Fly Fishing

Fly Fishing

An outsider looks at art of fishing
I own a fishing license. Yep, I bought that bright yellow annual sticker sometime awhile back during the smelt run.I used it to legally net and take home a smelt.One smelt.One smelt that represents the sum total of my fishing success so far this year in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Wait, that’s not entirely true. I caught two non-keeper perch and a good-sized sucker on a February ice fishing trip to Redridge Dam.We decided to bag that trip shortly after I caught the sucker, taking it to be a bad omen. It was something like three degrees out and the beer was turning to slush, so it was time to go home anyway.The smelt was the only fish I caught on my annual license, which is the first annual license I’ve ever bought.I bit the smelt’s head off, having been told that is the traditional thing for a smelt dipper to do upon catching his first smelt of the year. More than my first smelt of the year, it was the first smelt of my life, and the only smelt ever caught in the net I borrowed from one of my editors, whose luck with that net had been worse than mine.

All of this is by way of making the point that I haven’t done enough fishing since coming up to God’s Country last October.Fact is, I’ve not done enough fishing in my lifeThat I’d never bought an annual fishing license before this year attests to that.Most of the fishing I’ve done has been of the worm and bobber variety off the end of a pier.Though I’ve done some fishing with crank baits from the bows and sterns of rowboats, I haven’t gotten far enough into lake fishing to develop a proper appreciation for its subtleties.I think fishing a lake on any kind of regular must engender a new kind of understanding of it. I always admire anglers who can put to use knowledge of water depth, lakebed topography, fish habitat, etc., whether or not that knowledge leads to their catching any fish.

Fly fishing is a complete and utter mystery to me. I think I know about as much about the moons of Neptune as I know about fly fishing, and, honestly, I can’t even say with any confidence whether or not Neptune has any moons.What little I do know about fly fishing I learned reading a book called “To Hell With Fishing,” a collaboration between cartoonist Harold Webster and outdoor writer Ed Zern. The book was published in 1945 and a copy with a ragged dust jacket was was always on the book shelf at my aunt and uncle’s cabin in Baldwin, Mich.According to the book, fly fishing provokes deep-seeded passion among those who pursue it, those who fish with dry flies look with mild disdain upon those who fish with wet flies, and black flies always swarm as soon as the fish start biting.The challenges of placing a fly in the perfect spot in the current so it meanders tantalizingly close to a deep pool where trout are likely to hide, or of landing a brookie with a barbless hook, seem worthy but elusive.

Truth be told, when it comes to fly fishing, I’d be satisfied just to be able to tie a few flies and go around saying words like “caddis,” “stonefly,” and “hackle.”But for now, it’s high time I got a new rod and reel and some worms.And if anybody has the inclination to teach a greenhorn with an annual license a thing or two about fishing, just let me know.
Dan Schneider can be reached at dschneider@mininggazette.com