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3. That which can not be explained....

I am curious about something I have experienced in my own angling that by nature is difficult to discuss - thus "That which can not be explained".

This is a pretty enlightened board and a diverse one. Please consider this and respond to your own experience. I digress....

What I am alluding to is the ability to connect with another creature on a level beyond the physical. Not necessarily conjuring but related to that.

I first discussed this with another human a few years back while on an epic road trip across the Upper Midwest. I was on the road for 24 days and fished the better part of that entire time. I was relaxed and dialed in. I was at the top of my angling game.

It seems that we all operate in a space from time to time that allows us to transcend all of the baggage and distraction of our modern lives...to operate "In the Zone" to borrow a phrase from popular culture. I get there a few times a season and it is a magical place.

A state where the angler is in tune beyond the sights and smells and sounds...

I met this fellow angler over on the Little Manistee and we hit it off instantly. I was miles from anywhere in the middle of the week and this cat just shows up. I was like, "What the heck is this guy doing here off the grid in my space?"

We were brothers from another mother right away. He was also on a journey but was heading back home. He tuned into my mission right away and shared some vital supplies - leftover pizza, chocolate, flies, leader material and other stuff that I needed.

We spent the afternoon fishing and talking. I do not remember how it came up but he broached the topic of "That which can not be explained".

I had thought about it often but never verbalized it. We both shared our ideas and it was a cool conversation.

Since then I have discussed it with many other anglers. Some really connect, others kind of do. All seem to agree on some level about it. You have to be an experienced angler to understand. That is what is so cool about it.

"IT" is the notion that you connect metaphysically with the fish before you actually physically connect with it. That is to say you call it to the fly and hook it before it takes and is actually hooked.

I feel that fly fishing is the best form of angling to experience this. Especially if you tie your own flies and use your own patterns. The deeper you take your connection to the craft the heavier you can get into the realm so to speak...

When I am really tuned in I get hyper-aware - colors get really brilliant, sounds are different and such. I am not really aware of the change - slightly altered but awareness is a distraction and what I am really involved in is the presentation.

I am totally absorbed and visualizing the fly swimming - "as it was meant to be". This is not limited to sub-surface presentations but is more about animating the fly and the presentation so I find it happening more with streamers and active nymphing and wet fly swings than dead drifting a dry. Top water with a mouse or a bass bug is really good too!

Anyway - the marrow of this reality is the ability to know you are going to get bit before it happens. I am not talking about being confident that you will get a fish to take. I am talking about 100% understanding with every fiber that you are going to get hit.

It goes beyond knowing. It is a brief awareness just prior to the take that everything is "AS It Should Be" and then the fish is on. No surprise just a satisfaction that there is balance in the universe.

Can you relate?

Good post, Brad!

I'm not one to go for supernatural explanations, in part because I am so awestruck by the power and beauty of natural explanations. By melding into our quarry's world, we stir up an exciting part of our humanity that is dormant in modern everyday life. It's a sublime feeling of power and competence which traces back not a hundred years or a thousand but a hundred thousand and more, to the millennia through which our ancestors shaped our instincts, when we were hunters through and through.

We still possess those instincts and when we stir them our subconscious assembles subtleties from our senses better than our conscious minds. We become hyper-aware of our surroundings, predators high on the opiate of the hunt. We guide our gear with great precision without effort, and consciously we know only the fish and the fly and we are willing them to join.

It is no surprise that in this mode our intuition feels like prescience, and that it increases with experience. That it can be explained does not diminish its value. This is what we fish for.

Hey TroutNut

Good to hear from you. -10F today back in the hood....the Brule is a bit slushy!

Supernatural is not what I am talking about. I too am grounded in the Natural but am keenly aware of the fact that I breathe air and my quarry exists in a different medium. I am also reminded of this every time I take a 'baptism' into the Brule or another cold and powerful river!

I guess we all will assign our own values to the higher powers of the predator/prey relationship...

