (if they still call them courtships) my wife tolerated - sometimes even indulged - my obsession with all things piscatorial. It was she who first suggested I take a trip to Montana, and later encouraged me to make that trip some seven or eight times. I like to think she wanted to see me happy, but just as easily I suppose she could have been using that time to find another husband. I didn't much care; I was in Montana.

If God exists in the world then Montana - western Montana in particular - must be his backyard. For a bug chucker, Big Sky Country is like a shot in the neck with some manner of powerful antibiotic, an inoculation against those days when we are not out in the world doing that one thing we are truly meant to do. When I returned from my last trip I did so knowing that I might never again see such big skies; I knew that the memory of Montana would have to sustain me for years to come. My wife and I had decided to buy a house, and we were going to try to have a family.

On February 15th of 2007, our triplets came into the world, kicking and screaming and - at 4 lbs 8 oz, 4 lbs 10 oz, and 4 lbs 12 oz - just slightly underweight. If I'm honest with you and with myself then I have to admit that I did not take to being a father, at least not right away. I had never so much as held a baby before the doctor placed one of our precious little girls into my reluctant hands. In that moment, all the clichés about being a father were true. I was simultaneously terrified and desperately in love. I wanted to shout my joy to the rooftops and crawl into a dark corner and cry. I had no idea how I would do it, but I wanted to give the world to my children. I started by giving my daughter a little piece of God's backyard: the Madison River.

Madison Sarah Daley.

Maddie playing in the Battenkill ... I thought about naming my son for the Kill ... bad idea.

In short order, however, all the romantic notions about fatherhood quickly gave way to the reality of caring for three newborns. Together, my wife and I fed the children 24 bottles of formula per day. We usually changed in excess of 30 diapers - often two or three at a time. We were assembly line parents working overtime. My wife handled it all with aplomb. While I floundered and fumbled my way through the early years, she was a maternal warrior fighting and winning a battle she had trained all her life to fight. Most days I was in awe of her while quietly brooding and dwelling on one simple question.

"What the hell was I thinking?"

My frustration and apparent ineptitude could only mean one thing - that I was not meant to be a father. On even the best of days, I was overwhelmed to the point of teary-eyed exhaustion. I could never tell what it was my children needed whereas my wife seemed to operate on some preternatural plane, a place where the kids communicated with her via clairvoyance and astral projection. She was the baby whisperer, and I felt like Jo-Jo the Idiot Monkey Boy.

And then something happened. I'm not sure quite when and I cannot put my finger on why, but at some point along the way I started to get it. I began to see fatherhood for what it is and - perhaps even more to the point - for what it could be. Maybe because my kids had grown a little but probably because I had grown a lot, I discovered the joy of being a dad. Most days I still felt like Jo-Jo, but I realized an odd satisfaction in being perpetually bewildered.

I'm not sure what all of this has to do with fly fishing. Probably nothing. Maybe everything. All I know is that just yesterday I was tying flies, and my son crept quietly into the man-cave and startled me with a question.

"Hey Daddy, want to go upstairs and play Legos?"

Know what I did?

I did the only thing a man who is both a bug-chucker and father should do.

I played Legos.

A Tale of Two Fly Rods or An Angler's Odyssey

The following post was first published two summers ago. Recent events brought it to mind, and I thought it deserved another run.

A Tale of Two Fly Rods or An Angler's Odyssey

My father started me fly fishing thirty-one years ago. In fact, I caught my first trout on a fly in July of 1979. I remember the day well: the fish, the water, and my father's incredulous expression. I also remember the rod. It was a fiberglass Garcia; an eight footer painted electric blue. It was just the kind of thing that would appeal to a six year-old child of the seventies.

I remember needing to use both hands to cast, hooking that first trout, and eventually using big-blue to catch more panfish than I could ever hope to count. I fished that beast for a decade before earning enough money to buy a new, high-tech graphite stick. I no longer have either rod, but I wish I still had the Garcia.

Nearly a decade before I hooked that first diminutive brownie, the man who would eventually sire my fishing partner, Ben Jose,  was bouncing around the American west. Born and raised in Idaho, Forrest "Milo" Jose was no stranger to trout or to fly fishing. He fished his native Idaho. He fished Wyoming. He fished Montana when Montana was Argentina, and like me - he did it all with a fiberglass Garcia. To be exact, he did it with a Conolon model 2536-T, 7' 9" fast taper fly rod.

How can I be sure of the rod he used? Well, forty years after Milo was married, moved to New York, and forsook fishing to be a father, his son found Dad's old rod and reel tucked away in a dusty corner of the garage. The reel was a disaster; paint flaked away from the metal, and ancient grease jammed the spring.

The two, staggered sections of the rod had been held together with rubber bands for over three decades, and while I'm not sure it's possible for fiberglass to develop a set, it sure seemed that way. The cork was pitted, and the metal ferrules hopelessly tarnished. The single stripping guide was missing; other guides were corroded and in need of polish or replacement. All the wraps screamed for a fresh coat of varnish.

I suppose the rod was fishable, but Ben was determined for his father to revisit those days in the Rockies, and he wanted Milo to have something better than a "fishable" outfit. Ben used his resources as a foundryman to make the reel whole again (the entire process is detailed here). For my part, I did some research, and corresponded with folks who had their old rods - both fiberglass and bamboo - refinished.

After hours of Googling, emailing, and debate, I settled on a gentleman who came very highly recommended, one whose name is especially known in cane-nut circles. After a short correspondence, the rod was sent along with some very specific instructions: regardless of cost, please replace the missing guide with an agate stripper, rewrap and revarnish the guides (replace as needed), clean up the ferrules and be sure they fit together properly, clean the cork, and ink a very special message along the shaft of the rod.

