Saturated Waters

One of the most difficult kinds of fly fishers to guide is the one who knows just enough to not know that he does not know. This is the fly fisher who has spent some time dining in the saturated theoretical informational waters of fly fishing.  This is the fly fisher who has read various fly fishing texts,  books, on line blogs and taken fly casting lessons and perhaps various other classes ranging from “Entomology” to, ‘How to read the water’, and, of course has seen, “A River Runs Through It”. But often this fly fisher can be one who has lacked time alone on the river to figure out things for himself. He only does what he has “been told”. In this essay I am going try  to draw a parallel between the fly fisher who lives in the saturated waters of having easy access to all kinds of fly fishing information and the Christian who lives in the supersaturated culture of ‘easy religion’ and also has access to all kinds of information about the divine and the Christian life. .  

Ironically, I think one of the biggest obstacles to genuine spiritual growth in the modern Christian church is that we live in saturated spiritual waters. We have such easy access to Church services (both live and on the “big screen”), Bible studies, fellowship groups, prayer groups,  CD’s, books, programs, and on-line Christian blogs, facebook, emails, that a person can easily over saturate their lives with “spirituality” and all kinds of teachings  and yet miss out on true spiritual “meat” that causes real growth. In essence, this is the Christian who is never alone, “naked” before the divine.

In such a culture of saturated spiritual waters, it is very easy to NEVER be alone to think and feel for oneself. It is very easy to never have to deal with one’s own true thirst and hunger because it is so easy to be over saturated and falsely satisfied.  It is easy to just become part of the “mass culture”,  even the “Christian” culture; something Jesus never did because the spirit of Christ was abundantly counter cultural. The spirit of Christ is still countercultural today but often we are not aware, because we have become a part of the mass Christian culture ourselves. We can’t see because we are too close to it.  

What do you do if you are a believer who lives in these saturated waters and who partakes in these various Christian activities and yet most of the time you find yourself bored, unmoved, unfed, and thirsty. Or worse still, what do you do if you find so much of the rhetoric to simply not be true or at the very least irrelevant to the deeper issues in your own heart.  In such super saturated waters it is difficult to discern what is good for your soul and to know what is true. I advocate that perhaps the best thing one can do is pull oneself away from it all and go sit alone to pray and ponder things.  

When we live in such saturated waters it is difficult to even be alone to pray. I have become convinced that until the Christian church learns to be quiet in prayer, alone, and to empty oneself of all the “teachings” about God  that we have conformed to that we will remain  spiritual immature. How often have I heard in church such lofty prayers (sometimes they are like a grand performance) filled with so many words. And as church members we often are expected to just adopt this prayer as our own and how this person views God and how God works. We almost have to conform to it.

 Jesus had some different things to say about prayer.  Jesus specifically said that when you pray to not pray in public but to go in one’s room and pray in secret. He said we should not go on and on and babble to be heard by men.  He also said that when we pray to be heard by men that we have received our reward in full. In other words, whatever we get out of praying these lofty prayers in public that…that is our reward. That’s it!  That is all we get!  This is a legal phrase and means that we have received our reward in full.  It is a done deal in the same way that when a court awards compensation to one party, that no more compensation shall be given in the future.   

I think the Christian church is at a time and place where if we are going find something authentic in prayer we will have to “unsaturate” ourselves of much of what we have been taught and test what remains.  In the midst of prayer, we will have to empty ourselves. We will have to empty ourselves of all the thoughts, concepts, metaphors we have about who we think God is and who we want God to be and all the things we have read and heard.  We have to pull back our projections. We have to acknowledge the limits of language. We have to be silent. We have to be still.  We have to let go of the idols we have collected in our supersaturated Christian culture. The most deceptive and difficult idols to let go of are the ones that are highly valued in the mainstream Christian culture. These are the most deceptive idols to let go of. Rilke the poet describes our images of the divine this way, “We heap our images of You upon you until they stand around you like a thousand walls”.

