A SPRING DAY AND OTHER THINGS

I did go fishing, as I promised in my last entry — two days later on the Rush River in west central Wisconsin, a common enough destination for those of us living in the Twin Cities. (See photo of my fishing partner of that day, Don Wisner.) The river was low, spooky low and the sunlight felt tentative, not quite springlike. At home later that night, I came across this passage in Roderick Haig-Brown's "Fisherman's Spring":

"I have not seen everything that is to be seen, or felt everything that is to be felt, far from it. But I know that worthwhile things will happen to me in the course of every day's fishing and that when they do happen I shall know enough to understand them and draw the utmost pleasure from them."

Worthwhile things, indeed. Spring. Friendship. The sounds of water moving.

The many writers who have chronicled our sport through the years give both texture and continuity to our sport's history. Their observations should keep us humble, aware that the gift that is fly fishing has been spread out over generations, and is not ours alone, on any given day.
If you're interested, we caught our fish, small brown trout and brookies, on dry flies. There were a few Blue-Wings and midge around, and a sliver of a late-afternoon moon floated above the limestone bluffs.