Fishing in a Barrel

Bill and I went fishing a few weeks back. We'd been planning the trip for a several months and we had timed it to coincide with the last stocking of the Delayed Harvest waters in North Carolina. In theory, I'm not a fan of put-and-take fisheries because I prefer the illusion of catching wild trout but sometimes it's fun to plan a trip where you can catch a whole bunch of trout without working too hard. That's when the DH waters like the Tuckaseegee and upper-Nantahala rivers in North Carolina come in handy.

Unfortunately, our trip ended up being about a week too early. The Nantahala river wasn't stocked with its May allotment of fish a few days after we fished it so although we caught fish, we didn't have one of those 50-fish days we were hoping to have. The next day we arrived at the Tuckaseegee to find that the fish had been stocked less than an hour before we got there. Since the fish hadn't even had time to spread out, we found several pools of crystal clear water containing literally hundreds of fish. At first it seemed like it was going to be loads of fun, but after catching a fish on six or seven casts in a row it got boring and pointless. I switched to a 3wt homemade bamboo rod and tried to catch one of the very large fish (22+ inches) that had been dumped in the river, an endeavor that was made substantially harder by the fact that the smaller fish kept getting in the way.

The whole experience reminded me of something I've always known but sometimes forget: fly fishing is by its very nature designed to strike a delicate balance between not catching enough fish and catching too many fish. If catching fish were the only goal, there would be no reason to limit yourself to feather and foam when a live minnow, a worm, or a stick of dynamite would almost always work better. But if catching fish were of no importance whatsoever, there would be no reason to tie a hook into the fly.

I guess what I'm saying is that to me fly fishing is all about trying to overcome a challenge. Some would argue that the challenge of fly fishing is inherently abitrary, but who cares? Modern society has pretty much already overcome the "real" challenges (i.e. survival needs) so humans invent arbitrary challenges to find value in life. Fly fishing just happens to be one I enjoy.

Back on topic... As I mentally review the list of streams we've chosen to fish during this year's Fly Rods Across America road trip, I'm seeing a pattern: most of these streams are largely self-sustaining with a repulation for having selective medium-to-large trout. In other words, we're intentionally trying to present ourselves with a challenge that can be overcome with proper fly selection and technique. Here's hoping we'll strike that balance of catching just the right number of fish.