Coming back solo, and what counts as a good day
This is the last lesson in the last module, which means it is the point at which I step out of the boat, so to speak, and send you off to do this on your own.
I have been considering how to close it, and I keep returning to the same idea. The entire class has been building toward one afternoon on which you drive up the canyon by yourself, or down to the Provo, park the car, string up a rod with no one beside you to tell you what to fix, and simply fish. That is the actual finish line. Not a certificate, not a fish count. You, alone, capable of starting and completing a session without me.
So let us discuss how that day should proceed, and then let us define what "good" even means once I am no longer there to say it.
Before you go, a short checklist
Complete this the night before, not the morning of, because mornings are rushed and you will forget something.
- Rod, reel, leader, tippet, flies, nippers, forceps, floatant. Lay it all out on the kitchen table and touch each item. I still do this. It takes four minutes and prevents a wasted drive.
- Inspect your leader for wind knots from last time. If you find one, cut it out now, at home, in good light, rather than streamside with cold hands.
- Pinch your barbs down again if you added new flies. Every fly, every time. No exceptions here; I have said it all class and I am not stopping now.
- Tell someone where you are going. Not because fly fishing is especially dangerous, but because you will be alone and near moving water, and it costs you nothing to say "I'll be at the boat ramp stretch until two."
Once you are there
Give yourself permission to stand and read the water for five minutes before casting anything. This is the point I have emphasized all class, and I will make it one final time, because it matters most when you are solo and no one is coaching you: reading water outperforms fancy gear every single time. A person with an inexpensive rod who knows where the fish are holding will out-fish a person with an expensive setup casting into dead water. You now know how to identify a seam. Use that knowledge before you use your arm.
Tie your knot. Test it with a firm, hard tug. Fish it for a while. If it is not working, do not panic and change three things at once; that is how you end up more confused than when you began. Change one variable. Give it ten more casts. Then change the next if needed.
And talk to yourself if you like. Hum if you like. I hum through everything; my wife Tricia will confirm this is not a recent habit, and it has yet to scare off the fish. The notion that you must be silent and reverent out there to catch anything is, in my view, mostly people psyching themselves out. Laugh at your own bad cast. No one is grading you.
The knot, one more time
I want to tell you about my friend Pamela, because this is the last lesson and it still bothers me slightly, in a good way.
I taught her the clinch knot back when we covered rigging, and she produced it cleanly on perhaps her third attempt. Cleaner than I did, if I am honest, and it took me a while to become honest about that. I told her so right there on the bank, and then I noticed I was faintly competitive about it for about a week afterward, which is a foolish thing for a grown man to feel about a knot, but there it is. I am telling you this so you understand: the knot really is the decisive element. Pamela did not out-fish me that day because of her cast. She out-fished me because her knot held and mine, on one particular fish, did not. Learn it cold. Practice it at your kitchen table with your eyes half closed until your hands perform it without your thinking. That is not dramatization; that is simply where the fish actually get lost.
So what counts as a good day
I want to lower the bar for you deliberately, because I believe many people quit this hobby in the first year by setting the bar too high.
A good day is one on which you rigged up by yourself and it worked. A good day is one on which you read a seam correctly even if nothing bit. A good day is standing in the river for twenty minutes doing nothing but watching the light on the water, because I have done exactly that, up the canyon, stopped fishing and simply watched, and it was one of the better mornings I have had out there. That counts. Write it down somewhere if you need to. You do not need a fish to have earned the day.
A last few cautions, stated plainly, because I will not be there to catch you
Cold water and slick rocks do not care how many lessons you have taken. Wet-wade in old shoes if you are not ready for waders; that is genuinely fine. I would rather you fish safely from the bank than get in over your head, literally, because you felt you should. Watch your footing more than you watch your fly. And if you are alone, favor familiar, easy stretches for a while before exploring somewhere new and remote.
Before next time
There is no next time; this is the last lesson. So instead: go. Choose a morning this week, tell someone where you will be, and go stand in some water by yourself. That is the entire assignment, and it is the only one that has mattered the whole class.