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A Fly Rod of Your Own (John Gierach's Fly-fishing Library) - Softcover

Buch 14 von 16: John Gierach's Fly-fishing Library

Gierach, John

 
9781451618358: A Fly Rod of Your Own (John Gierach's Fly-fishing Library)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1451618352 ISBN 13: 9781451618358
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

“After five decades, twenty books, and countless columns, [John Gierach] is still a master,” (Forbes) and his newest book only confirms this assessment, along with his recent induction into the Flyfishing Hall of Fame. In A Fly Rod of Your Own, Gierach brings his ever-sharp sense of humor and keen eye for observation to the fishing life and, for that matter, life in general.

Known for his witty, trenchant observations about fly-fishing, Gierach’s “deceptively laconic prose masks an accomplished storyteller…his alert and slightly off-kilter observations place him in the general neighborhood of Mark Twain and James Thurber” (Publishers Weekly). A Fly Rod of Your Own transports readers to streams and rivers from Maine to Montana, and as always, Gierach’s fishing trips become the inspiration for his pointed observations on everything from the psychology of fishing (“Fishing is still an oddly passive-aggressive business that depends on the prey being the aggressor”); why even the most veteran fisherman will muff his cast whenever he’s being filmed or photographed; the inevitable accumulation of more gear than one could ever need (“Nature abhors an empty pocket. So does the tackle industry”); or the qualities shared by the best guides (“the generosity of a teacher, the craftiness of a psychiatrist, and the enthusiasm of a cheerleader with a kind of Vulcan detachment”).

As Gierach likes to say, “fly-fishing is a continuous process that you learn to love for its own sake. Those who fish already get it, and those who don’t couldn’t care less, so don’t waste your breath on someone who doesn’t fish.” A Fly Rod of Your Own is an ode to those who fish that “brings a skeptical, wry voice to the peril and promise of twenty-first-century fishing” (Booklist).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Gierach was the award-winning author of more than twenty books about fly-fishing. He was beloved as “the voice of the common angler" (The Wall Street Journal) and inducted into the Fly-Fishing Hall of Fame in 2015. He lived in Lyons, Colorado, with his wife Susan de Castro McCann until his passing in 2024.

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A Fly Rod of Your Own

1. A FLY ROD OF YOUR OWN
The goal of fly-fishing isn’t just to catch fish, but to catch them with style. Or, to put it another way, no one ever sets out to be half-assed at anything. You’d recognize style when you saw it even if you didn’t know the difference between a fly rod and a pogo stick. (If you’re like me, it was the mere sight of a good fly-caster that finally sent you out shopping for a fly rod of your own.) Think of those fly-fishing films in which all the tailing loops and motorboat drifts ended up on the cutting room floor, leaving only the economy of effort and absence of theatrics you’d notice in anything that’s done so well it looks easy. Filmmakers will tell you this ineffable quality is as difficult to capture as it is to find. After all, the first rule of style is: don’t try to show off if you don’t have the chops. And the second rule is: don’t show off even if you do.

The fundamentals of fly-fishing take time and effort to learn, but once you get the hang of them you’ll begin to have days when you fish beautifully. You won’t be wrong if you feel that you’ve now entered the prime of your prime: the time when you’re old enough to know what you’re doing and young enough to do it without breaking a sweat. You can even be forgiven for thinking you’ve reached a pinnacle of competence and that from here on out it will always go this smoothly. It won’t, but every day on the water is still a fresh start, and every fisherman goes fishing expecting the best, just as every painter sits down at his easel planning to produce nothing less than a masterpiece.

I’m not one of those natural-born fishermen—it didn’t come easily, and I’ve always had to work at it—but I do have my moments. I’ve been fly-fishing for over forty years now, and even if I’m not the best wader, caster, fish spotter, or flytier, I’ve learned to work well within my limitations, like a three-legged dog that can still go for a nice, long walk. The effect is cumulative. You naturally bring everything you know to every day of fishing, and the more days you have under your belt, the more you bring. If nothing else, the fly rod that once seemed so strange and awkward will now be thoughtlessly familiar, and the push of current against your legs and the slippery, uneven bottom are no longer surprising.

