Fly Fishing Experts: How to Catch More and Bigger Fish?

Not really.

We live in a society where we practically worship gurus. It’s not really their fault. We prop them up. We prop them up in many areas of life. I hear of them in fly fishing, sports, fitness and finance and education. I hear about them on how to live the spiritual life. I hear about them in regard to how to catch more and bigger fish.

 I wonder why we do this propping up and putting folks on stage.  It is almost as though we have a neurotic need for gurus. We sit in workshops and classes and in church pews taking notes and listening to their every word. I guess I have grown skeptical of it all.

In contrast to guru idolization, I love the message of a rather cynical poem by Charles Bukowski titled “The Secret”.  In the poem he assures us that no one is really all that special and magical.

“Nobody has the strange and hidden power, Nobody is exceptional or wonderful or magic, they only seem to be. It’s all a trick, an in, a con, don’t buy it, don’t believe it” 

Maybe this idolization of gurus is symptomatic of the “Sibling Society” we now live in as described by Robert Bly (Sibling Society, 1996 Bly). If we are a bunch of little immature kids all competing for recognition and immediate gratification then the idea of having gurus fits in nicely. We blindly welcome this idolization of gurus because we think they will give us the edge over the other squabbling siblings.

In fly fishing, we think that the guru will show us magically how to catch more or bigger fish all the time. Just like magic.

In the spiritual life there is always some guru offering some new way to always be happy or blessed or fulfilled or on how to live a victorious life.  

Bly also describes this sibling society as one that “participates in more and more nonevents”.  A guru announces that he is speaking on how to catch more trout or bigger trout and the masses show up. But most often, it is another ‘non event.’ Nothing new or magical is presented.

In the field of education I wish I had a dollar for every workshop, taught by some expert, that I had to sit through on some new way to teach. Maybe I could have retired a few years earlier.

Perhaps in the end this is what the fly fishing and the spiritual life have in common. There is no magic. No one really has it all figured out whether it be about life or fly fishing. The truth is that we really don’t know a whole lot.  And on any given day we can find ourselves stripped of everything and overwhelmingly stumped. Completely humbled.  Fishless. Spiritually, financially and emotionally bankrupted.

There are no gurus. There are no guides.  Not really. At least not in the way we most often think.

Bukowski concludes his poem with this final thought.

“There are no strong men, . . . at least you can die knowing this and you will have the only possible victory”.