My purpose for this is not to split hairs on where the lines are drawn but to delve into the unique experience of being an angler. What is it all about? How do we relate?

Through experience I contend and I guess I am looking beyond what is out there in print. It has been covered and covered....

Jason you and I have had this discussion of the frontier of this sport and where we can go as future voices...to me the next level is not in the new gear or another twist on an old pattern. It is to delve within and to understand the motivations and the meaning of our angling experience.

I appreciate your personal take...

But to assign it as supernatural or whatever is missing the point. I am not a smoke and mirrors guy. I am interested in what makes me tick and what makes others tick.

Of course some will assign human traits to animals to better understand and express their place. I feel that is dangerous - too Walt Disney for my taste.

I am talking evolution. Sure, I am a hunter and I have latent and not so latent perceptions. Others have their own. What I am scratching around for is this modern place and our adaptation here and now.

You like cheesburgers and 'all things not healthy' so mostly your needs are being met by Dirty Ron's before you hit the water. You are not hunting trout for chow. You are hunting for something 'higher'.

That is a luxury afforded by our present time and place in the Natural world...food, shelter, etc. seldom come into play. Correct?

You angle and I angle for our own ends. Some are similar and some are different. Yes?

I am looking into something that is common and shared that goes beyond the trappings and the whims of the individual angler. Something we all are fishing for...something we are adapting to as modern hunters. Something that our modern situation has freed us to explore.

Get my drift?

I can definitely relate to this feeling you describe, Brad. I've experienced it many times, though perhaps not because I am fishing better than anyone else could but because I'm thoroughly content in what I'm doing and who I am. I'll have days in the winter during which I fish for 5 hours, picking ice out of my guides the whole time, and it isn't until I get back into my car that it dawns on me that my hands are cold. Good stuff.

Unlike Jason, though, I take a definitive supernatural approach to fishing. When I'm totally immersed in it, I have great clarity about metaphysical things. I find that the stream quiets me in ways other things cannot.

I also have metaphysical experiences of a different sort when fishing with my father and brothers, more of a connectedness with other people than with God and nature. When we get together, fishing is one of the few things we usually do. It's odd: It can be years since I've seen one of my brothers, and after 5 minutes on the stream together, all our differences and distances just disappear; everything is right. I think that's supernatural. In fact, the last time we went fishing together, about 6 months ago, was such a thoroughly intense and satisfying experience that I've only fished one or two times since then. Unable to recapture that experience, I just find I don't have the desire to fish. I don't worry about it, but it does make me miss those times.

-Shawn

I'm stealing time from work to post, or this would much longer. As a person trained in the humanities and in science I often find myself bouncing between physics and metaphysics, refusing to accept either as a sufficient approach. So I thoroughly enjoyed every word above. All I'll add to Brad's observations is that animating a dry fly can produce the same evocative voice. One forum reader knows this story, but I suspect he'll tolerate my repeating it.

Several years ago, anchored up in the Gamelands on the West Branch of the Delaware, I watched folks in a driftboat downstream unsuccessfully casting to a fish. When they moved on I pulled anchor and slowly slipped my canoe downstream looking for the rise. Soon I had made several unsuccessful drifts over the same fish when I remembered Bob Clouser telling me to twitch my Green Drake imitation, that browns knew the big bug should be moving. I was certain that I was going to mess it up, producing drag that would leave me pulling anchor and moving on without ever seeing the fish rise again. But twitch I did and a beautiful brown, called from the depths by the struggling emerger, came up and drank in the fly. It was absolute magic.

Shawn

Yes, you are onto part of what I am getting at!

The stream quiets us indeed. It fills a void; it provides a connection to something that we long for. It satisfies on a level that only we as anglers can appreciate and experience.

Try to explain that to someone who does not fish...they will want to if they can begin to understand!

Also, it is a shared experience as you point out. Shared with others who become so very special. It connects us across time and space.

