. . . It can be dead silent on that mountain, quiet enough to remember a place in time with no interruptions, a day that started in a bustling, wide valley and finished in stillness on top of a mountain.
. . . . . . The guitar amp, the voices, the conversations, the laughing and arguing, the engine noise and the truck’s rattles, the NPR opinion and the crackly speakers — it’s all gone. And it’ll stay gone for as long as I’m here on the mountaintop. This is real silence.
. . . There’s a segment of fly anglers who will never see streamers, nymphs or wet flies as a legitimate offering. That’s fine. Keep it to yourself.
There’s another segment of fly fishers who believe trophy hunting for big browns with big streamers is the only way to live out there. And everything else might as well be tweed hats and waxed catgut. That’s fine too. Keep it to yourself.
The majority of us are fishermen, just having fun, trying to catch a fish and then catch another one . . .
Accomplished and skilled fly fishing requires that you give part of your life to the river. That’s evident in the first few trips, and I think the depth of all this surprises would-be anglers. It intimidates some, and it captivates others . . .
I don’t know another time when I approached a slot with so much confidence. Better. Slower. This was it. At the end of the fishless drift, my certainly wasn’t questioned, it was simply re-informed. “Need more weight,” I said. It was an unforgettable, prove-it kind of moment . . .
An account of our last and favorite day in Patagonia . . . We walked the banks and waded through it all — a new slate for memories, a new proving ground for tactics.
Nothing opens the aperture of life better than time away from your daily routine. Vacations are an intermission between acts, providing time to stretch your legs, consider what you’ve seen and prepare for what’s to come.
. . . This past week in saltwater provided that intermission and granted me perspective at just the right time.
Every angler draws their own lines for what fly fishing is. And this episode is not just for talking through what fly fishing might be and where each of us might draw the lines. Instead, we’d like to acknowledge the absurdity of the lines themselves — the decisions we make about what is fly fishing and what is not . . .
How many times have I assumed that no trout would eat, when all I needed was a different target? How many trout did I pass earlier this morning because I was complacent about my drifts? “Good enough” was my mindset. “Close enough” were my terms, but the trout were on a different page . . .
And then . . . the line . . . broke. Silence filled the valley when echoes of his exasperation finished the chorus.
The fisherman’s hands were wet and shaking as he doubled over. He surrendered to the surface fog and knelt from the heavy punch to his gut.
I watched Smith walk toward the access, toward home, toward the rest of life — into the lights, into the warmth, into the friendships. I stayed with the river and remained alone — pensive in the rain, resolute in the wind . . .
I was resigned to the plan but having a hard time watching it fail.
Why was my confidence so easily shaken? Because a river that was once the most predictable of any that I fish has now become the opposite. It’s a confounding mystery that I keep coming back to, wishing to solve. And I know that with enough time, with an open mind and by running the right experiments, I’ll find the answers . . .