The Fly Fisher's Reader. - book reviews

National Review, May 28, 1990 by Wick Allison

MAY is the cruelest month for the desk-bound fly fisher. Outside his office window the glass and concrete towers are fused with sunlight, which only reminds him that the trout streams are warming and the tiny mayflies are hatching. This little book arrives just in time. Leonard Wright's "unabashedly biased sampling of angling's finest literature" provides some respite from the itch to head for the hills.

How does the fly caster differ from other fishermen? In tackle, for one thing: the fly caster will use only an imitation of a natural insect; the fisherman will use any bait th at works. But mostly the difference is in purpose: the fly caster is simply not all that concerned about catching fish.

It's as if, having invested all that time and money in expensive new equipment ($2,000 minimum-and that's only to get started), in lessons on how to make the long, looping casts, in more lessons on how to identify and match the various species of insect the trout find appetizing, and in travel expenses to reach the streams where trout proliferate, the exhausted student reaches a new plane of existence in his life as a sportsman. Bedazzled and intimidated by the intricacies of the sport he has entered into, he merely wants to get in and out of the stream without making a fool of himself. The fish can take care of themselves.

Oh, one ends up catching fish, of course: on my first day out, I caught eight in one hour, a miracle never to be repeated in seven years of religious pursuit.

But the pursuit is the secret joy of fly fishing. This is a sport of calculation and strategy. When the fly fisher enters a stream he is entering an ecology whose complexities he must learn to read. Low water or high. Soft breeze or hard. Cloud cover or bright sun. Cold water or warm (or too warm). Are the fish rising.? To what? Are they feeding on the surface or just below? Nature must be patiently wooed, and she is rarely won.

Izaak Walton aside, fly casting as we know it today is a relatively new sport. The first mention of the dry fly-that is, the imitation of a newly hatched insect floating on the surface of the stream-was made in an English magazine only in 1851. Fly fishing didn't become popular in America until the 1890s, through the efforts of the legendary Theodore Gordon. Now, of course, it has become chic, a status sport.

In gathering together these engrossing little stories, however, Leonard Wright reminds us that, new as it may be, fly fishing captures something very old, the pleasure of sport for sport's sake alone. Its traditions may not be ancient, but they have ancient roots, and its pieties are the pieties of the wise men of every age.

(Michael Oakeshott in one of his books quotes the Chuang Tzu: Wen Prince Wen Wang was on a tour of inspection in Tsang, he saw an old man fishing. But his fishing was not real fishing, for he did not fish in order to catch fish, but to amuse himself. So Wen Wang wished to employ him in the administration of government, but he feared his own ministers, uncles, and brothers might object. On the other hand, if he let the old man go, he could not bear to think of the people being deprived of his influence.")

Mr. Wright has combed the mountainous literature on fly casting (it is a sport which attracts an uncommon number of good writers) to select his favorites over the years. His oldest is from 1881; his most recent is from 1989. In between are vignettes from such masters as Red Smith, Ernest Hemingway, Sparse Grey Hackle, Nick Lyons, Thomas McGuane, William Humphrey, and Theodore Gordon himself.

These are not mere fish stories. Like the sport itself, they transcend their humble origins. Thomas McGuane's The Longest Silence" is quite simply the finest writing he's ever done. William Humphrey's "The Spawning Run" is a classic of self-deprecating humor. Corey Ford's The Best Loved Trout Stream of Them All" is a testament to that river of "ancient prestige" (quoting Theodore Gordon), the gentle Beaverkill, where fly casting in America was born and where its traditions are upheld with priestly reverence.

In capturing so much-the vainglories, desperate tactics, urgent temptations, humbling experiences, and glorious beauties of this singular sporting so few pages, Mr. Wright has added a new treasure to the canons of angling literature. He has done more than that. For this is more than a book that fly fishers will love, it is a book to make fly fishers of us all.