Clarity Through Purpose

Electric green borders the ribbon of flowing hope as it makes its run through humid farm country.  Water wrests through a boulder garden, presenting bubble lines and eddies to the fisherman's eye.  Dappled sun and bugs and the urgent pull of flowing water, all the things that call the fish hunter, converge to create a sense of urgency.  Want and need conspire to quicken things into a hasty, calamitous effort.  A center must be found; a balance between rushing to folly and the knowledge that often, one well-delivered cast will produce more than a series of ill-planned, poorly executed efforts.

I know there are fish in the pillow water guarded by upstream slab limestone or veiled in the muted recesses of the undercut bank, though they do not yet know I have arrived.

There's never a fish peeping out when you jam the camera under a cut bank.

 It will take time and effort to get to them.  It will take experience and knowledge converging to form a plan much like the seams of current and foam.  Decisions need to be made and actions need to be taken to wrangle these fish to hand.  Flailing and stomping about like I've upset a beehive simply won't do.  I must approach quietly, my casts and mends must be true.  Done well, it requires clarity and focus, and can be downright beautiful.  At least when other people do it.

This pause before the action may be the singular defining moment of fly fishing for me.  The fish are exquisite, of course.  I chase smallmouth bass predominately, and when I finally fight a muscled olive tank from coursing water, his burning red eye leaving no doubt that he would continue to fight me above water had he feet or fists, I am dancing as the feet of my Lord, as they say.  But that's all adrenaline and smiles, fist pumping and hooting like a fool.  The pictures are being composed and the backs are being slapped, and it all vanishes so quickly.

The quiet, treasured secret comes in the time before all hell breaks loose, before you're trying to run down the bank to avoid a snag or just holding on and praying.  It's the clarity of purpose.  More precisely, the clarity through purpose.  You're there to catch a fish, all your practice and experience has brought about a confidence and a purity of thought that lets you make a thousand little decisions, and execute them in nearly the blink of an eye.  Autopilot in the best sense of the term, it's a state that comes about precious few other times in life.

While we've set the apex of angling on the catching of that one perfect fish (it is that one thought that keeps most of us going back, after all), there are no real ramifications associated with not doing so.  The goal is there in all its lauded enchantment, but nobody is going to starve, the universe will not cease to expand, if we fail to achieve.  So even with all the pressure and anxiety we place upon ourselves, it's just a damn fish.  There's a joy of freedom in that too.  Take a breath, set your feet, and let 'er rip.

It has taken years and many fish, but I more often look forward to the intensity of the hunt and the purity that it brings now.  The foreplay.  That moment when it all comes together and you somehow know, you can be certain, that a fish will soon come.  You cover water, you cast and wade, until, all at once, through some magic of proprioception and memory, you just know it's going to come together.  The cast unfurls before you, and you can almost see it before it happens.  The fish will be there.

Whether it is simply a trick of the mind that we forget all the times it doesn't happen, or we can actually acquire enough touch, enough clarity, to actually see a memory nanoseconds before it happens, I do not know.

I was a musician in a former life, a horn player with a group that continues to perform on a national stage in front of tens of thousands of fans every year.  It was there, playing with those guys, that I first experienced this pure clarity and righteous confidence that comes with tiny moments of flirting with perfection.  As long as we loved what we were doing, as long as we trusted each other implicitly, that moment would come when the tunnel vision set in, when everything else disappeared and the autopilot kicked in, and there was but one goal to strive for in life.  Deep in the groove.

That moment comes for me in fishing streams and small rivers now.  The relationship between angler and fish has replaced that of the one between musicians and fans.  When it all comes together, when that moment comes and you can feel the fish rising out of the darkness, there is little more pure.

 

First Cast

A pickup truck rolls to a gentle halt in the gravel along the river's edge, sending a faint cloud of dust wafting ahead.  The driver, stiff from miles of mind-numbing driving, exits slowly and stretches.  As always, his first move -- it's instinctual now -- before getting his gear out of the back, before applying sunscreen and bug dope, is to go to the river.  It appears both the same as always to him, and different, as rivers do.