Do you still remember the first time you waded into a river that tried to knock you down, and what a shock it was? I do, but only because I walk past the exact spot every few weeks and always shake my head over that dumb kid who tried to cross right there instead of thirty yards upstream where it’s so much wider, shallower, and easier. I wasn’t thinking clearly because I’d spotted a large trout rising in a side channel on the far side of the river—the biggest trout I’d ever seen there—and in my excitement I took the direct route. My father once told me never to take my eyes off my goal. He forgot to mention that I should also glance down at my feet from time to time to avoid falling on my face.

I didn’t catch that fish, and never saw it again. I wonder now if I imagined it.

There are few broad strokes in fly-fishing. It’s all specific details strung together in a precise order; too many details to think about, really, but over time you wear neural pathways and the process resolves itself into something like instinct. This happens gradually and comes from nothing but repetition. There are no shortcuts, and the hunt for shortcuts only distracts you from the business of letting the craft become second nature. Eventually you lose track of how little you think about it until someone asks you to teach them how to fly-fish and you do have to think about it. Why can’t you explain it better than you do? Well, partly because you’re not a casting instructor, but also because by now you’ve made hundreds of fine adjustments that you’re no longer even aware of.

Still, some days you fish brilliantly and some days you don’t, for reasons that are never clear. Often it has to do with the quality of your concentration. Fly-fishing isn’t as hard as some make it out to be, but it does demand your full attention, so if you’re worried that your investments are going south or that your wife is cheating on you, chances are you won’t fish well. It sounds like heresy, but there really are days when you should have stayed home to take care of business instead of going fishing.

Other times it’s as inexplicable as any other kind of off day. Yesterday you waded sure-footed through fast, waist-deep current, flicking accurate casts at will; today you’re stumbly in six inches of water and your fly finds every twig and leaf in range. Maybe you should have checked your horoscope before leaving home.

Or maybe it’s garden-variety stage fright. I almost always fish better with friends or when I’m alone and unobserved than when there are strangers around—especially strangers who stop to watch or, worse yet, train a camera on me. There are some casters who don’t mind an audience and a few showboats who thrive on the attention, but most of us can do without unsolicited reviews.

Once I was steelhead fishing on the Sandy River in Oregon with a guide named Mark. It was my first trip with a two-handed rod, and I confessed to him that I was self-conscious about my spey casting. He just shrugged (guides can be ambivalent about a client’s “feelings”). But then a little while later we came around a bend and saw a lone fisherman halfway down the run making one effortlessly perfect spey cast after another. Mark said, “Just stand here and stare at the guy for a few minutes and watch what happens.” We did, and sure enough, as soon as he noticed us, he got flustered and pooched his next cast. Mark was just trying to show me that even those who know what they’re doing can be ill at ease about their casting, but I immediately felt guilty about it. As a demonstration this was educational, but it was also pointlessly mean.

Years later I ran into Mark and told him my spey casting had improved since we’d fished together. He said, “Well, it would have had to.”

For all the talk about innovation and the hot new fly patterns, rods, reels, lines, tactics, and destinations, most days fly-fishing simply consists of going through the motions, and there’s nothing wrong with that. (Woody Allen said, “Eighty percent of success is just showing up.”) The motions are often complex, subtle, and difficult to master, and they exist in the first place because they’re known to work. Certain kinds of steelhead and salmon fishing are entirely mechanistic, designed to work the water in identical increments with a controlled swing so that every fish in a run will see your fly swimming at the same depth and speed. This kind of fishing usually goes best when it’s done in a kind of trance, which is a good thing, because a trance is unavoidable. Trout fishing is sometimes more surgical, especially when you’re casting to rising or visibly nymphing fish and the accuracy of your cast and the quality of the drift are crucial, although fishing is still an oddly passive-aggressive business that depends on the prey being the aggressor.

The particulars are always unique and sometimes surprising, but over time you see fewer and fewer things that you’ve never seen before, and what seems like inspiration often involves nothing more than going through a second or third set of motions, as in, “When all else fails, fish a beetle.” On the other hand, genuine creativity breaks...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1451618352
ISBN 13 
9781451618358
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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