I find nothing else in this existence that comes close. I am an angler and I was created and angler. Sometimes it can seem a tough lot in this modern world...but then I know I have something to offer and to experience that is valuable. Not just to me but to humanity.

Others are drawn to this connection. You would be surprised (or not) at how many non anglers express a longing to feel that purposeful...

Angling allows one to be his or her own Guru like nothing else. I challenge a yoga practitioner to take his/her catch home at night and have a meal!

BTW - I love yoga and release 99% of my catch....

Brad,

Thank you for your posts and for lifting us (for a precious moment) out of the more mundane aspects of this mysterious passion. I'm sure that everyone here can connect with your words at some level and in his own way. Fly fishing surely offers transcendent moments and insights, and perhaps it is the quest for that possibility that touches many of us so deeply.

Though this urge is often attributed to our ancestral hunting instincts, it also seems (to me) that it can be much more than just predator and prey. Perhaps a subconscious memory of our personal evolution, when we were like little fish swimming in our mother's womb, drives some of us along this watery path. And perhaps that is why we can feel such a deep connection to a creature so alien that it lives in a world within a world. Yet, we are all like that in a way, and the connections we try to make may be an effort to transcend the confines of our human nature and the limits of our human understanding. Such connections are about the nature of life itself. I know that sounds a lot like Shamanism, but it's also as close as I have come to grasping "That which can not be explained...."

Thanks again,
Gonzo

I am glad to find some thinkers around here!

Thanks for the responses. I am doing some background for an article on this topic and it helps to get into this with real anglers with real thoughts.

Louis- I hope you can 'steal' some time away from work to add to your post...I agree that an animated move to a dry fly at certain times will get results when nothing else will. It is really cool to get that kind of feedback from wary fish. To screw with a normally deadly drag free drift takes SAND!

GONZO - You are welcome. I am glad that this topic 'lifted' you however briefly...that was the point. I appreciate your feedback. Your thoughts are eloquent and thought provoking to me...

I agree completely that the next level is not to be found in the gear. I think in addition to understanding our experience, there's also much to be gained in our understanding of the sport from the fish's perspective. The decisions made by feeding trout are still mysterious, and I'm very interested in what exact mix of ecological and physiological factors motivates their behavior. Along the way toward these answers there will be little nuggets of information that help us catch another trout here and there, but the real reason to study it is just as abstract and philosophical as the reason to study ourselves.



Sorry, then. I misinterpreted. The phrase "can not be explained" trips an alarm in my scientific brain which is wired to maintain that everything can be explained, just not always by us, at least not yet. I realize some people use it in a less literal sense to describe wonderous mystery.



That's true, but evolution is a slow actor on human time scales. Our genes don't reflect the economic improvements of the last 50 years that way we don't need to hunt for food. Our nature was shaped over hundreds of thousand years, and I don't think it has changed very much. We view it through a very different lens in modern life, but both hunting and fishing allow a little bit more of our evolved nature to show through.

I think this is the solution to the riddle; it is what ties us all together in spite of our different modern backgrounds and preoccupations. Our remnant hunter/gatherer instinct is there below the surface in everyone, and fishing and hunting help uncover it.



I wouldn't call that supernatural; rather, it's a reason to call the natural super.



Very true. I would propose an alternative explanation to Gonzo's psychological womb idea for this. Throughout the evolution of our species, rivers were important to our survival. They represent drinking water, plentiful food, a source of stones for tools, and a mode of transportation. It makes sense that we would feel a strong emotional attraction to such a fruitful environment. A practical explanation like this does not diminish the river's value at all. We love rivers because that's who we are; understanding how we got to be that way is just icing on the cake.

Whether you look at it from a naturalistic or religious standpoint, it's amazing how fundamental water is to us, not only for our sustenance but also for our ability to understand our place in our world. I suppose water is considered holy by both theist and atheist.