"You can never step into the same river twice," he thinks as he walks the bank.  Who said that?  Some old Greek dude, most likely.  The thought evaporates as he begins to dissect all a river presents to a fisherman's eye.  Currents and eddies, boulders and seams, riffles and runs.  His mind jumps to calculating possibilities, to searching out the likely haunts of his quarry.  Water levels, weather, seasonal changes, and the availability of prey all play major roles in where the fish will be, among many other things fishermen have yet to divine, and he quickly remembers that most often, you just have to shut up and fish.

He moves slowly but with purpose, polarized sunglasses and the bill of a cap snugged down tight allow him to gaze just a little more effectively into the secrets the flowing water holds.  He stoops as he walks, almost imperceptibly, to let his hands flow through the tall grass. Young nettles sting his down-turned palms, but not as fiercely as they will later in the year.  This is the first trip of the season, and he wants to savor it.  Even the nettles are welcome.

Back up at the truck, it's time to don the armor.  Like the proper music supporting the mood or the perfect wine complimenting a meal, the waders and fanny packs, vests and boots are not strictly essential to wading or catching fish, but the act of having them there, putting them on, cements the proper mindset.  It's a ritual of anticipation, the deep breath before the meal.

He slops on the viscous sunscreen, plainly hating this part, cursing Nordic heritage and the burn that will follow if he doesn't apply.  He remembers through a grim rictus the time as a kid he burned so badly there were blisters on his small shoulders, how they looked vaguely like the surface of a golf ball, and how they screamed at him when he tried to sleep.  It's distasteful to him, smearing on the sticky goo, but necessary to get him where he wants to be at the end of the night.  Like dancing at a wedding reception.

He pulls on the stained waders, unwieldy buckles and straps, neoprene welds and crinkly breathable fabric.  As wonderful as modern waders are, the boys over in the wader lab can't ever get rid of that signature smell; part vinyl, part gym bag, part river must.  Even stored hung and dry for an entire winter, the aroma remains, a testament to hours spent in the water and under the summer sun.  Others would be repulsed by the olfactory affront, but he has come to associate it with time on the water, and inhales it willingly.    

Dressed and ready, he removes the four-piece rod from its battered cylindrical case, and with care, assembles the it once again into a functional fishing tool, equally capable of producing long elegant casts and frustrating disastrous ones.  The drag sings as he pulls lengths of line from the reel.  He fumbles once while lining the rod, and it all runs back through the guides, falling in a pile on the gravel.  Rusty from the long cold winter, he shakes off the blunder and tries again.  This time his fingers manage the slick fly line through all the guides and out the tip.  A tippet is tied to leader using a complex knot that used to give him fits, but now comes with the ease known to well-practiced fingers.

The ever-present fishing companion, a Red-winged Blackbird distracts from the task at hand with his abrupt, trilling call.  Conk-la-ree!  Conk-la-ree!  But now, after all those long hours at the tying bench while late winter and young spring conspired to bury any thought of this moment coming, it has arrived.  A fly must be chosen, a sweat begins to run.

As is his way, there are spread before him, in his chest pack and on the tailgate, in spare gear bags and as flotsam in the sea of equipment, entirely too many fly boxes at his disposal.  He enjoys tying flies as much as fishing them, so they grow in population until the fly boxes stack like tiny fly apartments in a downtown high-rise.  The number and volume of choices are almost too much to comprehend, so he chooses a few boxes of likely candidates, and banishes the rest of the boxes to quarantine in the wader duffel.  Out of sight, out of mind.  He lingers, his eyes alternately looking down to the river, and back to the open boxes.

