Caveat lector: fly fishing aphorisms make no sense whatever. An aphorism is a shotgun blast, a broken thought, a fragmented something or other. Fly fishing rambles on and on and on…

Mean? How can fly fishing mean anything? Do the rocks? Does the water? Any meaning radiates from the angler. Like throwing a handful of salt into the stream.

Inasmuch as the sun interrupts continuous night, these streams trespass across the earth, owning mere slips of territory, if any at all. It’s laughable, really.

The graceful, striving feral.

The stuttering, benighted pure.

Oh no! We have dematerialized! Fly fishing is now rivers of electrons flowing through ether. Soon we needn’t even bother getting our hands wet.

Enjoy thy stream, O harmless fish;
And when an angler for his dish,
Through gluttony’s vile sin,
Attempts, the wretch, to pull thee out,
God give thee strength, O gentle trout,
To pull the rascal in!
~John Wolcot

Dalliant. Evermost. Headlong. Fecund.

Jim Harrison: The head is a cloud anchor which the feet must follow.

Trout are not neither regal or noble. They are however vicious. A beautiful, efficient viciousness.

Vicious? Being owed nothing. Expecting nothing.

“A puncher’s chance”

Yes, vicious, but trout seem always to aspire to something more: more brawn, more ferocity, more guile — yet settle upon the subtle sheen of an arty reticence.

Unapproachable.

Proust: We must perish, but we have as hostages these divine captives who will share our fate. And death in their company is somehow less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less probable. “
…Willing to rise to the bait until “Less probable” !

Forget it. You cannot reinvent fly fishing. You cannot reinvent the nature of the fish. You cannot reinvent this joyous, hideous connection. We mumble some thanks to no real god for that connection, curse ourselves for doing so,  but still marvel: it is something.

The nature of the thing — the margins; the eddies; so close to the slack water. So close to the steep, steep drop off.

Silly. Fly fishing always seems more about the fly fisherman than the fish. Luckily, the fish do not give a fuck.

The guide who rowed for Dick Cheney.

Hope, the most gorgeous utterance in our language, defines our stumble- bumble lot.

Faith. Our rusting shackle, paints us in clown colors.

A slump buster’s mantra: “It ain’t like hell — it wont last forever.”

Damn you. Tamper your own enthusiasm? And do it willfully? Techniques that lead to negation yet serve to amplify your sense of… what is it? Suffering? Righteousness, Entitlement? Please Lord, no further trespassing upon our souls…

Still, those moments when glory surrounds.

Issac Walton digested 99 percent of everything he caught. Easily.

Ditto G.E.M. Skues.

And I do mean everything.

We are forced to stoicism… forced to zen… staring at that fucking knot.

When fishing, our other vices unfurl and march forth with such grace and sophistication. Oh! Every sense in bloom!

Who said life is fleeting? Did they fish?

Not to mention Hemingway.

No, don’t tell me that. Fish can’t possibly be your enemy.

And Teddy Roosevelt.

You were furious when you missed that fish? I am torn between admiration and pity.

Good Lord, let us once and for all refrain from defiling the river by calling it “sacred” or “holy”. It remains a blood sport, after all. It’s the blood that’s sacred.

Primitive? We can’t even scratch the surface. But there we go, off to our woodsy theater again.

Impermanant.

How quickly the color drains from a fish you’ve killed. How the scales tip almost imperceptibly up and away from the skin when the rigor sets the flesh. How many ways we perceive death when we ourselves deal it.

“Blessings upon all that hate contention, and love quietnesse, and vertue, and Angling.”  Izaak Walton said that. Our fishing souls, Ike, need no soothing. Our dozens of other souls… well…

Too proud. There is no such animal as luck, son. No fisherman really believes in such a beast.

Butcher, lift your thumb from the scale: Those who lie about their fishing. Those who we only suspect are lying. Our own lies.

Have we finally killed the formality? The pretense? The preening? Lordy, I hope there is but a thin smear of that blood upon my waders.

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…”
Yes, Shakespeare, but we hold the key to this confounded lock! We have a secret passage! And our creep, creep, creeping deals death, too.

Call yourself whatever you wish, but one only becomes a fisherman when one almost dies upon the stream (drowning, heatstroke, snakebite) and then returns to it once again, happily. There should be some sort of badge for that.

A fisherman’s vanity: Gloriously fugitive; sniffing that matted, stinking mass of fur, bones, and teeth rotting in that fetid, muddy ditch. Ammonia, death, piss, history. Civilization, resting comfortably.

That vest, those old boots, that tin of worthless and rusted flies. We can’t throw them away. They have battled with us.  Our heroism held in tiny boxes, smelling of mud and cold.

Forced to be alone with ourselves. Who do we confront? Can we fish together?

In fishing, we can finally stop talking. We don’t have to talk. Silence is golden.

Desire is the inconvenience of its object. Lourdes isn’t Lourdes if you live in Lourdes.
–Don Patterson said that.

Do we come close to boredom or do we, instead, glimpse the giddy nothingness… all of that glorious nothingness? A fisherman doesn’t really need to think about it.

Siddartha in waders.

Set your watch by the tides. Better yet, chuck that fucker into the drink.

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains,” so claimed Henry David Thoreau

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