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A Fly-Fishing Life

Review

"Tapply, author of the Brady Coyne mystery series, and Henry David Thoreau have both lived much of their lives near the same woods and ponds just west of Boston. The stated subjects of this memoir are middle age, secret and overlooked fishing spots, animal rights, and special outdoor moments. Unstated yet apparent throughout these friendly and witty essays is Tapply's cautious relief that his nearby woods and waters are, in some respects, as wild as they were in the nineteenth century. Also apparent is his gratitude that he has friends and fishing buddies as enduring to him as Emerson and the Alcotts were to Thoreau, whose spirit saunters throughout the book. Accompanying it is Tapply's self-deprecating wit and his clear and effective advice on spinning and fly-fishing, stream craft, fly patterns, and fishing for salmon and striped bass. A must for fishing collections and a good choice for adults teaching children to fish (the insights on patience and realistic expectation are invaluable)."
--Booklist

Excerpted from the Introduction:

Of the fishermen he observed on the banks of Walden Pond, Thoreau said: "Commonly [they] did not think that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. They might go there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all the while."

I haunted at Walden when I was a kid. I fished for trout with worms, which I lobbed into the water with an old hand-me-down fly rod. Stillfishing this way required a high tolerance for waiting, and I discovered that I had a certain gift for it. I was never bored, never felt that I was wasting time, and while I was always hopeful that a fish would come along and pick up my bait, I found plenty to do while I squatted on Walden's rock-cobbled shores. Long before I began to read Thoreau, I learned, although I could not have begun to articulate it back then, that fishing was a "clarifying process." This process continues still, although even now, forty-odd years later, my purpose is still not entirely pure.

I've gone fishing thousands of times in my life, and I have never once felt unlucky or poorly paid for all those hours on the water. I've willingly confronted what, to others, might seem like intolerable discomfort and even danger for the chance to catch a fish, and I've been skunked more than my share of times. But my time has never been wasted. I've had ponds and rivers and saltwater flats to entertain and teach me every time.

I fish hard and often, primarily, though not exclusively, with the fly rod. Although my homely local places continue to fascinate me, I also travel great distances to fish, and I have little desire to travel anywhere that I cannot fish. I arise before the sun to be on the water, and sometimes I linger there long after night falls. I endure mosquitoes and blackflies, rain and snow, blasting Montana heat and frigid New England winters, with no thought of complaint.

I love to fish. When I cannot fish, I think about fishing. I tie flies and read books about fishing. I correspond with fishermen all over the country. Most of my close friends are fishing partners. I cannot imagine not fishing. I would not be me if I did not fish.

Even as the sediment of fishing has begun to clear and catching fish has become less important to me, I find that I have gotten better at it. I have learned to slow down and pay attention to the way water moves and insects reproduce and fish behave. I have watched and listened to other fishermen. I have tried to learn the hard lessons that fish teach.

Luckily, there's still a lot I don't know. Every day on the water teaches me something. If that should ever change, I suspect my passion for fishing would diminish disturbingly.

I still live close to Walden, and I still go there in April with a fly rod and a can of worms, and while I sometimes think Transcendental Thoughts while hunkering on the bank waiting for a trout to come along, mostly I just wait for my line to twitch and begin slithering out through the guides. I still hunt down hidden brooks where the trout are small and wild and the best way to catch them is on a worm. I have traveled far to cast for tarpon and permit and Chinook salmon and Atlantic salmon, but I still like to roll up my pantslegs and wade the weedy shorelines of my local ponds, casting little foam poppers against the lily pads for bluegills.

I began as a toddler, hanging a worm under a bobber and catching panfish from the Charles River. I passed through what I'm told are the classic stages: First I wanted to catch a fish, and then many fish, and then large fish, and then fish of certain desirable species, and then difficult fish. Along the way, I learned that the way I liked best to do those things was with a fly rod, and I learned to treasure every minute regardless of how many fish I caught. But I never stopped wanting to catch fish, nor did I stop fishing with worms or loving panfish.

For me, becoming a fly fisherman has been a matter of adding layers, not passing through stages. I began with bluegills and largemouth bass, and I pursue them still. Then I got hooked on the mysteries of trout, and my passion for them continues to grow. Lately, great schools of striped bass have returned to our New England creeks and estuaries. They have given me new and delicious mysteries to investigate, complex equations of tide and moon and sun and season to puzzle over, and they drag me from my bed at strange hours without a whimper.

But if there are eels or suckers to be caught, I will fish for them, and if a fly rod won't do the job, I'll try a handline. I am still all the other fishermen I have ever been.

These stories are my way of exploring what all those hours on the water -- particularly, but not exclusively, those I've spent fly fishing -- have meant to me throughout my life, and how fishing continues to shape and define me. This is not a technical how-to book, although some of the lessons the fish have taught me are contained in it. Nor is it abstract or esoteric. It's mostly autobiographical and anecdotal. It's about people and places, fish and insects, success and failure, growing up and growing old. It's a book about love and passion and a life's journey in search of meaning. It's a book about the sediment -- what settles to the bottom, the weighty, important stuff that's left when you take away the fishing.