Class is in Session
Many of us don’t see much on our travels because we don’t know what we’re looking at… Often we enter a piece of wilderness somewhat like a scuba diver entirely ignorant of marine biology. As an instance, hunters tend to concentrate on the quality and variety of their weapons rather than on a close knowledge of the habits and habitat of their prey. — Jim Harrison
All the mechanics of fly fishing can be reduced to a single root principle. There is one fundamental truth that can reduce every beautiful theory, every scientific fact about fish and fishing to irreducible irrelevance. It’s one of those self-evident truths we prefer to ignore, “You simply can’t catch a fish where he ain’t.” — Ken Abrames
My confidence wavers between extremes while fishing, either convinced that what and how I’m fishing will undeniably hook a fish if one’s there to be hooked at all, or unclear whether what I’m doing is more of an exercise in odds and coincidence, rather than logic. When in the extreme latter states — fueled, at least in part, by slow fishing — it feels as if something is lacking or missing altogether, that my approach, whatever it may be at the time, is limited by some gap in understanding.
I’m referring to fly fishing for trout in a river, a relatively simple target quarry that is either eating or resting or hiding or spawning; more often than not, they are consuming. With the assumption that the question (what will the trout take?) indeed has an answer (a correct presentation), then without supporting or refuting evidence, must I assume that my proposal was incorrect? In other words, if they are not biting, is it them or me?
I pride myself on a little more than thirty years of fly fishing experience, and no doubt benefit from the decades of practice that I have, but I also recognize that such a tenure is a handicap as well. Thirty years of trout fishing tells me what is likely to hook a trout in many scenarios, but doesn’t always tell me what else will, or what will when something else won’t. In the seasons of an angler, a Trial & Error phase of extravagant experimentation eventually, inevitably, wanes and when it does, that same angler is left with what they have learned which is, to some degree, incomplete. In the process of learning to fly fish, our own successes and preferences later become a limiting factor in our education, in that we stopped trying new things.
But this isn’t written in stone or blood, it just happens to be. Why not return to intensive experimentation, intentionally? This is where my own experience and understanding ends.
A lack of understanding is not an inability to understand; rather, it is the absence of the lesson. And to learn any lesson, no matter who the teacher is, ourselves included, simply requires the time and the willingness.
I’ve held on to these quotes above for some time, knowing that they were linked in some way, and they have resurfaced repeatedly. They humble me in that they illuminate my shortcomings as an angler: an incomplete and insufficient understanding of the ecosystem, and a failure to study what needs studying.
So.
Class is now in session, and I’m building the syllabus. What would you add to the curriculum?
