Grace on the Fly

It's been a long winter. After the coldest February on record for this corner of the Midwest, the backyard pond was still completely covered with ice in the middle of March as were most of the area lakes. I hadn't bothered to get this year's fishing license until yesterday, and then it snowed five inches today. The corner of the family room where my rods and reels usually spend their spring, summer and fall is still stacked with firewood. I suspect the combination of these factors is probably why my cabin-fevered mind started spiritualizing fishing line.

I usually start bringing my favorite rods up from the basement around this time of year. I have two spinning rods and two fly rods ready to go at all times during fishing season. I got to thinking about my fly rods, and how my fly casting has greatly improved in the twenty years since my brother, a fly fishing fanatic, strongly recommended I take up fly fishing myself. I still marvel at how a tiny almost weightless hook and speck of feathers and thread can be thrown far enough away from me to fool a fish into thinking it is getting a insect dropped out of nowhere. My ability to do this well has only a little to do with my skill, and everything to do with the nature of fly line. Fly fishing is all about conversion, faith and grace...

I've fished as long as I can remember, but everything I knew about casting with spinning reels and bait casting reels didn't help me learn to cast a fly. My previous experience with fishing and getting the bait to the fish depended upon how much weight I put near the bait-end of the fishing line. With a heavy spoon, a hefty plug or a sizable crank bait at the end of the line, I could cast a good distance. If I had a light bait – a worm, a piece of dough, some luncheon meat on a hook – I'd add an appropriately sized split shot or sinker to give the hook and bait enough weight to send it soaring out to where the fish were. Sometimes, for fun, I would put a heavy sinker on the end of my line, fasten a baited hook on a leader above it, and see how far I could cast. Yep, I was in control. If I added enough weight, I could make the baited hook go impressive distances, the fishing line just trailing along behind for the ride. Fishing with a spinning or bait casting outfit is all about good effort and work with the weight. Fly casting, I found, had a radically different dynamic...

When I bought my first fly rod and reel, an inexpensive combo, (I wasn't sure how I would take to my brother's obsession...) the first thing that struck me was how really simple and boring the fly reel was. If I had read the fly fishing books and studied the demonstrations correctly, a basic fly reel didn't do much but hold the fly line in neat coils. I was supposed to pull the line off the reel by hand, and though I could use the small handle on the reel to retrieve the line when a fish was on it, I saw that many fly fisherman used their hands to retrieve the line instead when playing a fish. The fly rod itself, unlike the relatively stiff, shorter spinning rods that I was used to, was long and thin and wobbly and it, too, seemed to exist only to bow (literally) to the whims of the fly line. And the line – thick, pale in color, like a very long strand of spaghetti that tapered to angel hair pasta on the end – was nothing like the fine, clear monofilament lines on my spinning reel. How were these three strange bedfellows supposed to work together to catch fish?

Well, as Norman Maclean so aptly put it in his classic fly fishing novella A River Runs Through it:

...if you have never picked up a fly rod before, you will soon find it factually and theologically true that man by nature is a damn mess. The four-and-a-half-ounce thing in silk wrappings that trembles with the underskin motions of the flesh becomes a stick without brains, refusing anything simple that is wanted of it.

I could relate. Despite my previous great casting skills, when it came to fly casting, I was a damn mess. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that fly fishing wasn't about the rod or the weight I thought should be at the end of the line, a weight I could control myself. It was all about yielding to the wisdom and nature of the fly line and letting it do the work. I had spent years focusing on the weight at the end of the line, changing it as necessary to make it go where I wanted it to go. Now, the fly at the end of the line was totally dependent on the “weight” of the fly line. I wasn't casting a weight any more – I was casting the line itself and trusting it to do the work of getting the fly with its thin leader to the fish for me. When this small yet radically different concept clicked in my mind, I finally was able to cast a fly. It was surprisingly easy. The hard part had been my willingness to let go of my previous store of casting knowledge, especially everything I knew about (literally) throwing my weight around. I found I loved fly fishing for its easy grace, and though I do still use my spinning rods, fly fishing has become my preferred way to spend a day by the water. And, thanks to my faith in a good fly line, I think I've become pretty good at fly casting...

Perhaps it's more than the extended winter that has had me revisiting my early days of fly casting. It's been almost 44 years to the day since I had a major spiritual shift and epiphany in my relationship with God. Like the brain adjustment from spin casting to fly casting, the heart adjustment from good-Catholic-girl to girl-who-was-Good-with-God-and-still-Catholic was both a small adjustment and a huge tectonic shift. Previously, as a good Catholic girl, I'd make good things happen, oblivious to whether God wanted those things to happen or not, taking personal responsibility myself for the outcomes. I was very skilled at adding my own weight and effort to what I would do for God, fretting over whether I was heading in the right direction, whether I was reaching those far places I was aiming for. Secretly, I suspected, not unlike the first time fly caster, I was a damn mess. I finally acknowledged that, yes, I was a mess, and I let go of my tried-and-true old way of thinking about how to fix the mess I suspected I was powerless to change anyway. In the space that followed the letting go, I found faith in God's mercy and grace alone, and that was all the Good (with a capital G) this Catholic girl needed. In the years since that conversion of heart, I've cherished the relationship with a God who can be trusted to do the work that I now know is His and not mine, though He does let me participate in it. Instead of adding my own weight to it, though, I now trust in His ability to accomplish even the most delicate of tasks with grace and mercy.  Sometimes it looks like I'm the one doing a good job, but I know the truth - it's God, like an ultimate perfect fly line, enabling me to cover the distance with grace...

...My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things—trout as well as eternal salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy. - from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean