January 30, 2023 | Read Online

Gone Fishing.

Like Scientology, Fly Fishing is a religion I don't entirely understand.

Cole Schafer
January 30, 2023

Like Scientology, Fly Fishing is a religion I don't entirely understand.

Practitioners rave about the sport with such exuberance that one wouldn't be wrong in assuming that the trout perform fellatio on the fishermen upon capture.

However, despite my own enthusiasm for Fly Fishing––or lack thereof––I'll forever be fascinated by individuals who've developed a peculiar fascination with a particular craft, sport or hobby.

This is why, last week, I took some of my pals up on an offer to go Fly Fishing in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

It was 2 p.m. on a Wednesday when the six of us showed up at a fishing cabin in Walland, Tennessee that appeared to have been picked right out of an edition of Field & Stream.

The cabin itself was squatty, with a roof so low you could ascend it with a step ladder (or a particularly springy pogo stick). Fishing boots and waders hung from wooden pegs protruding from its hodgepodge walls in such abundance that the place could have just as easily been the inland headquarters of some King Crab Fishing enterprise.

Inside, it was surprisingly spacious, outfitted with several rocking chairs, a wood-burning fireplace, a mashed-down oriental rug, Fly Fishing rods in all shapes and sizes, spools of brightly colored line, more fishing boots, more waders, a computer monitor two decades too old, a leaky sink (I could have just imagined this given the cabin's aesthetic), a humming refrigerator packed with Coca-Cola and, of course, three fishermen––the tallest of which was forced to stoop in the shape of a mangled candy cane as not to skin the top of his head––who were to be our instructors for the day.

Our instructors soon led the six of us outside to a pond the size of a tennis court, handed us each a Fly Fishing rod, and explained to us how it differed from a regular fishing rod as we stared at the contraption in our hands as if we were holding alien engineering seized somewhere on Mars.

For the first half an hour, our instructors taught us three different casts: the overhead cast (imagine chopping wood), the sidearm cast (imagine swatting at a tennis ball) and the roll cast (imagine filling a bed sheet with a gust of air so as to lay it flat).

Not one of these casts came naturally to any of us. Or, at least not to me.

In fact, I couldn't help but feel spectacularly silly practicing them, like I had just binge-watched Harry Potter and gotten ahold of a spatula (or I was pretending to be one of those ground personnel on the airport tarmacs who wave the orange batons around to keep 747s from backing into one another).

When our guides saw us massaging our shoulders, our faces showing signs of physical discomfort––Fly fishing is one hell of a shoulder burner––they decided our training was over and advised us to climb into our waders and boots and meet them in a rushing stream a stone's throw away from the duck pond.

To avoid being trapped in a spiderweb of our own making, half the group hiked upstream while the other half traveled downstream.

I can't say what happened upstream because I was not there but downstream it was as if all the trout––upon hearing of our impending arrival––had held an emergency meeting and decided that they weren't going to bite, at anything, no matter how tantalizing.

After 5-minutes of casting, I caught a tree about the size of Bigfoot that was covered with so many Fly Fishing lures––the proper terminology is "flies" but I think "Fly Fishing flies" is a bit of a mouthful––that it looked like it was Christmas at Bass Pro.

My instructor came to my aid and said, "Yup, this tree has claimed a lot of flies."

As I watched him yank and pull at the rod like he was unearthing a particularly stubborn turnip, it took everything in me not to snarkily ask him why he kept placing his students in front of the fucking tree that had devoured more flies than a goddamn bullfrog.

He told me to keep fishing in the same spot––directly under Bigfoot––as that was where all the trout were.

I caught the tree two more times.

After spending two hours receiving not so much as a bite, my instructor said, "Alight, we have to head back to the cabin here soon, so I'm going to show you the trick I use when I absolutely HAVE to catch a fish."

He wore a shit-eating grin as he secured his "special fly" which was in the shape of a worm and, unlike most flies, was designed to not float on the surface but beat its whippy little tail underneath the water to draw the trout's attention.

He tossed a deep cast down river––nowhere near bigfoot––and his rod immediately bowed into a beautiful arch that spelled victory.

2-minutes later, he had in his net a 14-inch Rainbow Trout.

As we walked back––he with a smile on his face and me feeling mostly defeated––I asked him the obvious question you're probably asking yourself reading this now.

"So, uh, why don't you just teach us all that trick from the jump?"

He thought for a moment behind his polarized Costa shades that allow him to spot the spotted backs of trouts swimming in exceptionally murky water.

'Well, then it wouldn't be a trick anymore."

Somehow, despite my annoyance, this made sense.

When we got back to the cabin, I reflected on my day trudging balls deep in the ice-cold waters of Walland, Tennessee as I unlaced my water-logged fishing boots.

I think the reason the world feels less magical than it ever has before is because we aren't in it for the process nor the craft nor the work nor the experience. We're in for the tricks.

Like my city-slicker ass playing dress-up in my fisherman garb, the world doesn't actually want to fish, they just want the trick to catching the fish.

This is the very reason Artificial Intelligence was created. It was created because people, nowadays, want to skip the process and jump straight to the outcome.

What nobody realizes though––and I think this was something my Fly Fishing guide was trying desperately to teach me––is that the magic isn't in the trick but the process.

The magic of Fly Fishing isn't catching the 14-inch trout.

The Magic in Fly Fishing is accidentally hooking Big Foot. It's feeling the stream squeeze your legs, hips and belly as you lie dry inside your waders. It's experiencing the strange meditative flow of whipping your rod back and forth to throw the perfect cast. It's watching the water turn white over the backs of rocks. It's catching the freckled backs of trout breaking the surface to steal a dragonfly who has landed in wrong place at the wrong time.

Fly Fishing is a reminder to keep believing in magic; it's a reminder to escape a world obsessed with tricks and hacks and get-rich-quick schemes and AI-powered bullshit and just enjoy the process.

But, truth be told, I still kind of hate Fly Fishing.

By Cole Schafer.

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