SALTWATER FLY CASTING AS A WAY OF LIFE

By Liz Moser

Fly-fishing is seldom an end in itself; it is an adventure, an exploration, a portal…

I. The Dream

Many men have macho dreams, visions of stamina and skill to protect them against the passing years. Though still embedded in the routine of full-pressured work, they know the day is coming when they will have to retire. The dreams suggest how to fill the blank days when there is no office to go to. A common version pictures them with strong, lean bodies wearing many-pocketed vests and khaki waders, trudging among sunlit leaves and rock-filled streams, like the fishermen in the ads for single malt scotch.

I have a friend who acted out this dream. It took him down unexpected paths but, in the end, served him well. Martin told me it all started when his wife told him she was tired of his fretting, his anxiety about what he would do after he’d received the gold watch and the certificates of achievement. She told him to get a life, go back to college, baby-sit the grandchildren, find some activity that would give him both pleasure and meaning.

“So,” he said to me, as he pointed above the desk he no longer used for work to the pictures and framed evidence of his fishing success hanging next to the retirement testimonials, “I took her up on it.”

He found a catalog advertising a fly-fishing course and sent his check in right away, already tasting his first self-caught trout. But he hadn’t read the small print and signed up for the wrong kind of class.

Instead of learning how to catch freshwater fish in upland streams and ponds, he chose a saltwater fly-fishing course, a five-day marathon to be conducted at Ocean Haven, a golf resort in midcoast Maine. He was annoyed at his mistake, but the check was nonrefundable.

II. The Course

Martin learned that the group would live at the resort, in quarters slightly better than Spartan but by no means luxurious: small clean rooms, comfortable beds to fall into after days spent mostly outdoors learning the lore of flycasting. There would be lectures about physical fitness and safety, the necessity of stretching exercises and weight lifting to gain extra upper body strength. He would have to buy hobnailed boots for steady footing on the rocks. The worst part was that he’d be taught about the same blues and stripers he already knew how to catch with a spinning rod, using mackerel heads for bait. So even though he was dubious about learning anything useful for the life-after-work, even though he doubted it would make him the model outdoorsman of his dream, he had decided to stick it out.

On the first day, he met the other people who’d signed up for the course. There were a father-and-son team from Florida who were there so that they could get to know one another better and a couple from New York City who said that they had never fished before and were looking for something to do. The woman was sharp-chinned, tight-lipped, and taller than her balding husband, who smiled and let her do the talking. Their khakis and leather boots looked brand new. Three drab men from Massachusetts had come up to take the course for the third time—each time, they said, they learned a little bit more.

There were several instructors, either too young to be his own sons or older than he was. The young ones called him “sir” and talked technobabble about the equipment everyone should have. Martin was more comfortable with the grizzled oldsters who chewed on toothpicks under long-billed hats.

After roll had been taken and the class had heard the schedule of what would be expected of them, after they’d observed and assessed one another for compatibility, they were directed to the putting green of the resort and positioned in a large semicircle facing inward. The instructors handed each student a long pliant graphite stick with a cork-covered grip at its base, their fly rod for the duration. At the base of each rod, a metal reel was attached, wound with thin plastic line that had been run through circular guides with several yards to spare. The last six feet was called the leader, translucent and lighter than the rest of the line. The head teacher—one of the older men—demonstrated how to grasp the rod and flick it back and forth so that the line whipped in the air behind him in a loop and then snaked forward, landing at his feet in a perfect straight line.

I marveled at Martin’s total recall. He laughed, and said, “Each minute of each of those long days is ingrained, not just in my head, but in my arms and shoulders. I hurt when I think about it.” He said the instructors paced among the class, pulling people’s arms up or down and saying, “Like this,” or “Not quite!” When someone performed properly, the teachers would say, “Wow, let’s see that again,” and stand watching the next attempt before moving on.

He had learned quickly that the wrist action he used with his spinning rod didn’t work here. Others were having the same trouble as he was. When rods drooped or wobbled, the instructors jammed the grip-end of the rod up the student’s sleeve to hold the wrist and forearm firm. The woman caught on quickly, announced that the motion was like throwing an overhand ball which she did with her kids all the time. She was placed front and center to show her aptitude.

After two hours of unsuccessful forearm-snapping and downward thrusting, Martin had been unable to raise his arm above the shoulder and was ready for the large lunch the resort provided as part of the package. He was grateful to sit inside for the afternoon lecture learning about the habits and food preferences of stripers and blues and about the chartreuse floating leader to be used when the fish were surface-feeding on insects or bait fish.

That evening he slept with a cold pack on his shoulder to ease the pain.

The next day started out more of the same, except that his sore arm prevented him from casting as wildly. He had managed a cast in which the line did not plunge immediately downward but seemed to catch the wind and settle slowly outward. Both father and son, neither of whom had progressed this far, clapped. Others in the group were doing better, too. One of the three men who’d been there before was consistently casting sixty feet straight out, and the woman’s work was uniformly good.