It's too early in the year to fish big ugly topwaters, the water too chilly, the fish too sluggish according to conventional wisdom, but he can't be helped.  Out of love for the flies more than their expected effectiveness today, he decides on a garish deer hair diver.  It's poor choice for the day, and he knows it, but grins as he thinks it will be fun to fish anyway.  The blurp... blurp... blurp... as he strips it across the surface of a likely pool and the trail of bubbles skating away to forever, it's all so addicting.  "Just for a little while," he tells himself.  And if an especially spry fish does decide to murder it, well, that will just be a story worthy of calling the boys about on the drive home.  The now-pointless tippet is clipped off, and the fly is tied on almost as an afterthought.

He moves down to the river now, a plan in his mind, and unceremoniously steps in, thankful that he slid down the steep muddy bank without crashing to the ground.  Nobody talks about falling on your ass in the erudite and trendy world of flashy internet fly fishing these days, but it happens.  Not this time, but it has and it will again.

The weight of the water snugs the fabric of waders around his legs.  It's a strange feeling, a hug from an old friend juxtaposed with the faintest hint of a threat.  His feet cautiously probe the bed of the river, wary of hidden obstacles and soft bottom as he wades to his intended casting point.  Just because it was good bottom here last year, doesn't mean you can or should go striding across with nary a care.  Rivers change, and they love to surprise you.

Water tumbles over and around a mid-stream rock up ahead, chattering and foaming just a little.  Calling to him.  He knows there will be a deep hole on the downstream side of the rock, the river bottom scooped away by centuries of hydraulic action.  It's a likely home for his target, lying in wait in the pillow of slow water for a meal to happen by.  He curses himself for not tying on a deep minnow imitation to get down to that fish, but doesn't really mean it, surrendering to the joy of simply being there.

He wants to laugh out loud now, realizing in a moment of distracted clarity that he's firmly in the grip of this thing, but he he doesn't dare make a sound.  Predator mode.  He tries to set his feet quietly in the unruly cobble beneath them, waggling like a golfer getting ready to swing.  He breaths and calculates without realizing it's happening.  The internal computer born of experience and practice takes over, judging how far and how fast, where to aim against the wind and current, if a mend will be needed in the air or on the water.

A quick glance behind him to check clearance on the backcast forces his eyes skyward, and he is momentarily struck by gratitude for all his many teachers and the life that has led him to this point, ugly and beautiful as it has been.  His hands fall to familiar patterns as line is stripped from the reel and the dance of the double haul fly cast begins.

The rod tip passes back and forth through the pattern of the arc in space, power and glide, stop and start, as the line slides through his off-hand and out over the river.  There is that spray of water that always happens as the line whips through the stripping guide, and the sound of the lubricated fly line running out past the rod.

Then it happens -- the first cast of the year.  With one final strip of the off-hand the rod is extended and stopped.  The fly line, leader, and fly unfurl before him, a cast laid out in the air, all hope and conviction in a singular line to his goal.

The fly lands.

 

And Darkness Fell

A sniper mission, alone in the cold and dark.  No back up, no buddy, just a hunter and his tools under the stars.

I'll shuffle out of the bunk at 3am tomorrow morning, and rub the sleep from my eyes.  Donning camouflage that has been cleansed of human scent, I'll make my way through the night to match wits with the ever-cautious and intelligent coyote, my headlamp filtered red to safeguard my night vision and position.

There's an intensity to it that you cannot find in any other type of hunting in this part of the world.  Calling a predator in, with those fangs and sinister eyes, that demeanor of a killer, will make your hair stand up a little and make sure the ticker is in good working order.

I'm no expert coyote hunter, but I sure enjoy getting out there.  I like it because it is often a cold and solitary endeavor for me.  A test.  Can I force myself to get up and out in the dark, minimize my presence, and convince a wild carnivore that I'm a delectable morsel of bunny or mouse?  I like it because I see so few others doing it.  Anytime I can feel I'm just a bit on the fringe is fine by me.  Mostly, I like being out in the dark.

