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Reader Warning: This is a special Thanksgiving/fly fishing edition of Ask Matt. What does one have to do with the other? Not a thing, really. Here, there will be none of the typical Thanksgiving column conventions: no cutesy stories of pardoned turkeys, or of spending time with sociopathic second cousins, or of the Pilgrims passing candied yams and smallpox blankets to indigenous peoples. In actuality, this will just be a fishing column. My sole Thanksgiving hook being that after enduring years of this soul-rotting presidential campaign, it is finally over, and I can stop pretending to care. For which I am abundantly thankful. At least until Road to the White House 2020 kicks off, roughly the day after inauguration. Then the Endless Cycle of Futility will begin anew. For a while, however, we can get back to Things That Really Matter, like fishing. (Keep the fishing questions coming, as well as life/non-political questions. I bank all questions in perpetuity, even if I don’t use them right away, as you never know when inspiration/desperation will strike. And political questions are always welcome, too, though there’s usually no shortage of those, since all the world is now politicized.) For those who hate fishing, I’m sorry. Not only because you are missing out on the peace that passeth all understanding. But because I know what you’re thinking: “Great, yet another middle-aged white guy prattling on about the beauty of fly fishing.” To which I’d counter that you’re looking at it all wrong. It could be much worse. I could be yet another middle-aged white guy prattling on about the beauty of baseball. So you have a lot to be thankful for, too.
Dear Matt,
Have you started teaching your sons to fly fish yet?
Chad Eslin
Bangor, Maine
Yes, both of my sons have been at it for a while now, with varying degrees of seriousness. Though I wonder sometimes if they’re not actually teaching me—about other things, if not about fishing. A few months back, I took them to one of my super-secret brook trout spots in the Shenandoah Mountains. My youngest, Dean, is like me. He loves the scenery, the clean mountain air, but at bottom, he’s a predator. Single-minded of purpose. He’s there to catch fish, and nothing else, if only to let them go. (I would punch either of my sons in the throat if they deliberately killed something as beautiful as a brook trout.)
My oldest, Luke, has more of a Zen take on fishing. He’s out for a nature walk. Fishing is almost incidental. As the weather was sweltering and the water was low, we were enjoying a fishless afternoon. By which I mean I was not enjoying it at all. I could be fishing in the River Jordan while John the Baptist was dunking Jesus Himself, and if I didn’t at least pull a creek chub, I’d consider the entire episode a failure.
But Luke is not like me. He stops to look up at the sky, instead of just being fixed on reading water. He hooks himself in the hat, and laughs, instead of curses. He’ll put down his rod, and take a seat on a rock, mid-stream, just to feel the cool water run between his fingers.
As it was about time to head home, we were creeping up on what I knew to be a bankable honey hole. “Wade quietly, and stay low,” I whispered to the kids. As we were just about there, the place even smelled can’t-miss fishy. So I Gink’ed up my black gnat and started stripping line off my reel in anticipation of a 30-foot layup. Just as I was about to cast, I heard what sounded like a cannonball off a high dive. It was my son, Luke. He lost his footing on some rock-snot algae and went into the drink, as his waders started filling up like a bucket. He emerged like a giggling mermaid, as young Dean and I looked on in disbelief.
Reading the disapproval on my face, he said, “Dad! It’s okay. It’s just fishing. It’s not that important.” When I pointed out, as any dutiful fishing sensei should, that he just blew the hole, he said, “You know what? If I get skunked today, it really doesn’t matter. Look around, it’s beautiful. I’m just happy being out here.”
He’s a sweet kid. I love him. And I learned something, too: never bring this ungrateful punk to my brook-trout honey hole again. At least not until he understands the importance of not spooking fish.
Dear Matt,
Do you have any suggestions on how to cure the need to endlessly false cast? I remind myself of the remark made by the William Hurt character in The Big Chill, “I’m not into the whole completion thing.” Except I really do want to put the fly in its intended place. I suppose it says something either about my psyche or maybe that I’m just a really bad caster. Anyway, any hints would be appreciated.
Mark
Soon to be fishing near Ketchikan, AK, otherwise a Kentucky boy that thinks the Cumberland has the best trout fishing east of the Wind River
I generally don’t like fishing with guides. Not because I’m cheap, though I am. Nor because most guides aren’t better fishermen than me. They usually are. But it’s hard for me to be one with the fish when I feel like I’m getting judged. And since I employ several unorthodox techniques which aren’t in the fly fishing rulebook but which catch lots of fish (a column for another time), I don’t care to justify them to an audience, when the only audience I care about is the one on the end of my line. Some people fish to be with other people. Some people fish to get away from them. I’m in the latter camp.
