A Fly Rod and Life

For the first time ever the fly line did exactly what I thought it should do as it looped backwards in a long folded arc and when I swept the fly rod forward with the rolling of my wrist I knew without seeing that the line with the small popper attached would follow the trajectory I had intended for it.  And so it did.  I watched as the line sailed forward following the direction of the tip of the pole and began to fall gently on the surface of the water.  The brown line stretched out away from the boat and directly toward the right side of the lily pad where I’d just seen a swirl on the surface of the water.  The red bodied and yellow feather tailed wooden popper came to rest exactly where I’d aimed.  And there it floated as I admired my skill at casting with a fly rod.

“Not half bad,” I thought to myself, “for being self-taught.”

How many times had I watched folks like Curt Gowdy or Jim McKay standing in the middle of some Colorado or Montana or Wyoming river fly fishing for trout and wondered what it would be like to pull out yards and yards of line, create that long loop and manage to drop the lure right where you wanted?

Well, now I knew.

The popper lay there motionless exactly where I’d seen what I was certain had to be a bluegill that had just sucked some hapless insect off the surface of the water.  It sat there for seconds and more seconds as I waited for what I knew had to be the perfect end to a perfect cast.  And I waited some more.

The problem with being self-taught in any expertise is that far too often you don’t really get all the little things that go along with making the big thing look so easy.  You know those little nuances that have been learned over years of trial and error and figuring out what works and what doesn’t.  When I watched this guy or that on television throwing their line out at their target spot it always seemed to me that no sooner had the lure landed than they were setting the hook in whatever it was they were fishing for.  It never occurred to me in my earliest of teens that what I was seeing came from hours of filming and then editing to get the exciting stuff out there on the air while the rest of it lay on the cutting room floor.  There would be cast upon cast until finally there was the one that landed just so and drifted past that rock where that rainbow was just waiting for its’ next meal.  It was all those other attempts at winning the prize that I never saw and thus came to believe that they were simply that much better than me. 

I’d never be that good.  I’d never be able to read a river like they could.  I’d never make that perfect cast to that perfect spot.  So why was I even trying?

But just now I’d made what I’d swear was the perfect cast to the perfect spot.  I waited as patiently as I could with nerves on edge and muscles taunt for that swirl I knew had to be coming.  And I waited.

There were just about enough things that I was doing wrong in that moment as any kid who thought he knew it all and then some could have been doing wrong.  For starters I probably shouldn’t have been out there in that slough behind Rothe’s Ice Plant in my father’s boat.  I shouldn’t have been standing up in that 14 foot aluminum boat with a 5 horse Johnson motor and trying to become an expert fly caster.  And I sure shouldn’t have had my father’s split bamboo fly rod with the South Bend automatic reel out there in the middle of the water backed up by the dam just northwest of 80 on the Lemonweir River.  I had raided my dad’s tackle box, sneaked out the door with his fly rod and reel which I’d never seen him use, pushed the boat off the bank of the river and paddled out to an opening in the lily pads maybe fifty yards from shore.  It was there that I was doing my best to become an expert fly fisherman and having zero luck.

On that warm summer day I was not alone on this particular piece of the Lemonweir River.  Some 100 yards off to the west was another boat with another fisherman standing up in their boat and casting not a fly rod but a good old casting rod and reel. Even from this distance it was obvious it was the sort of gear you used to go after the larger fish in this river, the walleye and the northern pike in particular though a bass might be found on occasion.  From the glint of the lure being used my guess was it was something metal and that almost had to mean they were using a Daredevil of one sort or another.  And that meant only one thing; they were looking for Northerns. Oh yes I had spent hours in the back of Robinson’s Hardware Store studying the array of lures all neatly packaged and organized and I was confident I knew my lures even from a distance.

From this distance I couldn’t be certain who the other fisherman was but I had a pretty good idea.  Even though the town was small by most anyone’s standards the fact was I didn’t, nor would I ever, know all the folks living there but sooner or later I’d hear something about just about everyone.  In this case I was pretty sure that the fisherman (these days the term fisherperson seems to be the acceptable description) almost certainly had to be Gertie.  One thing I knew about her was that she was a fisherman but I’d also heard other things that didn’t really make a lot of sense to me but because they were said in hushed tones I was fairly certain there was something “bad” about her.

And that’s how it was in that little town, in that impoverished county, in that state and most of the nation in those days.  If a person was somehow different according to those around them then there was going to be problems and nothing anyone did was going to change that.  The looks and the whispers would go on and on and in the end I’m not so sure that even the strong could truly survive.

I went back to my fly rod and the popper I’d thought I’d so expertly laid out there for that pound plus bluegill that I knew was circling somewhere just beneath those lily pads and right under my lure.  I twitched the line ever so lightly causing the popper to dance on the water just a bit as if injured and ready to be Mr. Bluegills’ next meal.  Nothing happened.  So it was called a popper for reason so let’s see what happens if I give it a short, sharp tug.