It is well known that one of the most misused scriptures in the Bible that is taken out of context is found in Revelations chapter three verse 20. “I stand at the door of your heart and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and He with me”.  This verse has often been used in “alter calls” to those who do not believe and yet the verse is actually written to a church of believers. What could this mean to us who live in supersaturated Christian culture? The answer might be found in the verses just preceding this verse. “Because you say, ‘I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing, you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked”. Could these verses not be applied to our modern Christian churches? Maybe this is what happens when without discretion we dine in a supersaturated Christian culture. Perhaps it like eating nothing but cotton candy; all fluff but no substance and we remain immature parroting the “party line”. Perhaps this verse is a call for believers to use discretion and heed the call to feed on true spiritual meat. Perhaps it is a call to empty our selves of our “wealth”; to empty ourselves of all we have acquired in terms of concept and thought about God. Perhaps we need to remember and know that when we let go of our Christian idols and all our clichés about God, that we then realize how “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked”, we really are. (V.17)

And then, perhaps we need to sit alone and feel our nakedness and poverty and start all over. This is exactly what I have to sometimes do when I teach others how to fly fish. I just have to start all over and undo what has been done.  

If you would like to dialogue with me about this essay please email me at suragea1@aol.com

Waiting Without Hope

 

The inexperienced fly fisher in his eagerness, wishful thinking and determination to catch a fish may misinterpret events.  I have seen fly fishers “fight a snag” thinking it was a fish and then when the hook finally pulls free of the rock, he still might persist with his belief saying, “Ah, he got away”.  An impatient fly fisher while nymphing may set the hook at false strikes and mess up the natural drift for a “real” fish that may have been considering taking the fly.  Or when dry fly fishing he may see a fish rise and he wrongly assumes the fish was rising to his fly and he sets the hook only to spook the other fish that may have been looking at his artificial fly.  Each time he may yell, “Ah, I missed it”, when in reality there was no fish on his fly. Or, worse yet, he might set the hook with so much  enthusiasm  that he breaks the leader or the whole leader flies out of the river and wraps around the rod resulting in a ‘birds nest’ mess.  Such mistakes are common to the inexperienced. When I guide such folks, I have to love their enthusiasm and even their ignorance. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ even if it is a bit delusional and they often make a mess of things.

In contrast, mature, experienced fly fishers have the patience and art to allow the fly to drift naturally without false striking.  They are less prone to having false hopes. They know how to discern between snags and fish. They are able to stay attune to the drift of the fly, patiently waiting it out, waiting for that precise moment when a fish truly takes the fly. They have poise. They try not to allow “the wrong thing” distract them or give them false hope. They are not easily fooled. The mature angler knows how to read the signs and distinguish false signs. They do not overly react. They react perfectly. In essence, they know the discipline and art of fly fishing and have learned to wait with authentic hope.   

Perhaps a parallel can be made between the tendencies of beginner fly fishers and immature Christians of the church.  They both have impatience and have a tendency to misinterpret events. They both tend to want drama to the real thing. Being an enthusiastic, impatient, wishful thinker and even a bit delusional in fly fishing is one thing but when it comes to our spiritual lives such wishful thinking can  keep the individual (and church communities)  in a state of spiritual immaturity.  And instead of just ending up with spooked fish and a mess of tangled leader we have Christians making a mess of how they try to communicate their “divine experience” to a skeptical world.  The writer to the book of Hebrews states, “Spiritual meat is for the mature who through practice have their senses trained to discern good from evil”. The mature Christian as well as the mature fly fisher has discernment and this discernment marks their maturity.

Both immature groups, the inexperienced fly fisher and the immature Christian, do not have the art. And as Dante said, “Far worse than in vain is he who leaves the shore and fishes for the truth but has not the art”. In essence, such a person who does not have the art does not do this merely in vain. In other words, the result is not just some useless thing. It is far worse. He makes a mess of things both in fly fishing and in his spiritual life. The immature would be better off not ‘leaving the shore.’ He would be better off learning to wait…..and to wait… and to wait.  Do nothing but wait. But the immature are not good at waiting, both in the church or on the river.  