After lunch, the instructors showed them how to retrieve the line hand over hand in neat loops at their feet before rewinding it. They were taught about flies, mainly the Lefty’s Deceivers and the Clausers, both of which were named for master fishermen who can be seen on Saturday morning TV fishing programs. They were shown how to attach the flies to leaders and how to mash down the barbs, and how weighted flies affect the cast. Near the end of the session they learned how to remove the hook so the fish could swim away.

The last hours of daylight were spent back in the semicircle, practicing the cast with the chartreuse floating leaders. A wind had come up which made even the most accomplished students inconsistent. The woman hit her leg, and one of the recidivist students knocked his companion’s hat off. They all decided to wear long-sleeved shirts, trousers, and hats, even on hot days, to minimize injury if the hook hit them.

After a final practice the next morning, they were assigned to a cadre of boat captains, hired with their boats, for the real-life testing of what they’d been practicing on dry land. Martin had been placed with a gray-bearded retired lobsterman who took charters up the local rivers when he wasn’t working for the fishing school. The boat was black, deep-hulled, about twenty feet long, all open and outboard-powered.

They steered between the buoys into the river channel busy with other boats, fishing ducks, and squawking gulls. Avoiding the cork-topped seines and bobbing markers, he headed toward an almost totally landlocked basin, pointing out the craggy shoreline and pools where the stripers were likely to congregate on the outgoing tide.

The captain said to work the rocks because fish lie there and sun. He told Martin to try his luck, but to be careful since it would be his first cast with a hook, to throw it out the port side so the wind wouldn’t blow it back in his face.

Martin knotted on one of the orange and red Clauser flies that the instructors had selected for them, moved to the edge of the boat and flung back the rod. The fly rose skyward, glinted, and plunged suddenly, landing on the captain’s sleeve, on which a dark stain quickly spread. The captain winced, but did not say anything while he removed the rod from his student’s fingers; once the line hung loose, he was able to work the hook out.

Martin told me, “He said not to worry, that it was just a surface jab that happens with first-timers.”

They’d stayed out till dusk in the shadows of the tall spruce trees at water’s edge, patrolling the basin’s reefs and pools. Once an eagle hovered over them for a moment before soaring in widening circles and disappearing over a hill. Before long the captain and he were both casting, one from either end of the boat with the motor in neutral so they could drift with the current. His first strike came when the tide was running so fast that he missed the moment to jerk hard and sink the hook. He felt the line go slack and saw the silver glint as the fish escaped. His next cast was almost off-hand. Martin was bringing the line in slowly, thinking more about the clouds, which were starting to pink up at the horizon, than his fly rod, when there was a sudden strong pull. The line ran out and the rod almost slipped from his fingers—he had to yank it up hard to keep it off the water. This fish was hooked—twenty feet away, it broke gloriously, whipping the surface as it darted and plunged. He was standing, then leaning back against the pull, trying to stop the whirling reel as best he could. The fish continued to run.

The captain angled the boat toward the fish and told him to keep his line taut and lighten the drag.

“There I was,” he told me, smiling again with the excitement of that first catch. “I couldn’t believe the difference between bringing in this striper on the fly rod and fishing with a spinning rod! I was into the one-on-one struggle, sensing with my whole body when and how to put pressure on, when to let up.” He had played the fish, bending over the gunnel, reeling in, seeing the long rod touch the water and then raising it, working the fish closer to the side of the boat. It took him over ten minutes to bring his fish close enough for the captain to dip the net under it and drop it on the deck.

The captain lay his gaff, which was notched in inches, alongside the squirming striper and told him it was over twenty-five inches, that it was a pity they were only doing catch and release. Then he’d held it up, his large hand inside the gills and told Martin to remove the hook.

The weather stayed clear for the next two days, though it blew so hard the final morning they had to come in early, which was just as well because the final event was a huge lobster and corn-on-the-cob luncheon for the class and the instructors back at Ocean Haven.

He won the prize for catching the biggest fish—three Clauser flies and a certificate pronouncing him “Most Likely to Succeed.”

III. The Life

The summer had passed quickly. As soon as the course was over he went to the sporting goods store that had sponsored the course and outfitted himself with a very good rod and reel, sinking and floating leaders, an array of different-colored Clausers and Lefty’s Deceivers as well as the kind of net you can hang on the back of your jacket. He also bought a fishing vest, a long-billed hat, and waders.

He stayed in touch with the captain who’d taken him out, and one day the two of them plus one of the men from the class who lived in the area had gone back to the basin. That day the fish weren’t biting, but he had come home exhilarated anyway from the day, the chase, and the company of like-minded people.

Unless the wind was too strong—rain didn’t stop him and he discovered the fish bit better in fog—he was out every day, casting, casting and sometimes, but not often, bringing in a striper or two. Twice that summer he caught keepers, one twenty-two inches, one twenty-six inches, shining and fat, which he filleted and froze.

To mark the end of the season, as they did every September, Martin and his wife had the neighbors in for a party. This year he had saved his catch; they ate striper fillets broiled with lemon and onions. He was surprised when his wife presented him with a gift she’d been holding back for this occasion. It was a large framed photograph she’d snapped one day when he thought he was alone on the rocks by the riverbank, the one over his desk that had started our conversation. It showed him in profile looking out over the river, in waders, vest and fishing hat, his fly rod a graceful extension of his arm. 

 

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