Flyfishing

Fly fishing is simply trickery by illusion. We are making something that is not food for fish look like food, and then trapping the hungry instinctual beast on a hook and pulling him to ourselves.

How? Our magic is in simple physics. A line so thin it is not seen, a bunch of hairs and feathers wrapped on a sharp hook to look like a mosquito, or whatever the fish is a predetor of, and a way of throwing that cannot be detected. We extend our reach with a long thin stick, and we extend our throwing distance by the same. And what are we throwing? Not the fly, but the line itself. Rod, reel, line, fly, and a person to put it all together and drive it.

I was amazing tonight, as I put together my first flyfishing rod and learned the knots and different parts. I've been following written instructions for the most part, and bumbling along, trusting that this rod, reel, line, and fly somehow come together to form a beautiful tool. Everything is awkward in my hands. I am not familiar with any part of it, except that the far end of my rod moves faster than the end in my hand, which means speed, which means velocity, which means I can send an object flying at a target if I can release at just the right moment. In flyfishing, the target is a spot on the surface of the water with the fly landing as if it simply drifted there by hapinstance, like a live fly, which is accomplished by varying weights of line to dissapate the energy used to throw it out there in the first place. I can bring down Goliath with one stone if God is with me. In this case, God equals accurate manipulation of matter and energy.

I hooked one fish tonight, a lake trout. I wasn't even looking when he bit, but things started flopping, and I tried to reel him in. He got away when my friend and I were just getting him to shore. I had no idea what to do except spin and pull and react. Everything else had been done before, by millenium of experimenting and trying to catch fish, and putting all sorts of tricks together. We are wonderfully made indeed.