-Shawn

Last time I checked I did not see a lot of beauty in garbage, new roads, more people and more development as of late. Saying that everyone experiences all of this is certainly a very broad statement when a lot of people do not. I doubt that I am from the mother of anglers but if you are into that communion that's fine, just leave my fishing hole and space alone.

I doubt that people in our culture can actually connect as some others do in Native American cultures, as a few I know here do and have expressed how it works and the "path". In fact, they are expressed very well here by several tribal elders. Unless you've been there then words are at best your only tools. Unless as they say if you know Spirit and not some modern-day New Age guru. Whatever primordal nuances are left for modern man are deeply suppressed. Some try to attain them but without a culture that represents it as a whole, well it's just another stage to go through for most people.

Last time I saw someone I knew I asked for a few things back. Things are seldom this utopian. As far as water goes for someone it does hold a documented emotional connection that researchers have studied to some degree.

A lot of the stuff being covered here reminds me of "The River Why", by David James Duncan. I highly recommend it.

A humorous take on Gonzo's analogy to the womb, for example, appears on the first page in a description of the birth of the narrator. Really funny and thought-provoking stuff, all about the question Brad has raised.

-Shawn

Yeah, I wasn't saying everybody experiences it, only that everybody has the potential to. It has to be revealed by the right culture and life experiences, and most people do have it suppressed for their entire lives.

You are making a broad generalization about what people suppress and what they do not. Your premise is entirely different that most Native Cultures who see the physical and spiritual world as one or their "reality." Speaking with a number of them here locally most of them know it is there and choose not to be involved in it. When I say "they know" it's not a matter of potential they know that the power there creates or destroys. That however is part of their overall mythology. Besides that, having a fly rod in your hand would not get you there. It's just a fly rod. There are other things you do to cross over that bridge. They would disagree with you Jason, not everyone is built or wired let's say the same to use venacular terms. They do not see fly rods and flys or social fraternities like what is stated as valid in one sense or to get them close to what the original poster wanted to contact. You do not need them to say otherwise you are saying this is the only way to do it. Their accepted reality or their state of being combines both the physical and spiritual worl. Among the Sioux, they have laws were you are responsible for saying something bad about a person who has died because they believe that the person is in spirit and not in some place up in the Christian heavens.

It was posted about the ability to connect.......well in reality with the world view above you are connected all the time....and it does most of the connecting anyway.....for whatever purpose. Who needs to connect? I always thought that meditation was designed to train the mind to think in one reality or realities.

I stated the duality of all of this when one hand the natural world is honored and adored while it's destroyed by the other hand. Any virtue in all of this means nothing. There's a lot of poetic themes expressed as well here.

As far as Native Cultures so much as been lost but the frameworks still exist. This area has lots of this thinking within the right people since a Native cult was more or less centered here for sometime. Having grown up with them and outside them, I'm aware of what they experienced and told others. I think I was told just about everything and what to do or not do with it. The Blackfeet of Montana had some of these same ideas.

So contacting a "creature" is that easy? Hmmmm....first time I've read that. I'm just mentioning a word of caution. First before someone thinks we are all crazy and need to go to a hospital. Most people into this are wise enough not to do it alone because as much as there is potential there is also a power that can create or destroy. Just about every research into this area has proven that yes some people are able to bridge into this while others could not. That's why selected people seemed to have that power.

I'm afraid I'm not reading it here. I'd be wise enough to ask before I made that leap. Basically what's the motivation? This might something that in very hard to measure for potential since it like most of this it involves a leap of faith or the use of power. Mythological connections have followed the hunter/fisherman for a long time. They are mentioned in some of the first parts of th Bible. Perhaps this is more a dicussion of the collective conscienous of that rather than what the mind can do at times or what we wish it to do. Whether or not they are valid are based upon the person experiencing them. I'd not expect someone in Africa to experience things the same as anyone here.

We covered this in another forum. There are people who fish or hunt for difference reasons. There's a small number of people who do want to push the limits of their experiences, not all of them but a few for whatever reasons. Words afterawhile go so far since those experiences are often highly subjective and personal. I've known some tribal people who have and continue to push those boundaries. It's like scared turf also.

