I don’t want to get too dramatic here, but I have glimpsed the end of my fly fishing career.
It’s not imminent, but surgery may be required to forestall it.
After 40 years of fly fishing, I’ve finally given my casting-arm rotator cuff all it could handle. It’s torn and will likely take more than rest and recovery to get me back on the water. It’s only a week out from the injury, though, so I don’t know for sure. Certitude requires an MRI machine’s power to peer through tissue and reveal what the human eye can only see with exploratory surgery.
There’s a saying among the long-rod tribe that rotator cuff surgery is a sign of a serious fly fisher. I recalled that pearl this week, and for a moment, thought, “Well, at least I have confirmation. I’m finally serious about something.”
Then I dug a little deeper. Yes, rotator cuff injuries are more common with fly fishers than the general population, just as with major-league pitchers. Rotator cuff injuries are not inevitable, however, so long as a fly fisher uses good technique and maintains proper strength in the muscles supporting the shoulder ball joint. Good posture is also important. This hit especially hard when I recalled I never applied myself in finishing school when we walked about with books on our heads to develop poise and posture.
Ouch!
I don’t mean, “Ouch! It hurts when I move my shoulder.”
It was more like, Ouch! Five minutes of “research” on the internet transformed me from an “accomplished, serious fly fisher” — a status I have desperately pursued since I read “A River Runs Through It” — into a slouching, weak-muscled, incompetent-casting, fly-fishing troll.
Thanks, Google.
I suppose I’m guilty of all those casting vices to some degree, but I have been fly fishing for about 40 years and that’s a lot of repetitive motion to throw at any complex organic mechanism, such as my shoulder.
The manufacturers will love me for this — hopefully, enough to start sending me free gear to review — but this is one of the reasons buying as much quality as you can afford is a sound philosophy, at least when it comes to fly rods. Your 20-something rotator cuff may hold up just fine casting a budget rod all day, but its 60-something equivalent may have other ideas.
My last fishing excursion before my shoulder went to heck was with a budget 8-weight, fishing for carp. It’s not a bad rod, but I’ve cast high-end equivalents and there’s no comparison. The good stuff is just easier.
There wasn’t a moment when I felt the shoulder snap. I walked off the water fishless, but satisfied I’d at least found some feeding carp. None cooperated, but that’s how fishing goes.
Two days later, while I sat in the living room watching television and plotting a trip to Wyoming to fish in the Bighorns, I suddenly felt a piercing, increasing pain in my shoulder. By the time I went to bed, I was debating a trip to the emergency room just to get some pain meds to make it through the night.
I survived until morning and headed for the walk-in clinic. It was Friday and the pain and weakness in my arm was so severe the physician’s assistant who examined me was convinced I had a tear. She prescribed pain meds and scheduled me a Monday appointment with the shoulder doc.
This much I know: my 2025 summer fishing season is over, and my fall hunting season is in jeopardy, but at least I can look forward to surgery and months of physical therapy to get me through the dark times.
More importantly, at the end of this, there will be a first fish and more after that.
I’ve glimpsed the end of my fly-fishing career, but for now its time lingers beyond the horizon.