It's "whatever works" time!

It's bread baking day, to go with the cassoulet we're having for dinner. I don't remember ever having cassoulet before. There's an increasing clash going on between trying new foods and what our taste buds are used to. Often we find the new tastes good, just different. That necessitates adjustment to our normal hierarchy of good, better, best or the binary distinction of good versus not good. The phrase "good, but not to my taste," is getting used these days so is the concept of "it depends."

Back in the last millineum, when we were first learning to fly fish, we thought we had learned about fly lines and rods and flies and fish types. Weight forward for bluegill poppers and largemouth bass bugs. Five or six weight line and matching rod of six feet (fiberglass) for panfish; eight feet and six or seven weigh for bass; four or five weight double taper for trout. Over the years we accumulated different rod lengths and tried sinking and sink-tip lines and picked up on the idea of using one line weight more than the rod was rated for if we were making short casts, which was the case on many small, local trout streams.

Because we're much better at fantasy than at organization, over the years we ended up with a handful of fly lines and spare spools that weren't clearly labeled. That makes it challenging to match rod and line, even though all of our rods, but one, are clearly labeled. That one is a bamboo rod we made from an Orvis kit. It's 7' 6" long and takes what we seem to remember is a four or five weight line, but we're not sure.

a range of fly lines

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday we were researching if there's a proper way to match a known line weight to an unknown rod rating. It appears the world of fly lines has become considerably more nuanced (complicated and confusing) since we started out. The Orvis Streamside blog summarizes the situation thusly:

In conclusion, there are few hard and fast rules. Fly casters have a wide range of opinions about these issues. Rods vary greatly, lines are available in a huge variety of designs, and fishing applications are endless. The only truly hard and fast rules are the dynamics that govern the end result. To form a tight loop, one must move the rod tip in a straight path and avoid abrupt application of power. Find the rod and line that enable you to accomplish that, and you’ll be happy.

A similar assessment is provided by a different fly-fishing blog, but the most significant find made during our brief search of the internets was provided by a magazine we used to subscribe to, Fly Fisherman: How To Fly Cast:

The old way (and the wrong way) to teach fly casting is to have a beginner move his arm like the arm of a metronome back and forth from the 10 o'clock position to the 2 o'clock position. This was quaint in the movie and book A River Runs Through It, but in real-life situations, your arm will need to move along different paths to deal with different situations.

We became self-taught in the days of the old, wrong way. This also fits together nicely with the advice that practicing casting is the best know way to improve, even more so than buying a new rod or reel or line. Maybe it would be a good idea to start subscribing to Fly Fisherman and/or join the Federation of Fly Fishers / Fly Fishers International.

 

The Song of Wandering Aengus

By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

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