Fishing for words

My favorite fishing words

Last Sunday I had the chance to attend and speak briefly at the National Sporting Library and Museum's Field Day. It was a chance to visit my old stomping ground in and around Middleburg, Virginia. The Field Day included crafts, fly casting lessons, fly tying demos, and art vendors. In the afternoon was the IF4™ International film festival showcasing a variety of fly-fishing films.¹

The National Sporting Library and Museum has an impressive collection of books about fly-fishing. As I was browsing through the stacks, one of the attendees asked me about my favorite fly-fishing writing. I responded that while there a number of authors that I enjoy, there were three passages that I considered truly exquisite writing. One about brook trout, one about water and one about the why of fly-fishing.

The end of Cormac McCarthy’s ”The Road,”

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

The end of Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It,”

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.”

Robert Traver’s “Testament of a Fisherman,”

“I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly; because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape; because, in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion; because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience; because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don't want to waste the trip; because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters; because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness; because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there; because maybe one day I will catch a mermaid; and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant – and not nearly so much fun.”

1. You can see trailers of the films on their website.