Pueblo Arkansas River Tail-water Rainbows: Making Delays, Slowing Down

I had a wonderful time today on the Ark in Pueblo. It was relatively warm. I did not leave home until 10:45am which is unusual for me. I went solo and enjoyed the solitude and going at my own pace. It was peaceful to not rush or care about much of anything. I don't like it when I get into that rush mode of thinking I have to find a good spot or I have to catch a lot of fish or the person I am with has to catch fish. Today, my attitude was, "Who cares"?

I thought of some lines of poetry; a poem titled "Waiting".

"I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace"?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
What is mine shall know my face."

And so even as I was slowing down I caught some big fish. And it was wonderful.

How Do We Completely Understand Such Beauty: Arkansas River Rainbows

Without Complete Understanding

This morning I heard the Reverend David Shaw of “The Church In The Wildwood”,  in Green Mountain Falls speak about the novel, “A River Runs Through It”. David pointed out that toward the end of the novel, the author, Norman Maclean, remembering  his father, the Reverend Maclean, deliver one of his last sermons with  two moving quotes.  David Shaw touched on these themes this morning in his own sermon.

“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us”.

”But, you can love completely with out complete understanding”.

Reverend Dave Shaw simply shared with us with honest humility that there is much he does not completely understand. There is much that eludes him and us. How refreshing! We cannot completely understand how Jesus can raise Lazarus and bring new life to those he touches. We cannot completely understand so much of life: its beauty as well as the ugliness and brokenness. Ironically, I find such honesty far more reverent of God than those who seem to always know.

“But we can still love completely”, or at least that is our hope. 

There is much I don’t understand while fly fishing: the beauty of the river or of a rainbow trout arching out of the water showing its beautiful colors. How can I understand such beauty completely?

“In the open mindedness of not knowing enough about anything;  It was beautiful”  Mary Oliver

An Appeal for Community Life

William Stafford, in his poem titled, “A Ritual to Read Each Other”, offers a suggestion to help keep community life flowing at a meaningful depth.  His suggestion is quite simple: Learn to talk to one another to a depth.  In the 4^th stanza of the poem he makes his appeal.

“And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider-

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.”

The appeal made is an earnest request and call to be heard and to know others at a soulful level.

The opening lines of the poem asks us to know ourselves and others, “If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are",then, it seems we may fail to arrive as a community. In essence we will fail to be a community.

Perhaps we can apply this poem to church communities.   We can see it as an appeal for each individual to “Speak the truth in love”.  The poem appeals to us to speak to the deeper aspects of our souls;   to speak from and to the, “shadowy, remote important regions”, those places we tend to hide in the shadows.  It is an appeal for authentic dialogue at the level of the soul.

The appeal to soul talk is proposed in contrast to fooling each other with shallow surface babble. Sadly, often church communities are “good” at producing a lot of religious surface babble. “Though we could fool each other we should consider.”  Consider what? We should consider the fact that if we fool one another we “may miss our star”;  “a fragile sequence may break”,  “our mutual life may get lost in the dark”, and we may fall “asleep”.

We should consider- because “the darkness around us is deep”.  

To Cast or Not to Cast? Trying Not to Cast to Big Rainbows on Pueblo's Arkanasas River Tailwater

I fished the Arkansas yesterday and some of those huge rainbows are moving around in the shallows showing their broad sides and beautiful colors. It is spawning time on our rivers. Do we cast to them?  Or do we leave them alone?

I listen to fishing discussions on this topic quite frequently where we try to justify casting to these monsters. Comments such as : “They already spawned”, or, “They are only staging. They are not spawning yet”. Or “The fish was not on the redd,  it was behind it, (or in front of it). Or, “I saw the fish feeding on midges, it was not spawning”;  and on and on.

Truth be told, I am not sure any of these possibilities has any merit or gives us justification. We can say whatever we want but by casting we are messing with these fish. How much we are messing with these fish and what harm is done is difficult to determine.

Even if we admit we are messing with these fish it is still not easy to “not cast”. I do not stand or speak from a high place. I know.  

There is also the ethical issue of considering how hard is it really to get those fish to take a fly when one places the fly on its nose?  Not very hard in my opinion. It is way more challenging to get even a 12 inch fish to take a trico dry fly.

Does it matter if I  mention where they are “staging”?    There are not any secret spots on the Arkansas. Anyone can find them.  It is beautiful to watch huge rainbows laying in a run. And it is wonderful to just know they are there. But to cast? 

