They naturally come off the water heavy line first and in front, and light transparent leader and fly trailing behind.A masterpiece....
This is more than stunning fiction: It is a lyric record of a time and a life, shining with Macleans special gift for calling the readers attention to arts of all kindsthe arts that work in nature, in personality, in social intercourse, in fly-fishing.Kenneth M. Pierce, Village Voice. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christs disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman. On Sunday mornings my brother, Paul, and I went to Sunday school and then to morning services to hear our father preach and in the evenings to Christian Endeavor and afterwards to evening services to hear our father preach again. In between on Sunday afternoons we had to study The Westminster Shorter Catechism for an hour and then recite before we could walk the hills with him while he unwound between services. But he never asked us more than the first question in the catechism, What is the chief end of man And we answered together so one of us could carry on if the other forgot, Mans chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. This always seemed to satisfy him, as indeed such a beautiful answer should have, and besides he was anxious to be on the hills where he could restore his soul and be filled again to overflowing for the evening sermon. His chief way of recharging himself was to recite to us from the sermon that was coming, enriched here and there with selections from the most successful passages of his morning sermon. As he buttoned his glove in preparation to giving us a lesson, he would say, It is an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between ten and two oclock. Somehow, I early developed the notion that he had done this by falling from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up Gods rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. Although it was eight and a half feet long, it weighed only four and a half ounces. It was made of split bamboo cane from the far-off Bay of Tonkin. ![]() If someone called it a pole, my father looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would look at a recruit who had just called a rifle a gun. But it wasnt by way of fun that we were introduced to our fathers art. A River Runs Through It How To Fish WouldIf our father had had his say, nobody who did not know how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him. So you too will have to approach the art Marine and Presbyterian-style, and, 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. A River Runs Through It Skin Motions OfThe 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. All that a rod has to do is lift the line, the leader, and the fly off the water, give them a good toss over the head, and then shoot them forward so they will land in the water without a splash in the following order: fly, transparent leader, and then the lineotherwise the fish will see the fly is a fake and be gone. Of course, there are special casts that anyone could predict would be difficult, and they require artistrycasts where the line cant go over the fishermans head because cliffs or trees are immediately behind, sideways casts to get the fly under overhanging willows, and so on. But whats remarkable about just a straight castjust picking up a rod with a line on it and tossing the line across the river. When my father said it was an art that ended at two oclock, he often added, closer to ten than to two, meaning that the rod should be taken back only slightly farther than overhead (straight overhead being twelve oclock). If, though, he pictures the round trip of the line, transparent leader, and fly from the time they leave the water until their return, they are easier to cast.
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