The human ego, greedy for experience, both in the physical realm (in this case, fly fishing), and the spiritual realm (the immature Christian demanding to experience the divine)  has a tendency to impatiently grab at false hopes and grab for the wrong thing. The fly fisher wants so badly to feel a fish pull and the Christian wants so badly to feel the divine. The words grabbing or snatching seem appropriate to describe this tendency accurately. In both cases, it takes the mature authentic individual who can wait in hopelessness and learns to value the waiting in and of it self. The mature individual knows there are no guarantees of either experience. The fly fisher learns to remain focused on the natural drift of the fly and disciplines himself to not allow anything to disturb that focus. He waits and waits for the right moment and only the right moment.  The mature Christian in prayer like wise remains in silence and focused on the flow of things; the flow of all thoughts, expectations, and anxieties down the river as he empties himself,  waiting for the divine moment;  the narrow gate where God might enter.  

T.S. Eliot had something to say about waiting and not being deceived or distracted by the “wrong thing”. He said, “I said to my soul, be still and wait, wait without hope for hope would be hope of the wrong thing. I said wait without love for love would be love of the wrong thing. Wait without love for love would be love of the wrong thing; Yet there is faith but the faith, the hope and the love are all in the waiting.”

It seems to me that both the immature fly fisher and immature Christian can impatiently hope for the wrong thing. And yet they do not know it is the wrong thing. They have not learned,  (because they have not been taught) the art of waiting. Waiting in both cases is a holding out for the real thing, In a sense, the mature is one who refuses to settle for anything but the truth. He waits for an authentic experience even if that experience is felt as silence and nothingness. He delights in only a pure event. As Donald Nicholl said, “Delight in the truth. Truth tastes better with each illusion that evaporates.”  This process of negation is an old tradition called the via negativa. It holds to the idea that God can perhaps be known, only by first learning to discern about what He is not.  The individual engaged in this process in a sense says, “No, this is not it, No, this is not it,” again and again. He waits and he waits. He has discretion and he is anything but negative. On the contrary, he is of  a “honest and pure heart”.

In this silence of waiting all wishful thinking fades. Only a true faith persistently remains in spite of what is not experienced.   And sometimes out of seemingly no where, a fish takes the fly.

If you would like to dialogue with me on the contents of this essay or any other essay on this blog you can write me at  suragea1@aol.com

Fish Stories On the River and In Church

“Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes”  Don Marques

I notice when I go fishing with friends or guides and we split up and then come back to talk about how well we did things can get distorted rather quickly. There is pressure to make sure one looks as good as the other guys. So, two fish becomes 5 fish, a fish of 16 inches becomes  20 inches, fish momentarily hooked become landed fish, and the one that got away was at least 2 feet long,  And so on. I think we have all done this and told fish stories or at least told exaggerations of the truth. Maybe such exaggerations are harmless and just a part of the fishing experience. However, at the very least we have to acknowledge the distortion of reality that takes place as we are left wondering what each person truly caught and experienced. In essence, we don’t know the truth.

Human nature being what it is, I have become convinced that a similar phenomenon can occur in the Christian church as individuals claim to stories of experiencing the divine. There is pressure to look as spiritual as everyone else. So, if someone tells a story about how God answered a prayer or about how God caused something to happen, then there is a natural reaction in the listeners to try to match the story. And if those listening don’t really have a story that measures up then the exaggerations begin. I think there can be enough pressure to cause people to flat out make up things or at least distort things. When Christians get caught up in giving “testimony” it seems that no one is ever supposed to question the validity of the claims made. Discernment is not allowed otherwise one might be perceived as being “negative” or not being “spiritual”.  This is unfortunate because the discerning individual rather than being judged as being cynical and lacking faith can actually be the person of great faith and one who is holding onto an authentic image of the divine.     

