When I started fly fishing the sport still had something of an underground vibe. I remember practicing for months, casting on the lawn of the family home in sunny Southern California, well before I tried casting to a fish (my neighbors probably thought I was nuts).
Thankfully, I caught a trout on my first real fly fishing trip and have been a convert from “less-exotic” fishing methods ever since.
Many of us followed similar rites of passage into the world of fly fishing.
— You acquired your first rod. Ideally, something cheap. If it was inherited from a wayward uncle, all the better.
—You practiced casting far longer than you needed to, perhaps because you were intimidated by the otherworldliness of the sport.
—You caught your first fish on a fly. That’s the first stage of fly fishing, by the way. The Stages of Fly Fishing is a different list.
— You proceed through the remaining stages of fly fishing: catching all the fish, catching the biggest fish, catching a certain fish a certain way, catching the joy of just being on trout water.
— You read “A River Runs Through It.”
When I bought my first serious fly rod, an Orvis six-weight, the salesperson practically tried to force that book on me. Norman Maclean’s classic about family tragedy told through the lens of fly fishing, was published less than a decade before I purchased that rod. Then, as now, the fly-fishing world was obsessed with that book.
I didn’t need the fly-shop recommendation. I was in college and beginning to experiment with writing, so I knew about “River.” I don’t remember exactly when I read it, but it was during those early years when fly fishing seemed so new.
The above list of the stages of fly fishing within a list of the rites of passage of fly fishing may seem unnecessarily complex, but complicated is how fly fishers prefer the world. They, we — I’m a member of the tribe after all — subscribe to the belief that simplicity is always improved by adding complication. Often it is, but if you haven’t yet learned there’s no “always,” you’re either too young to know better or not bright enough.
Maclean’s book is a handy guide for people like the person I was when I first read it — young and just learning that bit about there being no “always.” Always, after all, is a doctrine of youth.
For example: “I’d always intervene, forcing my brother off his trajectory of self-destruction.” You eventually learn most folks don’t get off that trajectory unless they decide for themselves to dismount.
That first read was more than 40 years ago and while I’m not sure how many times I’ve reread it, I know that last time was before the movie came out in 1992, simultaneously removing fly fishing’s underground vibe, forever. I’ve read bits and pieces of it through the years, often when I’m writing about it, but I only reread it again, from beginning to end, this month.
This story, which has resonated so powerfully with me for so long, means something different to me today.
Rereading it reminded me what a con artist memory can be. This fraudster had me convinced scenes from the movie were passages from the book. Read “River” and watch the movie in quick succession, as I did recently, and you realize the book merely seasons the film. The character names and themes are the same, but the movie and book occupy unique worlds.
There’s another difference. I was about the age of the Maclean brothers when I read “River” for the first time. I had a lot of life and fly fishing ahead of me — marriage, children, a career, divorce. I’m in the Rev. Maclean demographic now and the story affirms another, happier message than the Maclean family’s tragedy.
There’s nothing better than fishing with your kids.