My friend Steve Gossage at Covey once told me a story of fishing on a section of river several years back where he spotted a 36 inch rainbow lying on a redd as clear as a rainbow in the sky. The person he was fishing with said to Steve, “Go ahead, cast to it. He will eat it”.

Steve walked away.

Wow! I wish I could be like Steve.

The Fisher King: Little To Do But Fish

I continue to be drawn to the story of The Fisher King.  I wonder what it is about this story of a wounded King that keeps pulling me in.  There are different versions of the story but usually the king is wounded in the legs or groin, and has difficulty moving on his own. When he is injured, his kingdom suffers.  The land becomes infertile, reduced to a barren wasteland.  Knights travel from many lands to heal the Fisher King, but only the chosen one can bring the needed healing.

Recently I got hooked by a little “fishy” detail found in this legend that that has left me pondering. While the king is lame, the story informs us that there is little left for him to do but fish in the river near his castle. I am not sure what to make of this detail. The wounded king can just fish the river all day?  No work? No responsibilities?  No visit to the doctor?  This sounds pretty good especially if there are big trout in the river.

Yet, even being an avid fly fisherman I somehow get the idea that this is not a good situation. Some thing is wrong here. It sounds a bit desperate with the wasteland all around. It sounds a bit aimless in that he is fishing because there is, “little left for him to do”.  I get the feeling that fishing under these circumstances and for this reason is not going to be fulfilling, rich and will not bring the healing he needs.

Fishing simply because there is little left to do does not sound intentional as in Thoreau’s proclamation, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately”.  Nor does it sound as passionate as the flyfisher in Yates poem, “The Wandering Aengus”, “I went out to the Hazelwood because a fire was in my head”.  Most importantly it does not sound like the “abundant life” or the “living waters”  of which Jesus spoke.

I guess for me I don’t want to fish simply because there is little else to do. Hopefully there are better reasons to fish.

I also don’t want to fish in an attempt simply to find excitement. Although, I admit that through out my own life, I know it has been my natural tendency to put many things in a place where they should not be. I have made many failed attempts to find life where it is not. Such an approach is like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip. It usually leaves me feeling lame and does not address my true need for healing.

I want to fish because I have life in me and fishing is a sort of a celebration of that life. I want to fish passionately and intentionally because I have at least begun to experience healing. Perhaps another way of saying this is that I don’t want to “use” fly fishing, or anything or anyone else to make life bearable.   

I choose to wait for the “chosen one” to continue to heal me even as I stand in the river casting and casting to rising forms. I cast and I wait, I wait and I cast. Some of those forms are fish. Others are only shadows. The fish dance while those that are phantoms simply fade away.  

Dream Stream Fly Fishing Report 2/23/13 Riding The Storm Out: Enduring Winter Fishing On the Dream Stream

2/23/2013 Dream Stream Fly Fishing Report.

When I winter fish in South Park I have to be careful to not make mistakes. Dealing with  tangles and re-rigging break-offs can be tough to endure. Hands become dysfunctional quite quickly. Caution must be used to keep gloves dry and clothing dry. A thermos of hot coffee can make the difference along with good clothing. When I go fishing in winter I dress similar to how I would on a ski trip. I also bring an extra rod rigged so that if I do mess up I can just fish my second rod. It is not a good idea to have to rig a rod on the river. Have every thing rigged the night before.

If I can endure the conditions, not make mistakes, and keep my flies in the water, there are fish to be caught on the dream stream.  And until the spawn starts the crowds are not here. Nice to fish the dream stream virtually alone.

Today my friend and I caught a fair number of good fish on apricot/orange pegged eggs and size 22 RS2’s along with small Zebra midges of several colors. Most of the fish were Browns in the 15-17 inch range. We each “almost” landed a big fish in excess of 22 inches but for each one of us, the hook pulled out.  I even saw a good number of fish rising to midges. If I had brought along a dry fly rod rigged and ready with a small dry, I think I could have hooked up on dry fly fishing. Small black midges were hatching and many of the bugs could be seen on the snow banks along the river.

We met another guy on the river who was new to the area and was fishing the river for the first time. He was catching fish also. At one point he asked me I these fish ever hit streamers. I told him, “Sure, sometimes… Give it a shot. Show them something different”. He tied on a large double hook streamer fly that looked something like a drowned rat, with yellow metal eyes.  Within 5 minutes he had  two strong “attacks” to the fly. Interesting! That got my attention.

Storm clouds could be seen dumping snow over Hoosier Pass. Good to see. More water for the South Platte. But this storm was coming our way. One does not mess around with winter in South Park. The  wind was already picking up and the temperature was dropping. No time for mistakes. Time to get out. Time to ride the storm out.