The day had started full of hope and aspiration. The sun shone on our backs, the river, if a little murky, was the perfect level for floating, bugs mingled with the cottonwood seeds carried on the intermittent breeze, and a shapely young lass wearing an orange bikini sunned herself on the rocks below the F St Bridge. It was a great day to be alive, on a raft, with a box full of dry flies.
I believe there is a natural order to fly fishermen, as there is to most species. Occupying the lower rungs of the ladder stands the streamer fisherman, struggling valiantly toward the sunlight, weighed down by his genetic closeness to the spin fisherman. Next comes the nympher, crawling slowly from the primordial soup, while standing aloft, alone and imperious, both feet planted firmly on dry ground, stands the dry fly fisherman. Like all creatures at the top of their respective food chain, they are relatively sparse in numbers. Streamers and nymphers will say this is likely due to starvation, given the fact Dry Fly Guy tends to catch fewer fish than anyone else. This may be so, but not for he the hollow sanctuary of numbers.
Except that this day, I learned something about myself. Fishing should never be about numbers, yet there is a big difference between catching one fish, and catching no fish. After a couple of fruitless hours, my resolve to fish only dries crumbled nearly as quick as the veneer of civilization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I realized I was prepared to hit the take out having caught nothing all day, but not without trying everything first. Out went the dries, on went the bobber. Nothing. Out went the nymphs, on went the dreaded streamer. It is not that I have anything against fishing streamers per se, rather that it all gets a little repetitive: Slap, strip, strip. Slap, strip, strip. Slap, strip, strip. Etc.
But it is surely an effective way to catch a fish. If I was sent somewhere remote, and had to eat trout to stay alive, I’d take a black wooly bugger before anything other fly. After a couple of miles, and a couple of hundred casts, patience and abandonment of principles were duly rewarded. I immediately went back to fishing dries to redeem myself, but not soon enough to shake off that vague feeling of seediness. Dante wrote several centuries ago that in order for our souls to be purified, they must first descend to the pits of Hell, where demons and angels tear from us that which has become corrupted during our previous life. Once this process is complete, we rise again, purified, ready to be reborn into the next existence. I reckon, one day back when, he too must have been reduced to tying on a wooly bugger.
