Unexplainable Common Ground On the South Platte River

“Do you fold your pizza”,  my client Jerry asked me as he was trying to get a good drift with his tiny dry fly?  He had spent a good part of his life in N.Y.   I had just let him know that I grew up in New Jersey and how I sometimes missed good pizza. So we talked about thin crust N.Y style pizza in contrast to doughy pizza.

We immediately had common ground.

I found the question a bit humorous. Here we were with his son standing in the middle of the South Platte River in Eleven Mile Canyon, trico mayflies and BWO’s  were all over the river, and fish were rising everywhere.   We were trying to tackle one of the most artistic and technical aspects of fly fishing: The presentation of the dry fly; a delicate task that demands all of our engagement and skill.  And he asks me if I fold my pizza.

I thought of the questions many of my beginner clients of the past ask me during such a hatch. Questions such as;  “So, how long do these mayflies live”?   Or, “How do the fish see such small flies”?  Or, “How am I suppose to see the fly”. Or, “How can you even see that thing to tie it on”? Or, time and time again, I hear, “I drifted the fly right over the fish why did he ignore it”?

Just then his son Robert yelled up from down stream that he had another one on. And he did, a nice Brown that was peeling out line and heading downstream over boulders.

Some where in the middle of this discussion on pizza Jerry caught a nice fish on a black and white parachute trico, and then another and another. And Robert got several more. Somewhere in between netting fish,  we also found out that we shared a common faith.

More common ground:  We shared in the common experience of how to delicately lay a tiny dry fly over a trout with a down and across ‘reach mend” cast and watch the fish rise. Surely, this is one of the marvels of fly fishing and requires a hope that is not so explainable.

The marvel of catching a rainbow or brown trout on a tiny dry fly is one of those things that simply cannot be explained. It has to be experienced in the same way that a perfect slice of pizza has to be folded.

Finally, I just told Jerry, “Of course I fold my pizza”.  

Don’t ask me to explain.

Funny how some times the simple things bond us and makes me feel “back home” or perhaps already  in the “home to come.”