Emergency Call

It was one of those calls that comes in the middle of the night, about 9:30 p.m. in my case. I had just finished a fairly descent glass of Riesling; it was perky without being pretentious. We were sitting on the deck enjoying the reluctant sun as it headed for California, when the phone rattled and danced on the patio table.
Caller ID said it was Tom, which meant it was probably fishing related and safe to answer. He had an emergency brewing. Dinner guests would be arriving at his place in less that 24 hours and he was under the gun to have some trout on the table. Could I make a supreme sacrifice, tomorrow morning, and go fishing.
Hmmm, this was a tough call. I made a mental rundown of the things on my to-do list and told him fishing might fit right in. I had planned to rearrange my sock drawer on Thursday, however, for him and the cause, I’d bite the bullet and pack up my rod, etc.,
After I committed to go he told me John would be going along, too, and, by the way, could I bring that bamboo rod I had restored this winter. They felt the rod needed some thorough testing on some real fish—trout in other words.
The rod is a real beauty. My guess is, it was built in the early 1900s and It is destined to go on the wall as an art object, like several other restored bamboo rods I have. I have a lot of mixed emotions about antique rod restoration: these things were made to catch fish, not hang on the wall. However, a lot of hours (pleasure-filled hours I should say) go into a project such as this and … What the heck. Better to burn out than rust out, I say.
There was a lot of the good-natured joking around as we lined up the rods in the parking lot at Rockwell Springs early Thursday morning. The bamboo rod (a gift from Susan) is a three-piece, 10-footer, not built in the usual hexagonal form, but in a round shape. Like a really long willow branch. Rods and lines of the past do not match up with current equipment. I was guessing at the proper line weight for this baby, but felt I was in the ballpark by choosing a line from the middle of my collection of reels and lines.
The best way to describe casting with this beauty is to imagine throwing a line with a 10-foot-log piece of spaghetti. And that noodle would weigh three or four pounds—or so it seemed. After three casts I knew why fly fishing was slow to catch on in the last century. It was proof that it’s not always about catching fish. Sometimes it’s about the beauty of the day and the tackle …
After managing two rainbow trouts, I deemed the rod well broken in and ready to take its place on the wall. Tom and John each took a turn and we all agreed, fishing with today’s stiffer, lighter rods made the sport more enjoyable. These fine old bamboo rods fit the era in which they were designed, when the pace of life and the pace of living were slower and more deliberate. As best we could tell, the fish didn’t seem to react any differently, no matter what we used. And our skills, as fishers, had to be the same as the person who lined up this old rod—when it was the new rod.
I thought about how the original owner, maybe 100 years ago, faced the same challenges we face today, which is another part of fly fishing’s appeal for me. Our tackle, today, is certainly technologically superior, however, the fish don’t know that.