I am no longer shocked or appalled by the possibility of Christians distorting the truth and losing discernment. It happened at the early church of Corinth. Each member was trying to ‘out do’ the other and things ended up rather chaotic and immature. My guess is that this sort of thing still goes on in many church fellowship groups just as men will commonly tell fish stories on rivers.   

A big part of the problem is that I think we have a limited understanding of how God can be experienced.   We hope that God is there with us every step of the way, always speaking to us and taking care of us, comforting us and making us aware of his presence in our lives. There is nothing wrong with this desire. The problems occur when we demand to experience God according to our own agenda and terms and we try to match our experience to fit in with the group. And then when God does not conform to our ways or the agenda of the group, then the pressure to measure up causes people to misinterpret their experiences.  We can then distort reality. We try to make something out of nothing or misinterpret the nothingness experienced.

 It is precisely here where many of us have not been taught properly about how to experience the absence and silence of God.  This is a misunderstanding of how God uses emptiness and silence (basically, the “experience” of NOT experiencing God) to teach us true faith. This misunderstanding not only causes Christians to distort and exaggerate but it can also cause the Christian church to rely on old worn out clichés that have lost their vitality. Somehow, we think the old clichés will clothe our nakedness and keep us looking and feeling spiritual when in reality we may feel an aloneness and emptiness that is beyond words (Ironically, the fact that the emptiness and silence of God are beyond words is the clearest indication that such an experience might be genuinely divine)  The clichés comfort us and keep us at the same level with those who are also using the clichés but at the cost of authenticity.  

In a sense, these clichés used to try to express the experience of the divine can have about as much credibility as the fish stories told by men in old clothes. They no longer mean what they were intended to mean and they only prop up individuals and keep others from viewing them as inferior. It is easy to hide behind the clichés and use the clichés as masks. It becomes very difficult to come out from behind these masks and to be honest and authentic in such circles. How could an individual dare say ?  “Lately I feel only God’s silence and absence in my life” when so much spiritual drama is being shared. It would be like a fisherman admitting, “I caught nothing”, while his buddies reported all kinds of fish stories.   

I think Christians fall back to using clichés in Christian circles similar to how fisherman use old fish stories to make sure they measure up. Phrases such as “God spoke to me”,  “God is really leading me to….”,  “God is really convicting me”….”God is calling me to” , “I just know God wanted me to”… and many other similar phrases, have become almost meaningless and in some cases offensive. And sadly God gets “blamed” for doing many things that I doubt he had anything to do with.   

Some how it is assumed that we know what someone is talking about when someone says “God spoke to me” or “God did such and such in my life” .  Do we really know what this means?  If we are honest, we have to admit that when we use these clichés we often  don’t know what we are truly talking about and neither do our listeners for the ways of God are a mystery and remain hidden. (see I Cor 2:7 and Romans 11:33 )

I strongly believe that Christians need to develop a new sensitivity and a new language in communicating about the divine experience. There comes a time when our Christian language (the “lingo”) needs to be redeemed. Divine experiences should be communicated with the deepest humility, reverence and honesty, otherwise it can  not only be offensive, but it causes  things to get distorted in the same way that fish stories distort how good the fishing really was on a given day.

 If we continue to merely use old worn out clichés the same way fishermen continue to wear old clothes then our fellowships becomes very similar to how fishing can be merely  a “delusion surrounded by liars in old clothing”. And what should bind us, only alienates us and keeps us deluded.

And then no one knows how the divine is truly experienced or how truth is distorted.  

Thousands of Casts

Martha Graham spoke of the long time it took to learn the art of dancing. She said of the dancer Nijinsky that there were “thousands of leaps before the memorable one”.

