A Tug is a Tug is a Tug: A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

 

Gertrude Stein was speaking of flowers.  But, I also wonder if it really matters what kind of fish we catch? A thing is what it is.

We cast our flies on the water hoping for a bite. We wait for a tug. Does it really matter what tugs?

Recently I found myself throwing streamers in several warm water ponds inhabited with Bass. The bass ambushed the flies like sharks. The tugs were forceful, solid and full of life holding deep in mystery.  

A tug is a tug is a tug.

Fly Fishing and Social Media

Generally, in the social media world there is a tendency to present our lives as more positive than reality.  It is difficult to compete with all those happy smiling faces, and so we keep it positive.

This is also true of fishing. When it comes to fishing, there is lot of pressure to appear successful.  If you are a guide or someone who is somehow making money through the fly fishing industry then the pressure is even greater. We have to keep posting pictures of our catches.  No one wants to be a failure.  We all need to put on a smiling face. We need to look good. So, as a guide, caught up in this craze, I also often post pictures of fish and give positive fishing reports.

However, social media most often does not capture the reality of a day on the river (or a day in the life, for that matter). The pictures are “snap shots” or highlights of when I or my clients finally caught a fish. The pictures do not show or reveal the hours and hours of fishing when nothing happens except messy tangles and snags and when the fish refuse to take the fly. We wait and wait and sometimes we are bored out of our minds.

Sometimes social media snapshots of a family vacation can be the same way. The family poses for a photo on the beach and everyone looks happy. However this picture might reveal a mere split second when the kids were not fighting, crying about getting stung by a jellyfish,  dirty diapers, or the parents were not having a reoccurring argument.

Therefore for this fishing post I have no picture of a fish or of smiling faces, or a group photo showing  connections with family and friends.  Fishing on a river, or daily living, has large segments of absent fish, loneliness and frustrations. 

This is the reality of life.  This is no fish story. But I can say it is life.

Late Fall at Deckers: South Platte River

Some people are just humble. I do not know why but when I see it in someone I recognize and value the quality. Such was the case when I took Bill and Caleb; Grandfather and grandson, fly fishing on the South Platte River below Deckers. I can't say that the quality of humility always helps a person catch fish but this did seem to be the case with these two gentleman. We had a fine morning sight fishing to Rainbows and Browns lurking below the surface under the seam lines. 

Longing to Know on the Dream Stream

Some things are rare in life.  What are the chances of my client John and I arriving on the Dream Stream and fishing virtually alone?

And rarer still, what are the chances of two men at mid life (ok, I guess I am past midlife already), casting to the elusive large forms moving under the currents while we talk about the deeper longings of the heart? Can two men, two strangers, really talk about such longings of the soul?

What longings?  There is the longing to connect to the huge fish that seem to avoid and reject every offering we make.   But there is more; the longing to connect to the beauty all around us, to each other, to life;  To some “bigger” life and perspective that is beyond fish caught or political debates or the score of some football game.

There are many things but as fly fishers there is the longing to know why the giant fish rejects us time and time again and the hours slip away.  But then there is the longing to know why a particular fish in the next moment takes the fly and we are tight to a huge mysterious Brown.  And at times, those fish stay on, and find themselves in our net and our trembling hands. 

And then there are the things we do not know, and perhaps can never know.  Regardless, to John it was "the longing to know.”  Know what?  It varies for each of us. We all have our losses and want to know. John was  thinking of deeper currents. Why at times in life we find love, meaning and belonging, and at other times we lose it and cannot find it? How can we ever know and understand such catches and losses?

We caught some huge beautiful fish and we also lost some. We long to know. We long to know where and if we belong in this vast valley under a wide sky. And we long to return.

Dream Stream South Platte River

Dream Stream Rainbows Continue to Rise

Luckiest Man in the World: Fly Fishing With Hope

If with a friend I can twirl this rod around my head again and again;  Casting my fly through the wind; and catch nothing, or maybe Something,  or at least hope that a fish might suddenly tug on the line, all within this beautiful place,  who is not to say I am the luckiest man in the world?