Shamanism might cover some of this but not really. It's a little different. What are we defining "Enlightment" by the way? If we are saying it's the final destination of seeing something outside ourselves or the metaphysical reality we are in then that happens to lots of people on different levels.

With regard to animals as posted why not? The Greeks wrote about this to some degree. Native cultures go back at least 20,000 years ago and they seem to have made it. The Nez Perce have many cerimonies/traditions about honoring the life cycle of nature and the salmon. They would clean their salmon and return the remains to the river. We just net the heck out of them or run guides boats over them for money without any thought. We have lost that in our culture as being European Americans. Thoreau tried to do it and many others.

It's odd. Some people deny angels and saints and some say this is real.The noetic nuances we come up with are either fact or fiction and maybe both.

Me.....I'll be on the river....don't crowd the hole and what you took give it back or offer up something just as good. I like poetry too but fish just taste too good to put back all the time.

Well, that's too broad Europeans and then European Americans went through these long epistles of trying to pull back the onion skin of fly fishing to what is at the heart of it for a long time. Not all of them did because for a long time the idea of America was to create another European landscape. Potential is seen in different terms to different people for whatever reason as well. A developer might see the land as a potential for a thousand houses and yet a fishermen might see another potential. Unfortunately, in America the other potential won out for a long time.

Okay, my thoughts follow:

We are creatures who begin the journey of life where all our senses are equal. We utlize them equally from the start until the day we begin to read. Suddenly we are transformed from a synaesthetic approach of living life to a more visual one. Our senses become separated. We are no longer whole nor do we utilize our learning processes equally.

Fly fishing is an art by which we again become whole. We utilize all our senses. We are immersed in an experience that satisfies the need to become whole once more. It is sight, sound, movement, visceral, touch, smell, and all the other varied senses we possess yet are sometimes unaware of. This process of seeking fish actually makes us closer to that which we seek. Our quarry is WHOLE using all its senses to survive and process its world. We have lost that, but regain it as soon as we start our fly fishing process.

These are not special things-not special gifts, but something most of us possess but have lost over time.

Those of us that fish share this common experience and are thus bound more closely together because we have rediscovered ourselves and what we are meant to be. Not many of our other activites in this world afford us this opportunity.

Mark

A most thought-provoking thread. Though I slide into the metaphysical on occasion, I've developed a habit of trying to ground those thoughts as much as possible. This discussion is certainly helping me do so. I feel there is some truth, for me at least, in GONZO's "early evolutionary" observations. I also saw that same overlap in "The River Why" which I ready a dozen years ago it seems. The subject reminds me of an article I read long ago titled "Zen and the Art of Nymphing." It had to do with using one's intuition to put the right movements into flies far subsurface and out of sight...and knowing precisely when to set the hook on things that were fish and not just rocks, logs or misc. currents on line bellies. Intimacy with ones equipment was merely the starting point for the conversation.

I found myself experiencing those same heightened sensitivities this summer while doing much lake float-tube fishing for large trout. Big rainbows of 25+ inches cruise the cold, clear mountian lakes around Anchorage, Alaska. In the evenings we'd drive up, pile into the float-tubes and fish till 1 or 2 am...when it finally got dark...or there were too many bears on the bank for my comfort.

Our primary fly was the black Chicago fly which we dragged painstakingly slowly along the silty bottom of the lake, imitating a three-spine stickleback - the main forage there. I recall thinking, "How would a tired / injured stickleback travel...especially if it eyed a predator?" Three short, quick strips for an initial burst of speed to try and get away. I'd follow with 2 short, but slow strips...as if running out of energy...then one, final slow pull...barely moving - exhausted. I wasn't that surprised at how many hits I got on that final slow pull. It accounted for several of my largest fish of the trip.