I often think about those words while fly fishing and how long it takes to learn this art. Often on a fishing trip, especially to some new water, it may take thousands of casts before I hook a fish. Or, while guiding a beginner, I try to encourage the client that there may need to be thousands of casts before the ‘memorable one’ and a fish is hooked.

Perhaps a parallel can be made in our spiritual lives. Thousands of prayers, hopes and dreams and thousands of days waiting before something memorable happens. And then and only then, after all the waiting, we might be given a glimpse of the divine. Both in fly fishing and in our spiritual lives we have to do a lot of waiting. It is a discipline and it is rare for us to be met with immediate gratification.  

Unfortunately, our culture does not like to wait. We want it all now!  And sadly this need for immediate gratification can creep in to the Christian church. I don’t think the art of fly fishing or the genuine disciplined spiritual life were meant to be so easy. As Norman Maclean quotes his father in “A River Runs Through it”; “All good things-trout as well as eternal salvation- comes by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”  All too often in the church we get the feeling that we will easily experience the presence of the Divine, moment by moment, day by day, and that this rich divine experience  is the norm.    

I have concern for this easy shallow experiential form of Christianity. We live in an age of easy “religion”. We have such easy access to books and cd’s, and prayer groups and Bible study groups and meditation groups and fly fishing web sites and fly fishing classes.  We tend to think we can walk up to a river and not only catch all the fish but also easily experience the divine.

I may be a bit cynical but I have learned to be a bit more discerning in regard to what I might credit as being an experience of the divine and what I might call art.  If it were so easy, where would the need for genuine faith be?  Where would the discipline of waiting be?  Where would be the discipline of all the work and practice that goes into truly learning an art?  We are told to ‘test the spirits’ and likewise, we should test the waters with thousands of casts and also test the claims made by others both on and off the water. But most importantly, we need to test and examine ourselves. As Dante said, “Far worse than in vain is he who leaves the shore and fishes for the truth but has not the art”. If we want to be authentic we have to be truthful and we have to learn the art of waiting. And when we learn to wait we learn that the experience of the divine is to be found in the waiting. But “far worse than in vain is he who fishes for the truth and has not the art”.

So while I fish  I often  pray,  Yes, it is my hope that I might get a sense of the divine in the beauty around me. And after ‘thousands of casts’, there is also ‘the hope that a fish might rise’.  In the end, all we can do is keep casting and to have hope and then a fish caught and the divine experience will truly and genuinely be memorable.

Perhaps There Remains

In looking back over 40 plus years of fly fishing I have tried to draw parallels between the spiritual life and fly fishing. Looking for spiritual meaning in our lives and the activities we find ourselves engaged in is a difficult task and “tricky”. One must wade in these waters carefully.

I have no intention of writing about lofty, divine, spiritual experiences while fly fishing. I have not been so fortunate to be able to make any such claims. Nor do I easily experience the beauty of God’s creation while fly fishing. But I have experienced “something” that perhaps we could call spiritual and I will try to communicate this experience.  

I look to the existential poet Rainer Maria Rilke for help in understanding this experience. In his most significant work, a set of poems called the Duino Elegies, Rilke opens the series of poems with the question; “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angel’s hierarchies”?  In these poems, Rilke asks the tough questions about life. Are we alone? Why is life so fleeting? Where do we belong?   Rilke poetically tries to answer these deep questions but in a way that may surprise us.

Rilke’s poems suggest that he finds some spiritual comfort to these big questions, as I have, in performing some simple task over and over in a familiar place. He writes, “Oh gently, gently, performing with love some confident daily task,”  and,  “Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we take into our vision; there remains for us yesterdays street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease that when it entered in it never left.” In some sense I almost have to laugh at Rilke’s “revelation”. Is this it? Some tree on a hillside? Some familiar street?  Is this your answer to the great existential questions of life?  What spiritual comfort can be derived from this?

