FOCUS I’m dreaming of high summer and wet-wading the rivers and streams of glacial tributaries, where I can leave civilization behind.
© Photo Dana Harrison
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The Soul of Fly Fishing
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SLOW GRINDING STREAMERS George Daniel There’s a saying regarding nymph fishing: The difference between catching a fish and not catching a fish is often one split shot. I look at streamer fishing the same way. Adaptability is the driving force separating good anglers from great ones. I don’t believe in secret flies, leader formulas, or rigs. Instead, great anglers hone their skills to perfect all the little nuances that eventually add up to a big difference at the end of the day.
GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE Tim Myers Nova Scotia is home to the Minas Basin and the world’s highest tides. They surge with such force and volume that tidal bores travel up many rivers and temporarily reverse the direction these rivers flow. Many of these streams have large spawning runs of striped bass. The Stewiacke River is one of them.
RUNOFF’S DIRTY SECRET Ryan Sparks Spring runoff spooks many anglers off the rivers. As snowmelt trickles and eventually pours into mountain streams, rivers swell and become muddy. Many anglers hate it because it limits where they can fish. It makes their usual spots inaccessible or just plain impossible to fish effectively and many people stop fishing altogether. In fact, runoff can provide some of the best fishing of the year because it concentrates fish in predictable places and fishing pressure drops to zero. By knowing where to look and how to fish in these conditions, you can catch trout while other anglers wait for the rivers to clear.
FLIES FOR EURO-NYMPHING Jeremy Davies I’ve always been fascinated by the fervour with which people attack Europeanstyle nymphing. When they get into fishing this way they often don’t want to do anything else. I’m the first to admit that I’m not very skilled or experienced at European-style nymphing, but I am fascinated by the techniques, the flies and the people who are obsessed with it. I tie ten or twelve different flies, for this style of nymphing and these are the ones that have become my favourites.
INSIDE 12 42 46 48 50
Stream Lines Long Lines Profiles Wandering Currents Stillwater Secrets
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On the Vise Editor’s Choice Awards End of the Line Water Marks
© Photo Tim Myers | © On the Cover Dana Lattery flyfusionmag.com
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STREAMLINES
Derek Bird I’m always willing to share a few fly-fishing secrets. My favorite fly, for example, is the one the trout are taking. My favourite season is the one when trout are biting. My favourite stream is the one where the trout are plentiful and the anglers are few. © Illustration David Danforth relogear.com
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The Soul of Fly Fishing
Steelheading with Musk, Atwood, and Berry
I
went steelheading the other day. I’d like to tell you it was fantastic, but there was nothing significant to report. I woke up early on a day where I could have slept in. I made two stops on the way out of town, one to pick up breakfast and the other to grab coffee. Then I drove through torrential rain, darkness, and fog for nearly two hours. I swung flies all day and caught nothing. The trip wasn’t a total loss. The solitude and the repetitive motion of the steelheader’s dance reminded me that, in the words of the old country singer David Ball, “I’ve got a thinking problem.” The remoteness of the rivers and the inclement weather brought to mind the little things I often take for granted. Before I left the house, I already knew the rivers were nearly blown because of how much rain had fallen the week prior. I kept an eye on the forecast, but I was too excited to explore the rivers to call off the trip or to adjust my plans. I’d been spying on them on Google Earth a few weeks prior and already knew which runs I needed to fish and how much ground I had to cover to get to them. So a right hook from a Southeaster wasn’t about to put me on the canvas. Trekking through the old growth and the ferns and wiping rainfall from my face, the moment was as close as I’ll likely ever get to an old-fashioned personversus-nature conflict, where all I had to rely on was… my satellite locator if I got into trouble, my layers of protective outerwear shielding me from the elements, the studs in my boots allowing me to safely negotiate the slippery terrain, and my canister of bear spray if Mother
Nature chose to toss in one more undesirable variable. Google Earth, satellite locators, relatively accurate weather forecasts, and multiple fly rods that each cost close to a year’s worth of mortgage payments on the first house my dad bought in Vancouver in the ‘70s—It’s a little like the old adage: a person never really appreciates breathing until the airway becomes obstructed. Confession time. With all of the foreknowledge and safety nets provided to me by technological advancements, it’s easy for me to not even notice them. When I have access to all our pastime affords, it’s not long before I shed my fascination, which then gives way to reveal its ugly cousin, expectation. In an era where I’m consistently surrounded by special, I find it increasingly difficult to recognize a truly special moment. I fully understand the paradox here. Because by all appearances, it would seem that culturally we have never been more aware of special moments. Just spend time perusing social media. But the images on social media potentially have less to do with understanding the gravity of a moment and more to do with an innate desire to understand the gravity of ourselves. Again, I understand I’m dealing in generalizations, but maybe we upload our special moments only partly because they’re special, and partly because we’re sending them up like bat signals hoping that someone will see it and come to our rescue… rescue from what most of us aren’t really sure…maybe the mundane of what’s perceived as the day to day. We broadcast our signs to let others know that we are significant. But the more paths I’ve ambled down and the more casts I’ve taken the more I understand that those who
have a grounded understanding of their significance are often not the ones who consistently try to impress upon others their importance. The poem “This is a Photograph of Me” by the iconic Canadian writer Margaret Atwood explores this concept. The setting is pastoral in the sense the speaker describes rolling green hills and a little cabin near the shores of a secluded lake. But the poem takes a dark twist when the speaker explains that the photo of the idyllic setting was taken the day after she drowned in the lake, and if “you look long enough…you will be able to see” her. She alludes to the question of her significance when she says, “I’m in the lake, in the center…just under the surface.” Then she makes a sobering observation. She’s not sure how large or small she is because of the “effect of water / on light is a distortion.” In the same way I suspect regardless of the interactions a person receives with their photos that the potential exists to be uncertain because of the distance between the event itself and person on the other end clicking ‘like’. So why is it so difficult for me to appreciate the moment in the moment? I suspect because it’s part of my inherited human condition—I’ll call it EMS (Elon Musk Syndrome), where it’s tough to understand the greatness of a moment because we’re naturally inclined to look at others’ truly great moments thus downplaying our own. But I think I’m getting to an age where I’m finally starting to recognize that a moment like my tempestuous fishless steelheading day is a truly great moment even though I didn’t pull out the camera to take pictures because my hands were too cold and the rain was too persistent. It was special in the sense I’m finally starting to understand myself in the moment I’m in. And at my core I’m still only a skinny kid from the Kootenays who’s got a love for fly fishing embedded deep within my DNA to the point where I can smile knowing that a fishless day is equally as beneficial as a day where the trout are plentiful.
The days where the weather and the fish don’t agree with me I’m reminded of my role, which is to take part in the landscape and not to rise above it. It’s here in the torrential downpours on the thousandth fishless swing when my mind wanders and invites me to entertain difficult questions, the ones that make me realize I’ve been living portions of life based on fictitious assumptions rather than tested reality. Why do I assume more is better? When will I learn that traveling away from an issue will only delay the attention it requires? When will I finally understand that steelhead fishing provides me with way too much time to think?
Author Wendell Berry might approve of my pensive steelheading days. He identified with the notion that “true solitude” is found in nature, and this is where “One’s inner voices become audible.” In one of his poems he remarked if we become incapable of thought then “mere power and mere greed / will think for us.” Then in the next stanza he transforms from poet to sage when he forecasts our culture’s present emotional climate. Berry states that if we are unable to deny ourselves anything “then all that we have / will be taken from us.” Is it too much of a stretch to consider steelheading during a nasty storm an act of self denial?
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