The Patriot Post® · The River of Peace Calls

With winter setting in on the Great Plains with a “Ha! You thought I was kidding didn’t you?” attitude, my thoughts always turn to warmer places as I resign myself to the fact that being warm and not risking frostbite with the simplest outdoor endeavor is months away.

I have tried to live my life embracing the words of the 15th-century Japanese poet Ikkyu, who wrote, “Learn to read the love letters sent by the wind and the rain, the snow and the moon.”

Fine words, but 30 below zero and 30 MPH of wind feels more like a “Dear John” letter.

So I have my memories. And, if my memories of warmer weather dalliances press in too hard on a bleak landscape, I have a truck in the garage with a full tank of gas with which to make my escape. In a closet are three different backpacks ready to be thrown in the back seat. They are provisioned with whatever I might need depending on which way the compass points.

There is not a fourth backpack because at this time of the year anything pointing any farther north is just an atrocious absurdity.

There are few things I can think of that are more peaceful than fly fishing. Perhaps an old dog getting up from warming her back at the fire after a full day’s hunt just so she can come over and put her gray muzzle on my arm for a little comfort. Aside from that, fly fishing for me checks all the boxes for meditative and peaceful.

How peaceful and meditative?

Once I entered my home river in Tennessee with a friend at 8 AM. We had agreed that we needed to be off the water at 4 PM. I’ve fished the majority of the trout rivers in the South and most of the well-known rivers in Montana, and when I say there are none more beautiful than my home waters of Tennessee, I am not exaggerating.

The fishing was excellent and the weather perfect — a bit of fog coming off the river and clear blue skies above the mountains towering around us. We were catching and releasing rainbow and brown trout on a very regular basis, and I briefly held and released a native iridescent brook trout before thinking with the eyes of a child that it might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

My friend always fished a bit faster than I did and was about 35 yards ahead of me. I was the meditative type on the water and he was the “What’s around the next bend?” type. It always balanced and worked for us.

Every time I glanced in his direction it seemed his rod was bent and line tight, so I knew he was having as much fun as I was.

I don’t wear a watch on the water as that, in my thought process, would be tantamount to putting an egg timer on the goalpost of my time to finish a seven-course meal.

I checked on my fishing companion a few perceived minutes later and he slashed a finger across his throat, the classic “We’re done” hand signal. There is no talking above the roar of this particular river, so I threw my arms up in the “What?” gesture. He pointed and tapped at his left wrist and began making his way to the bank.

We got to the truck and it was 4:15 PM.

I would have told you it was maybe noon, if that. We had been on the water eight hours and had covered about ¼ mile of a seven-mile productive section of the river and had caught and released scores of trout.

My friends, if you can find a pursuit that makes time stop any better than that, please introduce me.

The learning curve on fly fishing in moving water is steep. In heavy whitewater, it can be dauntingly steep. If you can throw a loop in a garden hose, I can teach you to cast with competency in a relatively short amount of time. But being productive is an entirely different matter.

It is best to hire an experienced guide and instructor that is familiar with his home water or with reading unfamiliar water if it is your first time. Use his equipment and knowledge.

Get or borrow a copy of Hemingway’s novella Big Two Hearted River to read for inspiration when you come off the water. I have a dog-eared first edition hardback that has lived in the pouch of my reel, spool, tippet, and hardware bag for over 30 years now.

I have fished with some of the true virtuosos of the sport, and without exception they have dedicated a large chunk of their lives to nothing but fly fishing as have I in the past. I never could truly call myself a starry-eyed, unshaven Trout Bum, but I was close and sure wanted to.

It is an equipment-intensive sport — rods, reels, lines, tippet, vests, nets, snippers, waders, pliers, flies, and fly boxes, with magnifying glasses on your hat that flip down so you can see to tie those tiny flies if you are anything above 10 years old…

What I just described is the beginner’s kit.

You will probably need a four-wheel-drive truck and a camper if you get real serious. You might need a marriage counselor if married … but, if your significant other happens to love the sport as much as you do, you will need nothing else in life except a good dog. And maybe a trust fund.

But here’s the thing about equipment — most fly-fishermen, when they truly get serious, acquire a blizzard of flies when all they really need are a few of the classic patterns in four or five different sizes and the knowledge and experience to present them so the trout sees dinner. The trout see dinner at the restaurants they hang out in, and once you learn to read water, those restaurants might as well have neon signs flashing above them.

Expensive rods and reels are bought when what the new fly-fisher really needs is more time on the water reading currents and learning insect hatches and feeding patterns of trout.

A $200 rod compared to a $1,500 rod won’t make you a $1,300 better fisherman. Only time on the water and intensive study and experience will do that. The $1,500 rod will make the fly-shop owner very happy. And I am guilty by experience. Years of experience. I love fly shops and am drawn to them like ants to a picnic. A favorite is Dan Bailey’s in Livingston, Montana, there since 1938.

About 25 years ago, I walked into a fly shop owned by a very good friend and dropped $500 on the counter for a gold anodized Abel fly reel with a drag system that would stop a runaway truck on the east side of Monteagle Mountain. So far it has stopped the run of a maybe three-pound brown trout … something I could have done by simply letting the line feed through my fingers.

The life lesson this has taught me is that experience is everything in virtually every pursuit.

Perhaps it’s the extremely technical nature of the sport that makes it so mind-clearing. If you are to be successful, there is no time to think of work, failed relationships, or any of the other demons in your life whose language you have never fully learned to speak so you can kindly and articulately tell them to go packing.

And there is the beauty. Trout only live in beautiful places with clean water. There is a distinct smell to a whitewater river. Intoxicating even. It is a mixture of atomized water particles carrying microscopic spores of earth, ferns, decaying logs, and vegetation.

If the Pointillist Art Movement could have created a smell, this would be it.

If truly interested, don’t let any perceived snobbery about the sport deter you. It is not meant that way, just meant to bring a bit of truth and reality into a pursuit that some initially find extremely frustrating. If you get past that point, you will find it extremely artistic and peaceful and meditative.

I would wish that for everyone.

If you decide to pursue it, trust me — it is far less expensive than therapy and produces better results and will find you standing amongst the world’s most beautiful and pure locations.

Right now I’m going to sort some gear and throw a pack in the truck. And probably stop at Dan Bailey’s.

Every so often it’s good to rid yourself of the baggage you have carried throughout the year in part to see if it was ever worth carrying to begin with.

The River of Peace is calling.