Focus on (fly) fishing

This week’s weather has been an excellent example of what I refer to when I claim Minnesota does a lousy job with spring season. So far this week, we’ve experienced daily mixes of snow and rain. The only sunny day in the extended forecast is Saturday, the day after tomorrow.

That may be part of what’s behind my recent return to a prior interest in zen and wabi sabi. [When life gives you lemons, etc.] That, in turn, has led to an interest in exploring any overlap among those two perspectives and tankara fishing. Since I’ve already mastered the inclusion of imperfection in my fly fishing, and my daily life appears to incorporate a growing number of imperfections, wabi sabi and fly fishing could be a very rewarding theme to explore. It’s also likely to help me stay away from news feeds and social media, which will help offset the blahs attributable to dreary weather patterns, legislative insanity, Republican evils and Democratic ineffectiveness. Definitely time to focus on fishing.

American, not tankara, flies

Photo by J. Harrington

I have vague recollections of a few winter fly fishing trips and casting midst gently falling snow flakes. Or, was that something I just read John Gierach writing about, with midges or blue-winged olives prompting rises from hungry  trout? The part that involves ice jamming the line guides is not to my taste, especially if it involves a long drive to reach a place where I can do that to myself, such as the Driftless Area of southeast Minnesota.

Above Pate Valley

By Gary Snyder

We finished clearing the last

Section of trail by noon,

High on the ridge-side

Two thousand feet above the creek

Reached the pass, went on

Beyond the white pine groves,

Granite shoulders, to a small

Green meadow watered by the snow,

Edged with Aspen—sun

Straight high and blazing

But the air was cool.

Ate a cold fried trout in the

Trembling shadows. I spied

A glitter, and found a flake

Black volcanic glass—obsidian—

By a flower. Hands and knees

Pushing the Bear grass, thousands

Of arrowhead leavings over a

Hundred yards. Not one good

Head, just razor flakes

On a hill snowed all but summer,

A land of fat summer deer,

They came to camp. On their

Own trails. I followed my own

Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill,

Pick, singlejack, and sack

Of dynamite.

Ten thousand years.

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