I know this borders more on the arena of thoughtful presentation, but there is perhaps some zen in learning to be the "Stickleback" or other prey.

Brad,

You've clearly touched a number of chords here, and I won't try to sort them out. (I'm not sure I could.) But, your mention of fly tying as an element in this and the comment Louis made about the physical and the metaphysical have stimulated some thoughts about the artistic aspects. (I can think of few other sports where the artistic elements are so integral and significant.)

Whenever I see photographs of the marvelous cave paintings from Altamira or Lascaux, I'm struck by their beauty and power. To me they are as meaningful and fully realized as any art produced by humankind in the 15,000 or so years since their creation. One can view these paintings simply as representations (however beautiful) of food on the hoof--as though our cave-dwelling ancestors had nothing better to do than to sit around painting pretty pictures of aurochs, bison, and horses. Or, one can see them as magical things that attempt to conjure and capture the spirit and wonder of life.

I think that, at some more modest and personal level, fly tying can be viewed in similar ways. Either it can be just a crafty component of our fish-catching pastime--as though modern humans have nothing better to do than to sit around assembling bits of feather and fiber. Or, it can be seen as an artistic interpretation of life, imbued with our attempts at understanding and carrying whatever magic we can muster in our modern age.

Best,
Gonzo

I am not so sure that even our ancestors were into this as people are assuming in this. The closest you might find to it would be some Native American people. Trouble is they seem to have no problem sitting in their spearing shacks and taking out one fish after the next also. Today was bad enough driving by and seeing dead northerns left on the ice for the birds to eat. Anyone there are people who are into this and all long as there in no harm that's fine. I am not interested it however.

I think this boils down to wishful thinking and going out a limb for the extremes of it. It seems that fly fishing goes through these periods of metaphysical questioning while at the sametime the Divine Comedy seems to be that the ice caps are melting, the earth is warming and human development continues to push resources beyond their limits.
It's more of a selling point now for some lodges to offer metaphysical weekends while at the same time expanding the number of cabins on their property. The Men's Movement came and went in reaction to feminism and this will pass as well. River guides who are like incarnated spirits come and go as time passes. I guess Robert Bly should show up with a few of his men around the drums and campfires.

Duncan came out with his materials and it was a mix of New Age, Druidic thinking and whatever else one could find at the local bookstore. Spiritual fishing.....no thanks.....LOL...free.....if you have the luxury of time. If not fishing is 95% fantasy. We would all like to think that some brotherhood exists were everyone is equal and fair but that is hardly even the case amongst the best of fishermen.

I'll pass on most of this.

Dave I would recommend that you pass on it.

I choose to Pass It On myself. Positive begets positive. Negative begets negative. You obviously have issues with even the most benign topics.

Brotherhood? Of course a negative person such as yourself would scoff at something like this. You have been booted out of nearly every common ground that I can keep track of because you just do not get along with others.

I remember you having no problem showing up for our old discussions back at Cabin Life Outfitters and partaking in fellowship and free food and drink. Then going off and bad mouthing our efforts...

I am sorry to taint this thread with personal drivel but old UpNorth2 aka Dave Turnbull has taken it upon himself to harass me at every turn.

Dave - I have asked you to stay away. I mean it. Go away and keep your negative energy to yourself. Stop your petty little attempts to slander my reputation - I know your games.

To the other upstanding members of this forum I apologize for the personal aspect of this but Dave has been harassing me and I have tried to ignore it. I have had to deal with him on other boards that he has been banished from, had to deal with him locally where he has also been banished and must endure his attempts to call my reputation into question.

I work very hard at my fly fishing living. Reputation is something hard earned. Slander in any form is wrong and treacherous. I stand behind my reputation and have nothing to hide.

I only post this to illuminate a being who hides behind online identities and takes cheap shots at others.

It is a long story and I will spare you the details.

Thank you for your understanding.

I will post some of the other comments this thread has generated on other forums. Very interesting and I thank you again for joining the discussion.