Word: fish
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...about process," he says, "fly-fishing and everything else. To fish with a fly is to imitate the fly at its various stages of development. As the fly is born and grows, it changes at different times of the day and year. Sometimes the fish go for the nymph, the youngest stage, at the bottom of the river. Sometimes they wait for the flies when they are emerging upward, attached to a self-created gas bubble. When the fly matures, it lies helpless on the top of the water until the bubble explodes and frees its wings. The fish will...
...begins my education by showing me dry-fly casting on a path above the river. Move the arm, not the wrist; keep the arc of the cast between 2 and 10 o'clock. But today the fish we are going for, whitefish and cutthroats, are loitering on the bottom. So we will wet cast and roll cast instead, with little weights on the line and flies that look like nymphs. Roll casting requires less arm movement. You swing out the line upriver and let it drift down in a natural motion. I find I'm not half bad at this...
...sort of fishing guide who takes you to the fish, points out the fish, tells you to keep your rod pointed down and when to "strip"--tug the line. All that baby-sitting will produce, he says, is a caught fish. What Chouinard wants to produce is an act of understanding. He teaches me about the different water speeds at three different depths. He shows me how to "mend the line," to slow up the motion of the fly. After 20 minutes of correcting and watching me, he suddenly leaves, and I do not notice his leaving...
...roll casting, as if I had walked there by myself. Out goes the line, like a river winding on a river. The fly whips and curls. I strip the line. I am beginning to see what he means by process. It is far more satisfying to cast for a fish than to have one on your hook. The consequence completes the process, so it is necessary to the process. But it also carries a kind of disappointment in completion...
...that have appeared on the river. Two fishermen sit on raised chairs at the bow and stern of each boat. A guide sits in the middle and rows. "They won't catch a thing," says Chouinard, "because they're dry casting. Besides, you don't need a boat to fish this goddamn river. All summer I haven't seen one other person walking the river." Chouinard is dead on; the men don't catch a single fish among them...