Darkness changes everything.  I've deer hunted out of the same tree stand location for two seasons now.  That walk in to it in the dark is still a little adventure every time.  I don't use flagging tape or reflectors because I can simply walk along the creek, but not being able to see more than a dozen feet adds a bit of mystery.  Things go bump in the night.  Your sense of direction can go a little sideways when creeping your way slowly through dense understory.  There is a quick moment when just a tiny creeping doubt sets in.  I'm never going to get lost walking in to that stand, it's easy enough that if I ever did I could never show my face in camp again, but that quick second of indecision in the dark still happens sometimes.  It's a welcome rush.

Distances grow in the dark.  It's easy to estimate where you are and how far you've come when the sun is out and the world is alive.  At night, with few visual clues, the trail can stretch and meander in ways you didn't think possible.  Familiar stumps suddenly take on the form of bears.  The stream that is supposed to be right here isn't.  Unnoticed initially, the wind sweeps around the compass, suddenly convincing you that you're walking in the exact wrong direction.  It all takes more patience and steadiness to get through than walking in the light, which is exactly why it is often more fun and rewarding.

Wade fishing a stream at high noon can be tenuous at times.  Moving water obscures deep holes, rocks and boulders lurk unseen, waiting for that one misplaced step.  Currents slink and flow in seeming harmony, lulling you into false confidence until they are suddenly tearing at your legs.  Now do it with a blindfold on.  The topwater fishing can be downright outstanding, but again, fortitude plays a role in dealing with falls and tangles in the dark.  One thing remains the same, however.  When the fall does come, and it will, get that rod up in the air.  A broken tailbone heals, absurdly spendy mangled graphite does not.  I know.  While sitting on an inflatable doughnut for a few weeks can be demeaning, replacing a fly rod is worse. 

The exact same stretch of water, a beckoning beauty in the daylight, becomes a dangerous, if intoxicating, mistress when the sun goes down.

Paradise

Perdition

Night has been driven from our lives for the most part.  A lot of us sometimes forget that at home or in town.  The sun goes down, street lights come on, and we carry on our merry way.  Traffic and signage, nightlights and the warm glow of the TV, all lead us down a path to thinking that night is simply a continuation of day.  Not too long ago people didn't live like that.  Daylight broke, we labored away to scratch out an existence on the land, the sun went down, and we retired to our sod house or teepee or log cabin to sleep the sleep of the dead. 

When I find myself out in the wilds at night I make it a point to enjoy the things I can't see or hear in my illuminated nighttime life most of the time.  A novice camper or night fisher is often taken aback, mouth hanging agog, at the number of stars that are up there once you get out from under the quilt of mercury vapor lamps.  Add the chorus of crickets often hidden by traffic noise or the ephemeral drapery of the northern lights, and the city dweller will often become suddenly still.  Mesmerized and quiet for the first time in too long.  Spellbound.  I'm a little jealous of that, and try to remember to force myself to take in the beauty, even when I've seen it before or I'm on a mission.

I will be on a mission tomorrow morning.  I will creep through the darkness.  I will melt into the landscape, and let hunter become prey.  And I will take in the subdued beauty of it all.

JuJu, Rhinoceros, Apophenia

"Good Luck.  Be Safe!"

I've had those two short sentences said or written to me maybe a dozen times this week.  Deer camp is coming, and those are the prevailing sentiments.  Good luck getting a deer, but more than that, please come back home with all your parts attached and in working order.

Relative safety is achieved without too much trouble.  I hunt in an area without a lot of other hunters, I'm using a better safety harness in my tree stand this year, and I trust the men I hunt with implicitly.  Most of the fatalities associated with hunting occur when hunters fall out of their tree stands, or suffer some sort of heart problem anyway.  Either when Bullwinkle walks out in front of them or when they are attempting to drag a  deer out of the woods.  Shooting accidents do happen, but they are much less common than a chunk of bacon getting snagged up in a ventricle.  I have been much more frightened for my personal safety driving down the interstate than I ever have doing any type of hunting.