Yet, while fly fishing, I find some truth in Rilke’s prose.  I realize that the most significant aspect of my own fly fishing experience (that I might dare call divine) is to be found in the simple tasks and places that every day, while I fished, I took into my vision.  And those experiences remain with me. These are the images that will never leave me. They comfort me.  There is the memory of a street I walked over and over as a young boy to get to a little pond where I taught myself to first fly fish. It was there casting rhythmically for hours, days, years, that I learned the art of fly casting.  Those memories as well as countless other images of specific places on the South Platte River I have internalized and will stay with me for ever.

For Norman Maclean in “A River Runs Through It” , the depth of his  fly fishing experience also  seems to have been developed from being in  a specific place accomplishing a simple task over and over. These were the memories that never left him. As an old man in the end of his novel, he is casting alone in the Blackfoot River and he writes, “Then in the arctic half light of the canyon all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four count Rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise”. It is here in “his” river that he has fished for decades all alone, where he experiences the Logos, the ‘Word’ that sustains all things, is the basis of all things, and is under everything. He ‘hears’ from listening so carefully his whole life that, “under the rocks (and under everything) are the words”.  

Perhaps for us there also can be something divine about fly fishing the same places over and over.  The repetition of familiar simple rhythms in familiar places become “loyal habits” that keep us, “at ease” and when they enter in us, they never leave us.  Perhaps, in time, we too, when we lay quiet our anxieties, begin to hear the ‘word’ that sustains us and will never leave.

I find it is a bit of a paradox that something so powerful can be almost hidden,so non-dramatic and yet  found in such simple things.  But, then I remember that Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God being like treasure that is hidden in a field. Perhaps, the kingdom of God remains hidden in the simple places and tasks such as to be found in certain rivers while fly fishing.  Perhaps.

Forty Plus Years: Guiding Insights from "The Old Man and the Sea"

40 Plus Years

Guiding Insights from “The Old Man and the Sea”

When one has been fly fishing for 40 plus years and guiding for 25, there are changes in one’s perspective. In Hemingway’s “Old Man”, a young boy admires the old man Santiago and says that he is the best fisherman, to which the old man replies, “No, I know others better” and then adds…..”I may not be as strong but I know many tricks and I have resolution”.

In thinking about this resolution I have wondered as a guide of 25 years and a fly fisherman of 40 plus years what I have “resolved” in my heart.  

Just as the old man Santiago denies being the best fisherman I gladly do the same. I am resolved to the fact that I am not the best fly fisherman, nor, guide on the river. Being resolved on this issue takes a lot of the pressure off and frees me up to simply enjoy fly fishing and guiding much more. And of course, I am resolved in knowing how ridiculous it is in trying to define a set of criteria that would determine such a label and distinction. Such honors and distinctions are fleeting at best and at their worst, completely meaningless. Even in the tale of “The Old Man and the Sea” we see the fleeting nature of making a great catch. The giant marlin that the old man finally catches is then attacked by sharks and the old man goes home with nothing but the skeletal remains. Fishing and guiding has a way of humbling even the “best”, bringing us to “bare bones”.   I personally, while fishing or guiding,  have broken off, “mis-netted, “mis-guided” or in some fashion lost more fish, fallen in the river, and did just about every stupid thing imaginable in the realm of  fishing  that there is absolutely no room for boasting. I have been humbled far too many times to ever make a claim of being the best or any where close to it. And often when my clients have make wonderful catches they happen in such a manner that it really has little to do with my instruction. I have had clients do exactly everything I taught and yet fail to make big catches and at other times the client does everything wrong and defies all my instruction only to make a wonderful catch. When one had been guiding for many years you learn there is a lot of irony in fishing. And I am resolved to accept such irony.

We see another wonderful quality in the old man that is closely linked to humility that can also come with age. While Santiago was battling the great marlin Hemingway writes, “Then he began to pity the great fish he had hooked”.  He wondered about the age of the fish and wondered what the fish was thinking and planning to make its’ escape. He considered the fish as being mysterious and wonderful and he respected it.  

