REALITY CHECK

Chip Chipman

     Have you ever watched those TV fishing shows on weekends?  I mostly watch the fly fishing shows where they are fishing for trout.  I’m not into the bass fishing shows like “Fishin’ with Bubba and Leroy”, in some swamp full of snakes and alligators.

     On TV, it always looks perfect doesn’t it? There are one or two participants on a beautiful and perhaps  famous stream with a guide.  Their casts are picture perfect- you never see a busted cast.  One huge fish after another are caught. Then there is the little ritual where the guide holds the fish out of the water far to long and everyone says, NICE FISH!  Then the guide and the catcher shake hands and the guide says, NICE JOB!

     When they break at noon a gourmet lunch is prepared beside the stream. A typical day on the trout stream?  Not mine.  Not yours either I bet.  When I go fishing, things happen that you don’t see on those TV fly fishing shows.

      How often do you get your fly caught in a tree or bushes during the day?  If you wear anything besides chest waders, did you ever notice that you somehow manage to wade over the tops of them, usually at the time of the year when the water is at its coldest.  Of course you do this within the first few minutes of fishing and you have to walk around the rest of the day making that squishy sound.  At the end of the day when you take your waders off, your feet are all shriveled up and look about two sizes smaller.  You don’t see that on TV.

    My gourmet lunch, if I didn’t forget it, is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, squashed nearly beyond recognition from having it jammed into a vest pocket. Sometimes I get so involved in fishing I don’t even eat. It may be weeks later that I will find that sandwich while searching through the dozen or so pockets in my vest.  Glad I don’t take tuna fish.

    No matter your level of competency with a fly rod some fluky things can happen.  A sudden gust of wind can change the course of your fly line and the fly gets caught in your clothing.  When this happens it always is in a place where you can’t reach the hook with either hand so you have to take that item of clothing off to free the fly.  I got a fly caught in just such a place while wearing a rain jacket. It was pouring at the time. There are no sudden wind gusts and pouring rain on TV fly fishing.

      Did you ever slip and fall while wading a stream? I have seen that mishap on several occasions and sometimes it is I.  Those TV fishermen are sure-footed and never even get in a situation where they are waving their arms around like a windmill trying to maintain balance.

    So if you are new at fly fishing and some of these misadventures occur, don’t think you are the only one they happen to. No matter how long you have been at this sport, these things will happen. The only difference between the TV fly fisherman and the rest of us in the real world is that his mishaps are edited out.  The best we can hope for is that nobody is watching.

Chip Chipman is a flyfishing guide and lives in Nutrioso, AZ.

**This story has been reprinted with permission from the author.