Winter Pontification

I haven’t posted anything for a while because it’s “winter” in Alabama. So fly rods have been broken down and stowed away for a couple of months while I spend my outdoors’ time looking for deer and wood ducks.

However, I do have a pontificating post to add as I daydream about redfish and tarpon. I am often asked why I love to fly fish so much. There is never a simple or even single answer to a question dealing with an obsession, but as I was recently looking over a few photographs from the fall, a specific photograph of a South Carolina marsh and another of a Belize permit flat made me aware, seemingly in an instant, of one of the driving factors in my obsession.

Fly fishing in areas such as coastal salt marshes and turtle grass flats are akin to being presented with a challenging riddle that requires total concentration and awareness in the present. When one arrives on the edge of marsh or flat, either on foot or on the bow of boat, the water often looks empty. There may be an occasional ripple on a calm surface, but again, there often aren’t any obvious signs of life.  There are of course those rare occasions (for me anyway) when you pull up on a flat that is exploding with life – birds crashing the surface, and fish and shrimp jumping. More often than not the water appears to be empty, at least at fist glance.

Redfish Marsh in South Carolina

Of course the flat or marsh isn’t empty, so the initial scan over the water can be deceiving. It often takes me time to adjust both my vision and concentration in order to focus on sometimes very subtle clues - a slowly moving shadow, a brief glimpse of a tail, and wakes made by single fish - that fish are indeed present. For me, few of these clues are immediately apparent; its almost as if I have to reprogram my senses away from the human world and onto the natural world. This is especially true on slow days when clues are few and far between, and a buzzing cell phone or impending deadline can easily make the mind wander away from the water off the bow.

And while my ultimate goal is to catch the fish I see, there is also a reward in simply seeing a fish, particularly before the guide points out the same fish. When I spot a fish first, I feel as though the guide and I are on the same page, working in tandem, rather than me being completely dependent on the guide’s better-trained eyes and senses. I imagine guides also appreciate fishing with a client who has their senses invested in the moment, who aren’t always waiting to be told where to cast.

When I’m on a flat or in a marsh, completely focused on the water’s subtle clues, I often think about a line that Peter Matthiessen wrote in The Snow Leopard, “When one pays attention to the present, there is great pleasure in the awareness of small things…” For me, there is amazing pleasure in spotting a tailing fish, a cruising stingray, or a motionless, brightly colored sea star among the dull sea grass. The world would be a better place if everyone had something in their life that allowed them to be truly present – no phones, no deadlines, no obligations – true focus on the water off the bow. 

Permit Flat - Belize