Trout Water by Josh Greenberg

Author:Josh Greenberg [Greenberg, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2021-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

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Of course, Junker was demonstrating how to catch a fish in New Zealand every time he, well, caught a fish in New Zealand. Originally, I mistook his slow approach as part of his careful, slow-moving nature, and not a learned technique. Being the quintessential hustle player, I doubled down on my effort in lieu of my study, casting right between the eyes of every trout I saw, wondering if anyone had ever been skunked for an entire New Zealand summer in front of their new wife. Which made me think of the Thomas McGuane story where the wife of a permit fisher keeps saying bear down and the husband roars back I am bearing down. Was that our fate? Katy advising me to bear down while I unsuccessfully fired casts at big trout?

I eventually caught a New Zealand trout doing it my way, which meant it ate a fly that I rammed right between its eyes. I don’t remember the trout at all. You’d think, after all that bearing down I’d have perfect recall of my first New Zealand trout, but I don’t. But I guess, in the scope of what happened next, it makes sense. I knew as well as Junker that the fish was a fluke, the result of stubbornness.

Once I began paying attention to the fish, I got a whole lot better at catching them. If I understood what the fish were doing, I could usually fit myself—an entire person disguised as a fly—into their fate. I realized that fly-fishing is a series of miniature exercises of technique and thought bent toward a single deception. Map study. Gear check. Reorganize fly box. Well-tied fly. Tight knot. Observe the trout. Good cast. Fine drift. The cast to a feeding trout becomes the peak of a story the angler has been writing for at least months, if not years.

I’m not saying that I do this on every trout I see rise, or even on any given week, because I don’t. Not even close. Not hardly ever. But it exists as an ideal, and when I find it, I find the steadiness that I often lack. This ideal is simple: I fish as if the upstream bull watches and I will find no other trout but this one, the one I see now. There is nothing beyond this trout, and behind this trout are only the steps that brought me to it.

Back to Michigan, pre-New Zealand: I once caught a three-inch trout that was rising in an impossible-seeming lie on the upper Manistee during a long upstream wade with Junker. We caught a lot of trout that day, and some nice ones. But in recounting the day over some sandwiches at Subway, Junker reminded me of the three-inch trout in front of the stick, which seemed, to him, to stand above the rest as especially noteworthy. This wasn’t something that made sense to me then. But later I would see that it was connected to New Zealand,

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