Luck is an entirely different matter.  We don't even know what it really is or if it exists.  In our struggle to define it, we assign random values, willy-nilly, to random occurrences until such time as we can link a certain outcome with a certain occurrence.  It's all very slipshod, but that doesn't prevent us from spending massive amounts of mental energy on it.  I'm sure it varies from person to person, but I think most of us have our own little rituals or talismans that we secretly believe help achieve a given goal.

I have a little pewter rhinoceros on my key chain.  It must be moved to the zipper of my hunting coat at the start of the gun deer season or I will surely go the entire year without so much as catching a glimpse of a deer.  I shot my first buck two days after I'd clipped that little guy to my coat, and now I have greatly diminished confidence if I do happen to forget him on my key ring back in camp.  God forbid I ever lose him.  I'd have to quit deer hunting.

There is a shirt that I prefer to wear under my vest while wading in summer.  I'm not going to go as far as calling it a must-have lucky shirt, but I certainly prefer to wear it.  If fits me well, wicks away moisture, and matches the trim on my favorite Fishpond vest, if nothing else.  It's important to look good on the stream -- never know when you might run into a mermaid.  If it doesn't bring actual luck, it definitely brings ease and comfort, two qualities in high demand when my notoriously sketchy fly casting starts to go sideways on me once again.

Just like mise en place in the kitchen, I think our little superstitious ticks help bring order to a world that can quickly ramp up to a Category 5 shitstorm if we enter into it ill prepared or disorganized.  Having everything in its place, including little trinkets, not only boosts confidence, but helps us to be more productive and level headed when it's time to rock-n-roll.

Apophenia is defined as perceiving connections in unrelated phenomena.  Or seeing meaningful patterns where none exist   This is where hunters and fishermen truly shine.  We see connections everywhere that may or may not be related.  Ask any fisherman why the fish are biting better (or not as well) today, and you'll get almost as many opinions as there are fish in the sea.  Everything from barometric pressure to sun spots, water temperature to wind direction, moon phase to static electricity -- all have them, and many more, have been thrust to the forefront as the cause of victory or defeat on any day in question.  I have literally stood slack-jawed in front of some of this armchair science, while at the same time, having absolutely no way to refute it.

Of course there are professionals, guides and commercial fishermen, tournament anglers and avid locals, who seem to have an uncanny ability to read their home water.  They've been fishing the same water for years, and have gained a sixth sense for how the lake "feels" today.  I realize this happens all the time.  The accumulation of vast amounts of data stored in an experts mind can result in pronouncements and catches that seem to border on the mystical.  But that's all it is, trial and error refined by experience.  The "10,000 Hour Rule" espoused by Malcolm Gladwell fits well here -- true expertise in any field comes from performing any task for roughly 10,000 hours.  I'm gonna need some aspirin and my tennis elbow arm band thingy after that much casting. 

It was once a common belief that Northern Pike lost their teeth in winter because they became more difficult to catch, and therefore, must have stopped eating until spring when their slightly frightening chompers would reappear for another summer of terrorizing perch.  We now know this to be patently false, but it was asserted as truth for decades.

Hunters are the same way.  We stand around tailgates and campfires trying make sense of what we have seen.  Deer trails go cold, birds seemingly disappear, coyotes stop responding, and we are forced, by our nature, to attempt to make sense of it all.  They stopped feeding, or it got too cold, or too hot.  Whatever.  We grasp at any shred of evidence, and stomp it to gelatinous goo until it oozes down into the cracks of our reasoning like mortar.  Not that it's an entirely bad practice.  Often, we do stumble on a bit of key information by simply hashing stuff out with each other.  Brainstorming over pickled eggs and beer can produce results other than the gaseous emission kind. 

To any of you fellow deer hunters who may stumble upon this before heading out into the fields and woods this weekend I say, good luck and be safe!  And don't forget your lucky socks.