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The Nugget Newspaper
Sisters, Oregon
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A peace of river
By Jim Cornelius

I never really "got" fly fishing.

I grew up in Southern California and fishing for me meant heading to Santa Barbara to go out reef fishing for a day or two, jigging for rockfish and landing the occasional ling cod. Or, better yet, it meant driving down to San Diego in the piping August heat to board a boat sailing for days into Mexican waters where the tuna were biting.

After catching 80-pound Pacific bluefin, I just didn't believe catching a little ol' trout in a river could measure up. And I wasn't sure about this catch-and-release business, either.

Part of the satisfaction of fishing was always preparing the catch in different ways (or at least letting my brother do it) and enjoying those succulent tuna steaks.

I wasn't sure I wanted to catch dinner and let it go.

Oh, once we moved here in 1993, I tried fly fishing once or twice, just to get that Oregon experience under my belt, but I never took to it and I let it drop.

Yet something kept nagging me, telling me I was missing something. A couple of my hunting buddies are fly fishermen -- if such a prosaic term can describe glaze-eyed zealots. They listened to my protestations about freshwater fishing and not eating your catch and they said little: "We'll have to go out sometime," was all they ever said, as if proselytizing was unneeded. They were right.

I got a bug to go fly fishing.

Lucky for me, my bird hunting compadre Todd Williver has been guiding for The Fly Fisher's Place in Sisters since he quit the sheriff's department last spring. With one phone call, my first serious fly fishing expedition down the Deschutes River was underway.

I should have known.

The challenge of casting and drifting a nymph was every bit as exhilarating as casting into a boiling school of tuna. It took me a while to learn how to set the hook properly -- my experience on heaving decks made me way too aggressive.

Once I got the hang of things, I started hooking fish. Then I had trouble bringing them to the net. I caught some white fish and a little bitty "micro-trout" -- but Todd was determined that I was going to catch a serious fish before we called it a day.

Eventually, as night began to fall, I put it all together to the point where I hooked, played and landed a couple of very nice Deschutes River Redsides.

But I was hooked long before then.

Hunting or fishing tunes you in to your environment in a way that no other activity can. Your senses are heightened, your focus more intense.

Todd is an excellent guide; he knows the river, where the fish are and where they can be caught. Like all good guides, he is adept at explaining what we were doing and why we were doing it. I paid attention.

Almost immediately, I began to see the river in a way I had not before. I was looking for those seams in the current where fast water and slower water touch. I saw more than just a river flowing along; I saw it come alive in all the complexity of riffles and eddies and shoals.

I paid attention to the insect life, instead of just waving it away.

I learned the way a proper cast is supposed to feel and how a proper drift is supposed to work and I focused my whole being on doing it right.

It seems paradoxical, but that kind of attentiveness is incredibly relaxing. You simply cannot fish seriously and think about the outside world. Bills, sick relatives, the whole mad, sad world just slipped away.

"It's kind of like meditating, isn't it?" Todd said.

Now, neither of us talks like that on an everyday basis, so that was a serious statement. And a true one.

It was peace.

Oh, and about that catch-and-release business: Once I held one of those beautiful redsides in my hands, I didn't want dinner. I wanted to put that fish back in the river, where I see it swimming right this minute.

I guess I get it now.

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