That said, the best fishing advice to newbies that I’ve ever heard came from a Bozeman fishing guide named Collin Brown. I was out in Montana, reporting a story in which I was fishing with Marines fresh off the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, who were suffering from physical injuries and PTSD. They were learning to fish through a most excellent organization, Warriors and Quiet Waters. (Any donations made to them will be the very best money you ever spend. Read all about our adventures here and judge for yourself.)
Before the Marines ever hit the water, they were taken to a field house at Montana State University for casting lessons. Here, Brown asked how many of them had ever seen A River Runs Through It. All nodded their heads eagerly. To which Brown said, “Good, forget everything you saw.” He went on to stipulate that a shadow-casting Brad Pitt looping 80 feet of line side to side without the fly ever touching water might look awfully pretty. But this is fishing, not rhythmic gymnastics. As exactly none of us had ever seen a fish launch from the water to take a fly a foot or so above it, you’re best off spending the bulk of your time keeping your fly on top of or in the water. Which you’re not doing by definition when you’re false casting.
For those who don’t fly fish, false casting is merely whipping the line back and forth without letting the fly touch water. It is not just used to look cool, like twirling one’s six-shooter before a gunfight. False casting is necessary and employed for practical reasons: to extend the distance of a cast, to dry one’s fly, or to change casting direction. It is also used to show off. Since false casting is both satisfying to the caster and matches the picture most readily identifiable with people’s postcard notions of fly fishing, many fisherpersons tend to do way too much of it.
You seem to be one of those. But to your credit, you admit it. The first step to redemption is acknowledging your sin. I’m all for breaking orthodoxy when called for. But some fly fishing commandments become commandments for a reason—because they are immutable truth handed down by God and the prophets. And chief among them is Thou Shalt Not Over-False Cast. Why? Nobody really knows what a fish is thinking, of course. They’re notoriously shy about giving interviews. But it stands to reason that if you’re going to spend an entire afternoon flogging the sky above a fish’s head, you might as well send a telegram to the fish announcing that you’re an osprey, come to bring its talons of death. As I tell my own sons when they fish with me, “If you want to take casting practice, we can stay in the back yard. But if you want to catch fish, quit spooking them with too many false casts.”
Fishermen, by nature, are obsessive people. So some habits are hard to break. If you still can’t stop yourself, there’s a few ways to solve the problem, or at least mitigate the damage. First, if you need to get some extraneous false casts in for superstition’s sake, like a batter who needs to knock his cleats three times apiece before stepping to the plate, direct them off to the side, away from your target water, before re-directing, shooting line, and completing. (To bring it back home to William Hurt.)
Second, keep a fish log. If fishing conditions/temps are going to stay relatively constant for a good stretch, fish for a week while false-casting to your heart’s content. Then record how many fish you catch. The next week, fish while eliminating unnecessary false casting, and see how many more fish you catch. This will help you self-sabotage less and to actually fish more.
Lastly, think about Kirk Deeter. Deeter covers fly fishing for Field & Stream, and nearly a decade ago, he conducted an interesting experiment. Posing as a six-foot-long cutthroat trout, Deeter donned scuba gear and swam with the fish of the South Platte River, observing them in real-time fishing situations. Chief among his observations was that too much false casting kills fishing. While the trout weren’t bothered in the least by “a big bubble blowing blob” so long as he moved slowly, a few false casts overhead sent fish scurrying for the bank, as fast as their fins would carry them.
So at the risk of sounding like a nerd (or worse, a staff writer at Vox), the data is in. Deny it only if you want to go fishless.
Dear Matt,
How do you feel about using strike indicators?
A.C.
You mean bobbers? (Fly fishermen, while forever singing the hymn of simplicity, love to make the simple complicated.) I don’t hold it against anyone for using them. The same as I try to be a good Christian and not hold it against anyone for using push-button Zebco reels, nightcrawlers, or Jolly Green Giant corn niblets. But I don’t use them anymore. When I became a man, I put away childish things. That’s in the Bible. You can Google it. Or you can Hotbot it if, like me, you’re forever about fifteen years behind.
Those of us who wield a fly rod as our weapon of choice don’t do so, necessarily, because it’s the most efficient way to fish. Often, it’s not. We do so because, next to hand-lining, it’s the most tactile way to fish. You have to stay in touch with your line, to tell what’s going on, so you tend to stay in closer touch with the fish, feeling every bump and flirtation. Strike indicators often make you lazy. If I wanted my gear to do the work for me, I could just pop a beer on the back of a boat and troll. I like beer, and I like boats. But no, I want to feel that fish, to watch the fly or the end of my flyline, and to be hyper-attuned to the take, the most exhilarating part of fishing. The entire reason fishing is as addictive as it is, is because if you want to be any good at it, it forces you to be present in and fully attentive to the moment.
Strike indicators tend to dull the senses. Using them can be like having sex while wearing two condoms. Wearing two condoms while having sex might still beat not having sex at all. But there are so few true pleasures in life. Best to maximize them where they can be found.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at [email protected] or click here.
