In fishing, many traits separate the men from the boys, but in my opinion, one thing we should all work toward is what I would call, for want of a better term, smoothness. Many of the great anglers I have fished with have had this trait above all others and it is the one thing that I continually strive for. This is the trait that unites sportsmen as diverse as the Grand Prix driver Juan Fangio, who was so smooth he rarely strained the cars he drove, golfers like Bobby Jones, and baseball players like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. There are always a few anglers blessed with genius and inspiration: towering casters, lead-footed deep river waders, anglers with astounding vision, and so on. But the angler who accepts both his gifts and limitations, who recognizes the importance of keeping his fly in the water, who abjures tackle tinkering once he reaches the river, and who strives to fish coherently throughout the day will usually, finally, succeed. Steelhead and salmon fishing exaggerate the importance of this. And sometimes, relatively unskilled anglers who are otherwise persistent and capable of sustained focus will outfish flashier types, better casters and even more experienced companions. I have seen steelhead rivers act with great leveling effect, rewarding the scrupulous-if-limited anglers and penalizing mere technicians, tackle nuts, distance casters, and fishing experts. A great angler like Bill Schaadt was a tremendous caster, an outstanding schemer and intimate with the rivers he fished, but what impressed me about him the few times we fished together was that he was tougher and more persistent than anybody I’d ever seen. He kept the fly in the water longer than anyone, ever. He was smooth and efficient. All of his strength and talent — indeed the overall design of his life — was at the service of keeping the fly fishing, which begins with casting a straight line. There are armchair anglers who can cast four kinds of curve but never a straight line except in dead still conditions. A late start in the morning prevents the fly from fishing; a crooked cast delays a fly from fishing; fly changing, leisurely meals and a forgotten bailing can all play a part in separating the fly from its job. Schaadt’s term was “lost motion.” Every angler should strive for its elimination, not so as to become an automaton but to facilitate smoothness.
Why do fishermen lie? This interesting question ought to be dealt with because it’s the single thing we are most famous for among the general public. I have a hunch that most anglers do not wish to compete but have found no successful way to avoid competition when fishing with others. I, for example, do not wish to compete and therefore do most of my fishing alone so that I may better absorb its mysteries, poetry, and intimations of mortality. On many occasions, however, I find myself fishing with others and it is then that I helplessly find myself competing, crowing at hookups, admiring some great thing about my tackle when I really mean myself. The lone angler, or even the one who just scooted around the bend from his companions, may fish and dawdle as he pleases, take in the migratory birds, the soaring hawk, the hunting mink, the glancing light on the riffle, the sound of a hollow bank. He may even catch fish. Moreover, upon meeting up with his retinue, he may dispense with matters of competition by lying about his results. How did he do? “Major poundage. A semi-load.” The most incredulous of his comrades have probably come by their disbelief honestly: they’ve been lying, too. So, all is well. A day in the life has been suitably taken in, and in this avalanche of lies, a kind of truth has been served. The only people any the wiser are the general public.
Sons
BOTH MY PARENTS were Irish Catholics from Massachusetts. My father had had enough of the Harp Way and was glad to get out of there and move to Michigan. My mother never accepted it and would have been happy to raise a nest of Micks anywhere between Boston and New Bedford. Every summer she did the next best thing and packed us children up and took us “home” to Fall River. My father seemed glad to watch us go. I still see him in our driveway with the parakeet in its cage, trying unsuccessfully to get my mother to take the bird too so he wouldn’t even have to hang around long enough to feed it. At the end of the summer, when we returned from Massachusetts, the bird would be perched in there but it was never the same bird. It was another $3.95 blue parakeet but without the gentleness of our old bird. When we reached into the cage to get our friend, we usually got bitten.
We traveled on one of the wonderful lake boats that crossed Lake Erie to Buffalo, and I remember the broad interior staircases and the brassbound window through which one contemplated the terrific paddlewheels. I hoped intensely that a fish would be swept up from deep in the lake and brought to my view but it never happened. Then we took the train, I guess it must’ve been to Boston. I mostly recall my rapture as we swept through the eastern countryside over brooks and rivers that I knew were the watery world of the fish and turtles I cared so madly about. One of these trips must have been made during hard times, because my mother emphasized that there was only enough money for us children to eat; and it is true that we had wild highs and lows as my father tried to build a business.
Many wonderful things happened during my endless summers with my grandmother, aunts, and uncles in Fall River, but for present purposes, I am thinking only of fishing. Those original images are still so burning that I struggle to find a proper syntax for them. In the first, my father arrived and took me up to see some shirttail cousins up in Townsend. A little brook passed through their backyard and, lying on my stomach, I could look into one of its pools and see tiny brook trout swimming. It was something close to the ecstasy I felt when I held my ear against the slots of the toaster and heard a supernal music from heaven ringing through the toaster springs. The brook trout were water angels and part of the first America, the one owned by the Indians, whose music I’d listened to in the toaster. I had seen the old Indian trails, their burial mounds and the graves of settlers killed in the French and Indian wars. For some reason, I understood the brook trout had belonged to the paradise the Indians had fought to keep. I knew King Phillip — or Metacomet, as the Indians called him — had eaten them.
All this seemed to be part of a lost world, like the world I was losing as my father became more absorbed in his work. We had good times together only when fish were present, and those brook trout are the first memories. It was casually easy for us to get along fishing; the rest was a bomb. I think of the fathers-and-sons day at his athletic club with particular loathing, as it was an annual ordeal. Silver dollars were hurled into the swimming pool for the boys to vie for. Each father stood by the pool, gazing at the writhing young divers and waiting for his silver-laden son to surface. Rarely coming up with a coin, I was conscious of appearing to be less than an altogether hale boy and hardly worth bringing to this generational fête, with its ventriloquists and Irish tenors or more usually, the maniacal Eddie Peabody on the banjo. All of this was an aspect of the big dust we were meant to make in our mid-American boom town where sport of the most refined sort quickly sank into alcoholic mayhem. Steaks in the backyard, pill-popping housewives, and golf were the order of the day, and many youngsters sought to get their fathers away somewhere in search of a fish. Most of our fathers were just off the farm or out of small towns and heading vertically upward into a new world. We didn’t want them to go and we didn’t want to go with them.