After guiding on the Platte for 25 years I am also resolved to pity the fish and to have respect for the resource and to do all that I can to protect it.  As I have written elsewhere I am resolved to the fact that “catching and counting’ as many fish as possible separate from some form of pity and concern for the resource is sheer stupidity. Over the decades,  I have seen many fisheries “pounded to death”. I have seen fly fishers and guides standing in the same exact spot for 6 hours day after day without moving.  As guides we must have some bigger vision of what it means to teach others about fly fishing and this certainly means taking some form of pity on the fish and having concern for others. I am resolved that guiding should involve teaching in such a way that leaves the client with more knowledge, skills, and  fascination and respect, rather than a claim of a certain number of  fish netted on a given day.

Besides having resolution, the old man Santiago does make one other claim that old age has brought him. He says that “he knows many tricks”. Obviously, these are tricks that only come with old age and years of experience. These tricks will compensate for his waning strength.  The tricks of older guides can mean many things and I guess they would no longer be tricks if I spelled them all out. Nor, could I.  All I know is that after guiding and fishing for decades there are simply certain things I have learned in order  to deal with an ever changing set of variables that might occur on the river on a given day. These tricks take into account the conditions of the river and the skill level and attitudes of the client and countless other variables. The veteran guide simply knows when it is time to move, maybe only a step here or there or knows when it is time to change holes completely; knows when it is time to change a technique or change the fly; knows when it is time to speak and instruct and when it is time to back off and remain silent. And even when the client has broken off his 5^th fish in a row the veteran guide knows how to patiently and calmly reinstruct without making the client feel bad. I know I could not do these things in my younger days.

I think perhaps the greatest “trick” and form of resolution that a guide can possess is to be resolved to the fact that the fishing trip is NOT about him. It is not about the guide. It is not about the guide’s ego. It is not about how many fish the guide netted or how many fish could have been netted. Nor is it about how many fish the guide could catch or how many he caught last week or last year.  I guess, if nothing else, the old age of 40 plus years of fly fishing brings the veteran guide to a place where they have nothing to prove anymore to anyone; not the client nor one’s self, but can only give and offer to the client what decades of fishing has taught him so the client can then go out on one’s own and learn their own tricks and their own place of resolution.

As a guide, I hold out my bag of tricks and offer 40 plus years of fly fishing experience to those willing to learn and  knowing all along,  it is not about me.   

Honoring the Journey of Learning to Fly Fish

When I was a kid learning to fly fish I never really paid attention to how many fish I caught. With out knowing it at the time I had learned to value the process; the journey that some times led to the actual catching of a fish.  Each fish I caught was the result of a long process of trial and error relying totally on my own resources and that process was reward enough.  It was the process that was most fulfilling and what made me love fly fishing. It would not be too much for me to call the process sacred and it is a process that I have valued ever since.    

As a guide of 25 years I often think about that sacred process of learning to fly fish and I wonder how well I am able to honor the process, for myself and for my clients. When I feel overly caught up in the pressure to put fish in the net for a client I know I am not doing a good job of honoring the process. I can usually sense when I am “riding” the client hard almost demanding he catch a fish (or let me catch the fish for him!).  When I am in such a state of mind it is more about me and my ego than about the client. And I forget to value the process.

Do not misunderstand me. I know some “success” (fish landed) is needed and expected on a guided fly fishing trip. Clients pay good money and often have some kind of expectation. And while guiding I work my hardest and use all the knowledge I have gained over 40 years of fly fishing to help my clients have the best day of fishing possible. And hopefully that includes catching fish.

All guides have their tricks, their short cuts, their “efficient” means to increase the odds of the client catching as many fish as possible. I have my own.  But, some times these short cuts can cheat the client out of experiencing the process without even knowing it. When I reflect upon my own learning experience in fly fishing, I think the greatest lesson I could give my client would be to encourage him to value the process for himself. It is  in the journey where one will find the greatest fulfillment.  To honor the process means, among other things, to have a sense that an individual achieved the task more or less on his own. To honor the process of fly fishing means to learn how to read the water, observe fish behavior, pay attention to bugs, plan strategies and many other dynamics. And these things all take time. It is problem solving. It is the soul of fly fishing.  .    

