W

ith the stealth of a Navy SEAL, Father Jake Anderson creeps through tall grass on the bank of a small stream in northeast Iowa. He stays low to the ground as he glances at the current flow, his right hand grasping a fly rod. When he spots a change in current where a brown trout might lie in ambush waiting for a bug to float by, he puts his fly rod in motion.

The back-and-forth movements are smooth and snappy, the rod seeming like an extension of his arm. The keen attention to detail, the passion for hooking trout on his assortment of hand-tied flies, and more than two decades of experience wading streams in several states have made him an expert in the eyes of anyone who fishes with him — though far less so in his own eyes.

On this particular trip to a state that is home to miles and miles of blue-ribbon trout streams, he is joined by 13 other men, including a priest he has fished with, and another man who was ordained to the priesthood just days after the retreat. It is an annual men’s fly fishing retreat, complete with a spiritual theme and a patron saint — St. Zeno of Verona, after whom they have named a group they formed, with members going on local outings throughout the year that sometimes include wives and children.

The 11 laymen at the retreat belong to the parishes of St. Michael and St. Mary in Stillwater, where Father Anderson served as parochial vicar from 2015 to 2018. He was looking for an activity that could draw men together for fellowship, fun and faith, and discovered that there were several parishioners who shared his passion for fly fishing. Among them was Pat Houlton, 73, who helped get the group — St. Zeno Anglers — started in 2016 and helped Father Anderson launch the first fly fishing retreat four years ago.

Also making the retreat were Father Jim Livingston, with whom Father Anderson has fished in recent years and who is pastor of St. Paul in Ham Lake, and Father Julian Druffner, who was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, May 28.

Father Anderson’s devotion to what some call an “art” started when he was 11 and growing up on a small farm near Baldwin, Wisconsin. He remembers exactly when he first desired to pick up a fly rod.

“It was a June day,” recalled Father Anderson, 37, who was ordained in 2015 for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and now serves at St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center in Minneapolis. “My mom went shopping and my dad wasn’t working that particular day. And, he said, ‘Hey, do you want to watch a movie?’ I said, ‘Sure.’”

The movie was “A River Runs Through It,” a fly fishing drama produced by Robert Redford in 1992 and starring Brad Pitt. It won an Oscar that year for cinematography, with spectacular river and mountain scenes filmed in Montana. After watching the movie, Father Anderson was hooked on fly fishing.

“That day, I said, ‘Dad, I want to learn how to do that,’” Father Anderson said.

So, he did. His father, Mark, who has since died, went to the garage, pulled out an old fly fishing rod that he had made while in college, and started teaching his young son how to cast.

“I started practicing in the yard and then went to Fleet Farm and bought some cheap rubber hip waders,” Father Anderson recalled.

The Rush River was just a few hundred yards off their property, and he started making regular trips there on his bike, wearing the hip waders while pedaling. He quizzed people who were fly fishing, took copious notes, and also poured over books on the subject.

His passion grew and continued through formation for the priesthood at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul. He got away to fish whenever he could, and grabbed fellow seminarians to join him. He took day trips during his free time, and he waded miles of streams with his fly rod in search of trout. He enjoyed teaching other men to fish, but even more, he sought to “deepen a sense of fraternity.”

This year’s retreat took place May 21-24, with fly fishing sessions in the mornings and afternoons, and retreat talks, prayer and Mass interspersed during other parts of the day. For Father Anderson, it’s as easy to mingle faith with fly fishing as it is to drop a hand-tied “woodchuck caddis” into a trout’s line of vision.

“We want to just keep it as simple as possible,” he explained. “It’s not like a retreat center. You’re not going into formal silence and there’s not three meditations a day. It’s more like just taking something guys like doing and yet having the Lord at the center.”

It works. Men arrived promptly on Sunday for this year’s retreat, and all of them brought enthusiasm and attentiveness to the opening Mass, which Father Anderson celebrated outside on a deck of the large cabin where the men were staying. He engaged them with a homily about the ascension of Jesus, with conversations about spiritual and earthly topics continuing through dinner and well after sunset around a campfire.

“There’s something beautiful” about going on the retreat, said Mark Setterstrom, 39, who is married children and at one time played in the NFL. “I know these men so deeply. There’s such a deep commonality that comes together, not just from the fishing, but (from) spending time together in the Eucharist, in prayer, and then in God’s great creation.”

When the retreat dates — usually sometime in — are put on the calendar, “I make it a priority” to up, Setterstrom said. “This is the most deeply manly thing most of us will get in the entire year.”

For him, it boils down to one thing: “We know through this.”