Arkansas Sportsman

Fly fishing zen comes during Little Red outing

After five decades of fly fishing, my "aha" moment finally arrived Monday on the Little Red River.

It was an epiphany that melded motive and method, process and product.

As much as I would love to write that this resulted in spectacular catches, it did not. I didn't catch a fish as a result, but it planted me firmly as a middleman in the water web matrix.

I have that focus when I go for smallmouth bass, and to a lesser extent when I fish for trout with spinning gear. Fly fishing is different. For me, it has always felt as natural as walking on stilts.

Rusty Pruitt of Bryant and my son, Matthew, joined me on a sodden trip to Richey Shoal near Heber Springs, a couple of miles upstream from Barnett Access. Pruitt and I fish there frequently, and we always catch fish.

Pruitt, an avid fly fisherman, does well with his spiderweb silks, and I always catch trout on my ultralight spinning gear.

I am not good at fly fishing, and I am even less adroit in Pruitt's presence because I tend to mimic what he does, and it's hard to beat a man at his own game.

That was the first onus to shed. Beating Pruitt or any other partner is not the goal; fooling a trout into taking a fly is what matters.

When I don't catch fish standing beside someone who does using the same fly, I get discouraged.

It started that way Monday, when I asked Pruitt whether he was going to throw a "flashback." He was, so I rigged mine identical to his, and we began casting in a cold, driving rain. My tippet was too long, and my casts with my 4-weight fly rod were pathetic. Even so, I got a few strikes but failed to connect.

Wanting to try something different, I looked in my fly box and admired all the beautiful nymphs, streamers and dry flies within. They had no defining characteristics at that moment beyond whether they sink or float. I merely saw them as means to an end, nothing more than plug-ins.

A large nymph with a silver tinsel body, red tail and deer hair hackle drew my gaze. It was bright, and it was pretty.

Thinking I had never thrown this particular nymph before, it probably was going to work as well as anything else that was in my fly box.

As I studied the fly closer, something magical happened. It was the same size as many of the tiny baitfish that swarmed in the shallows to feed in the silt that my feet disturbed.

In the water, I envisioned the tinsel transforming the fly's image to that of a tiny minnow. In motion, the red might look like exposed gills.

The closer I studied it, the less artificial it looked. It metamorphosed from a decorated hook to something alive.

Current would carry it through the shallow runs, and a strike indicator would keep it suspended when it passed over the lip of the shoal into the mouth of the pool below.

If a fish doesn't take it on the drift, could I provoke a strike by stripping it across the seams?

I tied that fly to my tippet and adjusted the depth of the strike indicator, but I remained seated and studied the river. I noted the current's backbone, as well as the places where it split into seams. I noticed how it eddied against the side of the pool and pinpointed the eddy's fulcrum.

In the shallow ledge beside the pool were sticks and rocks lodged in the mud and gravel. Current-gouged flutes were behind them. Those little current breaks might hold fish.

At that moment I was a water molecule. I was a leaf floating on the surface. I was a nymph floating below. I was a minnow swimming. I was the river, and the trout were a part of me.

That's about the time Matthew arrived with a ham sandwich and a bag of chips. I inhaled them to beat the rain.

My reverie was broken, but the spell was intact. For the next hour I fished with purpose, contentment and resolve. I didn't get a take, but that meant nothing. I was a painter, the rod was my brush, and the river was my canvas.

The catching came later, when I traded the fly rod for Matt's spinning rig.

For now, at least, that is what I do best.

Sports on 01/08/2017

Upcoming Events