At some point both fly fishers and guides, have to realize the folly of thinking one has to catch a certain number of fish in order to feel successful.  We would do better to honor the process, the soul of fly fishing. We might want to consider an old teaching,  “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world (or every fish in the river) and yet  loses his soul.”?  In a society that can be quite soulless and focused on immediate gratification,  this is a question that we may want to ponder.

Of course there really is not a correct answer to the question of how many fish we need to catch.  It is completely arbitrary. But over the years I tend to think that the best fly fishers and the most mature soulful human beings are those who can feel good about themselves catching fewer and fewer fish.  It is a paradox of sorts, but not really because the greatest reward is always somewhere else perhaps even hidden.  These are the fly fishers who will gladly shake a fish free and not even land the fish. I know when I am guiding and a fish shakes the hook out of its mouth right before being netted I usually say something like, “Better on the fish”  or “long distance release” and most often both I and the client understand the meaninglessness of counting fish netted.

There are many good reasons we might find reward in catching fewer fish or at least not worrying about catching a certain number. Relentless pressure on our quality ‘catch and release’ waters comes to mind immediately.  It is clear that the constant catching and releasing of fish results in a decline in vitality of the fish populations. Again, the question begs to be answered. How many fish do we really need to catch on a given day? When do we stop?  When is enough ‘enough?’  And when it comes to guiding the question becomes: How many fish does the guide need to net before he feels good about himself and he feels that his client has gotten his monies worth?  I think each individual, both guides and fly fishers have to set some kind of “inner limit” to their fishing. Over the years, I have been  fortunate enough to have had many wonderful clients when after they caught, hooked and battled fish (no need to say how many)  simply knew when it was time to stop even though the fish were still rising and more could be caught. They would simply say, “That is enough. Let’s end on a good note” or we might even end on a fish that got away.  

Other factors that can be a variable in this meaningless number of fish caught would be the techniques used and the type of water fished. Obviously, most beginners usually can catch more fish nymphing than dry fly fishing. Does this make the fly fisher fishing with nymphs “better” than the one fishing with drys’ because more fish were landed ? Of course not, I have guided many folks who catch a lot of fish nymphing but would struggle to catch one fish on a slow moving stretch of water on a tiny dry. On the South Platte I often say, “One caught on a dry is equal to 10 caught on a nymph”. I personally, on many occasions have stalked one large fish all morning making countless changes in my presentation and fly selection. The fish finally takes the fly and after battling the fish for several minutes breaks free. Was such a long stalking process a success or a failure?  In such situations success and failure are hard to define. In fact, I think many things in life, including fly fishing, are learned by a series of “failures” in which we learn and this learning is part of the wonderful journey of fly fishing.  

As a guide, perhaps honoring the process can mean several different things even if it results in fewer fish in the net. It can mean allowing the client to figure out certain aspects of the process on his own. It can mean giving the client some alone time for trial and error. It can mean allowing the client to problem solve on their own and make those micro adjustments that are often needed to get the fish to take the fly. It can mean allowing the client to select his own fly to tie on the leader. It can mean allowing the client to dry fly fish even though most often we know this is far more challenging. It can mean allowing the client to “fail” and laugh at himself and yet learn.  

In essence, it can mean allowing the client to be the most important person in the process rather than the guide. Of course a guide needs to “guide” but perhaps we need to rethink what this means. When we allow the client to honor the process by making him aware that it is his process then something wonderful can happen. If the client can truly perceive that he achieved this process more or less on his own, then that process becomes sacred to him. And every single fish, even if it is only one, becomes sacred. . . 

Even if it is the one that got away.