Carol Northcut | Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Have you ever thought about how few shortcuts there are in fly fishing except, perhaps, for using forceps to tie some knots? Whenever I try to take shortcuts, something bad happens. For instance, during practice last week, the fluff came off the leader. I reeled up the line but left the leader out to work on it and brought it inside the house. I set the reel on the end table. In the meantime, the rug needed a good vacuum. I saw that most of the tippet was rolled up. I didn’t see it, but there was sufficient length still out to reach the floor. The vacuum found it, quickly sucked it up like a largemouth inhaling a minnow. It ate the tippet and the entire front taper with the reel flopping around before I could kill the power. Toast.
To add insult to injury, after that day’s practice session, I didn’t roll up the measuring tape. It later snowed. My hubby didn’t see the tape and snowblowed it.
How about other shortcuts, like not checking for trees behind you before casting, or leaving a bunch of line in the water while moving up river and snagging it on rocks, or not checking whether you smashed the barbs until struggling to remove it from a fish. Or how about not running through the gear check list before leaving the house, or not looking around you after a lunch break to ensure you aren’t leaving anything behind like a net, or not checking the zippers on your pack/vest after changing flies, or not running through the gear list before leaving the parking spot or, or, or …. The litany of all the things I’ve done at least once could go on. I could have starred in Monty Python’s classic Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVYA3oTG8fg
Not all anglers are mindless twits in a hurry, but I’ve come to recognize that, for me, there are no shortcuts in fly fishing. I do better when I am calm and mindful. That happens most when I’m not in a hurry to keep up with someone else.