Gone Fishing

I’m going fly fishing next week. My friend Jerry is taking me to his favorite stream in Colorado.

I don’t have time for this. There are deadlines for the book, one of our rentals is empty and I have a construction project that is behind schedule.

But I’m going anyway. Because, ever since I was a young boy fishing with salmon eggs for the small rainbows around Red River, New Mexico, I’ve wanted to fly fish. I’d watch my dad standing midstream in his waders, making those effortless back and forth casts, for which the genre is known.

If my rod were a harmonica, his was a violin, playing with a grace and art unattainable to bait fishing.

And I’m going because, a few years ago, I watched “A River Runs Through It.”

Need I say more?

I’m practicing my casts this week. So far it’s not looking good.

***
“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through it and Other Stories