"Happy Father's Day Dad ... Love, Ben."

Can you think of a better gift for a son to give his father? I've tried, and I cannot.

Ben and I both understood that the Garcia 2536-T was hardly collector's item. We knew that the cost of the work we requested would likely be ten times the value of the rod - if the rod was in pristine, unfished condition, and it wasn't. We didn't care. This was a gift for Milo. This was Ben saying to his father, "I love you Dad, I appreciate all you've done for me ... all you've sacrificed. Thank you." We were very disappointed when the rod found its way back to us just days before Father's Day.

The ferrules were cleaned, but little else was done in accordance with our request. A cheap wire - not agate or mildrum, but wire - stripping guide was mounted with thread that did not nearly match the thread on the other guides. None of the guides were polished or replaced. The cork was not cleaned. Not a speck of new varnish covered any of the wraps. A Post-It Note bearing Ben's message to Milo was stuck to the shaft. Included with the rod was a bill for $40.00. Forty dollars to have a lousy wire guide wrapped. Ben had been willing to pay up to $200.00 to have the work done properly.

As Bennie and I sat at my dining room table, sharing a six-pack and lamenting the mindset that allows someone to do shoddy, haphazard work, I thought to grab my laptop. I visited Ebay, and typed "Garcia fly rod" into the search string. Miraculously - and I couldn't possibly make this up - a 2536-T Fast Taper 7' 9" fly rod in new, unfished condition (with original sock and tube no less) was the first item up for bid. We won the auction - in fact we were the only bidder - and before our payment was ever processed, the very gracious seller overnighted us the rod so that Milo could have it in time for Dad's Day.

And Mr. Jose could not have been more pleased. We all spent the morning on one of our favorite ditches. I played guide, and everyone caught a few fish; nothing huge, but enough to remind Milo of what it felt like to be a twenty-something fly flinger. He smiled, and then Ben smiled.

I thought it a privilege to see a father and his adult son share a moment like that. I'm happy to have played my part, and I hope that someday my own boy might think enough of me to put so much effort into one afternoon on the stream with his old man.

On Shame and Nubby Fins: Redux

I've maintained this blog for just over three years, and I wrote the following piece nearly two years ago. While I hate to rehash yesterday's news, recent fishing trips have me thinking about the value of wild fish, and the inherent foolishness of many stocking programs. I'm curious to hear what you folks think. Is there a place for stocked fish? What's your experience?

On Shame and Nubby Fins

Several of my previous posts have referred to a river (THE river in fact), and I think I've gone out of my way to give the impression that it is indeed a special place. Much of what makes it special is its propensity for growing large, wild trout. It's a wonderfully complex river, and a fine place for a flyflinger to wet a line. The anglers who wade its runs are blessed with consistent hatches and difficult holding lies, which is precisely why it is such a shame when the stocking trucks arrive on its banks.

Starting about two weeks ago, stocked fish with amputated pectoral fins and stunted tails, starting showing in all the usual places. I caught a slew of them. They're pale, misshapen, and far too eager to chase one's flies. I resented each one as it is difficult for me to find any satisfaction in their capture. The annual stocking of the river drives the river's regulars, including myself, farther back into woods and away from bridges and cookie-cutter fish.

The river is a perfectly viable and self-sustaining fishery. Sadly, bureaucrats seem to think that if tax dollars are available to spend on hundreds of hatchery brood and a metric ton of trout chow, then those dollars positively must be spent. Health of the river or quality of the fishery be damned. Wasteful spending be damned. This is how it has always been done. This is how it will always be done.

Folks like me, who've spent most of their lives on the river, are left confounded. What should we do? On the surface, the right thing is to bring attention the river. Make folks aware of the river's potential. Do what you can to assist folks in experiencing the river as you have. More to the point, demonstrate to taxpayers and tax collectors alike that the dollars spent on raising and stocking hatchery fish are monies better spent elsewhere. The river produces plenty of fish on its own and it does so gratis, free of any expense in treasure or labor.

With attention, however, comes other and perhaps more significant problems. I've alluded to these problems in previous posts, and I won't rehash them here. Suffice to say the truth is that few people respect the river as we do, and they've absolutely no regard for wild fish. This is the sad and inevitable consequence of a society that increasingly prefers artificial landscapes to the natural world, and by extension rubber trout to the real thing.

To illustrate my meaning, I point to the roughly 120 students with whom I daily interact. Of that number only a handful recognize a picture of a pickerel, a brown trout or bass. Only one (God bless you Jeremiah) could tell the difference between a whitetail and a mule deer. All of them (Jeremiah included) instantly recognize the Halo or World of Warcraft series of video games. One particular student actually admitted to devoting 50 or 60 hours a week to video games.

So what do we do? How do we respond when a student, a friend, a neighbor, a son or daughter spend so much time wasting so much time?

I'm not sure, but I think we start by turning off the televisions in our own homes. We shut down the computers and leave them shut down. We take advantage of every available moment and spend that time outdoors. We take our spouses with us. We take our children, both sons and daughters, with us. We take the neighbors' children with us. And we do not start with fly fishing.

We start with picnics, bike rides and hikes. We start by catching crayfish in the stream or picking pussy willows by the pond. We start by being role models, and demonstrating our love of the outdoors. We teach young people that the opportunities afforded to us by nature far outweigh the fleeting satisfaction furnished by the digital world. We teach our kids that the quiet pride one takes in catching a few wary, wild fish, far outweighs the bragging rights one assumes as he or she gloats over a bucket full of stockers.

We remember our Emerson. "The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship."