The Religion of Trout
 As
a Scot and a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature
was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow,
I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling
from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed
God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count
and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain
power and beauty. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the
word "beautiful." After he buttoned his glove, he would
hold his rod straight out in front of him, where it trembled with
the beating of his heart. Although it was eight and a half feet
long, it weighed only four and a half ounces. It was made of split
bamboo cane from the far-off Bay of Tonkin. It was wrapped with
red and blue silk thread, and the wrappings were carefully spaced
to make the delicate rod powerful but not so stiff it could not
tremble.
Always it was to be called a rod. If someone called it a pole,
my father looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines
would look at a recruit who had just called a rifle a gun. My
brother and I would have preferred to start learning how to fish
by going out and catching a few, omitting entirely anything difficult
or technical in the way of preparation that would take away from
the fun. But it wasn't by way of fun that we were introduced to
our father's art. If our father had had his say, nobody who did
not know how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching
him. So you too will have to approach the art Marine and Presbyterian-style,
and, if you have never picked up a fly rod before, you will soon
find it factually and theologically true that man by nature is
a damn mess. The four-and-a-half-ounce thing in silk wrappings
that trembles with the underskin motions of the flesh becomes
a stick without brains, refusing anything simple that is wanted
of it. All that a rod has to do is lift the line, the leader,
and the fly off the water, give them a good toss over the head,
and then shoot them forward so they will land in the water without
a splash in the following order: fly, transparent leader, and
then the line-otherwise the fish will see the fly is a fake and
be gone.
Of course, there are special casts that anyone
could predict would be difficult, and they require artistry-casts
where the line can't go over the fisherman's head because cliffs
or trees are immediately behind, sideways casts to get the fly
under overhanging willows, and so on. But what's remarkable about
just a straight cast-just picking up a rod with a line on it and
tossing the line across the river?
Well, until man is redeemed he will always take a fly rod too
far back, just as natural man always overswings with an ax or
golf club and loses all his power somewhere in the air: only with
a rod it's worse, because the fly often comes so far back it gets
caught behind in a bush or rock. When my father said it was an
art that ended at two o'clock, he often added, "closer to
ten than to two," meaning that the rod should be taken back
only slightly farther than overhead (straight overhead being twelve
o'clock).
Then, since it is natural for man to try to attain power without
recovering grace, he whips the line back and forth making it whistle
each way, and sometimes even snapping off the fly from the leader,
but the power that was going to transport the little fly across
the river somehow gets diverted into building a bird's nest of
line, leader, and fly that falls out of the air into the water
about ten feet in front of the fisherman. If, though, he pictures
the round trip of the line, transparent leader, and fly from the
time they leave the water until their return, they are easier
to cast. They naturally come off the water heavy line first and
in front, and light transparent leader and fly trailing behind.
But, as they pass overhead, they have to have a little beat of
time so the light, transparent leader and fly can catch up to
the heavy line now starting forward and again fall behind it;
otherwise, the line starting on its return trip will collide with
the leader and fly still on their way up, and the mess will be
the bird's nest that splashes into the water ten feet in front
of the fisherman.
Almost the moment, however, that the forward order of line, leader,
and fly is reestablished, it has to be reversed, because the fly
and transparent leader must be ahead of the heavy line when they
settle on the water. If what the fish sees is highly visible line,
what the fisherman will see are departing black darts, and he
might as well start for the next hole. High overhead, then, on
the forward cast (at about ten o'clock) the fisherman checks again.
The four-count rhythm, of course, is functional. The one count
takes the line, leader, and fly off the water; the two count tosses
them seemingly straight into the sky; the three count was my father's
way of saying that at the top the leader and fly have to be given
a little beat of time to get behind the line as it is starting
forward; the four count means put on the power and throw the line
into the rod until you reach ten o'clock-then check-cast, let
the fly and leader get ahead of the line, and coast to a soft
and perfect landing. Power comes not from power everywhere, but
from knowing where to put it on.
"Remember," as my father kept saying, "it is an
art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two
o'clock."
Norman MacLean, from A River Runs Through It
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