The Long Cast

Photo by Dave Merwin

Those that fish for trout are fools. They are the optimists who cling to hope despite the clear lack of evidence that there is none. And we maintain this ridiculous pursuit because of the sheer poetry of evenings like the one I experienced when I was eleven or so.

Fishing for stillwater trout in the eastern United States is a special kind of fool's errand. Just as skittish as their western brethren, but fewer, and cruising around in clear water with plenty of time to examine their quarry. The flies that are desperately trying to complete their very short life cycles are "sipped" from the surface as they strive to graduate, get a job, find a mate, start a family, build a career, retire, and die in 24 hours.

Large trout cruise the feeding lanes, lazily looking for food. They have a sinuous movement that looks lackadaisical. Leading with the head, they create a slow twist down their body that propels them forward through the water column. In reality, they are a lightning bolt ready to fire. You are one bad move from watching them rocket away if your line dares to land with anything louder than an angel's whisper.

The only exception to this is when a hatch is on. When the insect of choice has left the comfort of home and makes its way to the surface to graduate and propel itself into the sky, trout seem indifferent to who or what you are, as long as you have precisely the right fly. If you have the right fly, the fish will take your offering repeatedly, no matter how terrible your cast. I have caught the same fish from the same hole on the same evening because of this behavior—more than once. I have snapped off flies in a trout's mouth only to catch that fish again and recover the fly fifteen minutes later. But I fish western trout now. It is a commonly held belief that trout west of the Rockies are dumber than those east of the Rockies.

My grandfather was the most elegant caster I had ever seen. He could do things that I didn't know were possible with a fly rod. And he seemed to do it with a level of panache that the rest of my family lacked. My father could cast further than anyone, and I don't remember seeing my uncle cast except that the fly was always precisely where it should be for him.

Watching my grandfather cast was a vision of long arms, white hair, and khaki colors. His waders would crease or stretch to follow his long-form as he reached through his entire body for a trout's bite. And when it came, his response was quick and efficient to set the hook.

This evening's fishing was on a beautiful section of the Norwalk River where the river met the pond above a dam. Deep channels at the entrance to the pond were next to the bank, and made for excellent trout habitat. It was going well for the trout by the evidence of the huge brown trout that had grown fat there.

It was a midsummer evening. The warmth of the evening wrapped itself around you and all the sounds of the day were muted and hushed. I still think of this time of day, the last hour before twilight, as a sublime gift from God. A moment's peace and a transition from one reality to another.

What made this particular stretch so beautiful was the gigantic white pines that were on a tiny island that split the primary current at the head of the pond. They created a green vertical barrier that blocked out light and forced one to look out to the pond to see the sky reflect its intentions in the water below. It was a very romantic place for a picnic, as I will discover later, and a perfect vantage point for three fly fishermen of various skill levels to watch a master attempt the Long Cast.

The Long Cast is something special. It requires grace and speed, and focus to control things that you can't possibly actually control. The Long Cast is the farthest that you can cast with precision. It is the farthest reach you can make and is on the edge of disaster. It requires a full extension of the body and a narrow path behind you for the backcast that pulls the line from the hand and shoots it out the tip of the rod, through a light breeze and straight to the target, folding out with the same touch of a single hair on a silk pillow. In order to pull this all off, you must be perfectly aligned, front and back, with nothing behind you to snag your fly.

This evening, my grandfather had spotted two large browns that were feeding on mayflies. But the hatch was not on. These trout were sipping flies and would require all the skill he could muster to pull off a presentation. It was beyond me. It might be beyond my grandfather.

The rest of us, my father, uncle, and I, had finished our fishing for the evening. We made our way back downstream and came upon my grandfather in the last light of the day. He had positioned himself in the river, slightly to the right of the main current with a narrow window of space behind him where the backcast could go. He was completely captured by these feeding trout that seemed an impossible distance away. We collected on the river bank to watch in silence. We felt the same excitement for my grandfather each time the trout rose. We stretched out with our minds as he stretched out his line and began to cast.

As Norman Maclean writes in A River Runs Through It, "It is an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o'clock." It's very important to keep the tip of the rod on a single plane so that the line does not drop as it travels through the air . Allowing it to drop will cause it to lose speed and start to open up the loops losing speed and power. Again from Norman Maclean:

"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."

My grandfather had tamed the natural man and each cast he made was right. His casts stretched out across the water, his arms long, his body curved towards the fish. The amber light of the evening only made it all the more magical. The fly would land and slowly drift, and a trout might rise to it. When a trout rises, this is where you find the fatal flaw of the Long Cast. In order to set the hook, you need to exaggerate the movement of the rod and line back and up. And there will always be a bunch of slack on the water and a flex in the line. So when a trout rises, you must strike hard, and you will often miss.

I don't remember if my grandfather actually caught a fish that day. I only remember his casts, our waiting with bated breath, and watching him pull off something beautiful.

Thirty years later, I was standing waist-high in a cold Idaho river. Deep canyon walls on either side and a deep pool in front of me. West slope cutthroats were sipping flies at the edge of my reach. My closest friends were standing on one of the cliffs above to watch me as I made my way as far as I could into the river to line up my backcast with where I wanted the fly to be delivered. I began casting, flexing my arms, arching my body, and focusing on the rising trout that waited at the end of my long cast. As soon as the fly hit the water, I remembered what he looked like all those years ago, and I smiled. I was making the Long Cast.

It might sound strange, but making the Long Cast is the reason I live in Oregon. That feeling, being connected through history and knowing that I can do this thing, keeps me on these large Western Rivers fishing for wild fish. If I'm honest, I don't care if I can catch trout. I want to be outside, feel the water at my waist, and stretch out to touch something wild.