“Gullup,” is what I heard which  pleased me but ultimately seemed completely unimpressive to that state record bluegill I knew had to be lurking out there and was only there to taunt me.  And taunt me it did as again and again I cast to this spot and that spot out there around those lily pads and every time the same result, nothing.

I was certain I’d heard my dad say something one time about Gertie being about the best fisherman there was out there on the Lemonweir and I’d finally worn myself out enough that I was thinking I needed a new plan but I had nothing.  Maybe I could row over to where she was and if she was as good as my dad said she was I might get some pointers and before you knew that state record bluegill would be mine.  That’s what was going through my head as I sat there more than a little frustrated and watching back over my shoulder to see Gertie casting and reeling her lure in over and over again.  She kept at it with an obvious purpose as if she knew that sooner rather than later that river would give up one of its’ treasures from beneath the waters’ surface.

I didn’t know her and being young and not knowing someone older than yourself and wanting to just go up and talk to them was not done I had been told time and time again and in fact it could be a very dangerous thing to do.  You didn’t talk to strangers no matter what and that was simply that.  And so I didn’t give in to what my gut was telling me which was to hoist up my anchor and just row over to her, introduce myself and ask her how I was supposed use this fly rod and the popper out there at the end of my line.  Somehow I knew that she would know and I would be the better for having asked and learned from the expert.  Still, she was the unknown and for me that meant danger.

And so I sat there anchored in one place while behind me Gertie would take an push an oar and turn her boat one way and then the other oar to shift slightly the other all the while working with the little bit of current that was in this bit of back water.  She was slowly working her way toward the main channel but she was in no hurry.  There was this patch of lily pads to cast to and around and there was that old log that had made it to this spot in the river that needed more than a little examining with her Daredevil.  And she would cast, wait a moment and then begin to reel the lure back to her with a quick twitch of the pole this way and a jerk of the pole the other.

“I should go,” I thought to myself and grabbed the rope to pull up the anchor.  I wasn’t going to catch anything today and I wasn’t going to go ask Gertie if she could help me.  She was getting closer now anyways and I was probably in her way so I really should go.

She’d drifted within thirty yards of where I’d been trying my level best to coax the new state record bluegill from when I turned to look at her.  She was wearing bib overalls with short hair and wearing a ball cap.  Women didn’t wear ball caps as far as I knew.  And so now I knew for certain that she was different, that the whispers had something to them and I probably didn’t want to get too close to her.

I sit back and grabbed the oars to head for the safety of shore when suddenly I hear her grunt and her pole suddenly dropped toward the waters’ surface.  She pulled back and the water erupted twenty feet out from her boat.  The battle is brief and somehow amazingly efficient as I watch her reach for her net and with one hand on the pole and the other on the net she lifts the Northern Pike out of the water and into her boat.  Today I would say it was all very businesslike and nothing like the sorts of fish versus fisherman I’d seen on television.  But in that moment I didn’t have words for what I’d just witnessed.

And almost as quickly she lifted her catch up out of the net with the lure still in its mouth and her fingers in its gills.  She held it up to me, this young boy who was afraid to even come close to her, and standing there in her overalls and baseball cap she smiled at me.

There are so many moments in life you wish you could relive and maybe, just maybe, you might do something different.  That was one of those moments when I wish the prejudice and fear that had been placed in me by a world of simple people with unfounded fears and prejudices of their own might have been replaced by a courage I couldn't find within me.  But the truth is I know I wouldn’t have done anything different.  I would have done exactly what I’d been programmed to do when faced with something or someone different and that was to row back to the shore as quickly as I could and find the safety of solid ground and believe that I was safe.

My path never crossed Gertie’s again.  I never saw her on the river and I never knew what she did in her life.  I do seem to recall that she got a photograph of her and that Northern Pike in the local newspaper as I would that summer with a sucker I caught just below the dam that was almost as big as me.  But mine was a sucker and Gertie’s was a Northern Pike in that four foot range and everyone knew who the fisherman was.

The fly rod and the reel now reside with me and the truth is I’ve never caught a thing with it though I cherish them dearly.  I love the memory of pulling out the line and first with a large swing of the wrist and arm and then smaller, more gentle ones, I would work the line and the lure as close to my desired target as I possibly could.  The flow and the rhythm and watching the line curl up and out only to softly, almost silently fall out and away from me on the waters’ surface.

Still more than that I love what that fly rod taught me all those years ago though it took me a very long time to understand what I’d been taught.  I learned that those moments to learn, to experience something new in my life, to drop my defenses and take a chance, to let go of my fear if only for a moment come seldom at best.  To have simply smiled back at the woman wearing the overalls and baseball cap, holding her catch up to me and smiling at me might have broken down walls that would instead remain upright and strong for years to come. 

I never knew the real story of Gertie but I came to understand that the things that had been whispered, whether I understood what they meant or not, didn’t matter when it came to the person.  I could very likely have learned a lot about fishing from Gertie had I only rowed over to her when my gut told me it was the right thing to do.  Yeah, I might have learned a lot about fishing and maybe a bit about life as well.

Dad said she was the best fisherman on the river but that smile as she held that fish up for me to see said she was a whole lot more than that.