A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons

by Steve Raymond

  It also changes the whole point of the thing: What once was a means to an end becomes instead an end in itself. In other words, it’s the fishing that’s important, not the catching, and if we succeed in catching fish, that is merely a reward for having fished well. The accomplishment is not the capture of the fish itself, but the skill it took to catch it. And that is the essence of true sport fishing.

  In that respect it is rather like golf. If the objective of golf were simply to get the ball in the cup, the easiest way would be to carry it over and drop it in. Instead, golfers handicap themselves by using irons and woods to hit the ball, and by counting the number of strokes it takes them to get the ball into the cup, they measure their skill. So it is with angling.

  There are still lots of people who don’t understand this, who think the only reason to go fishing is to catch fish. Usually they are people who haven’t been at it very long. In fishing, as in nearly everything else, there are several distinct stages of development, and as people pass through those stages and reach maturity, their motives change and so does their understanding of the whole purpose of the thing.

  As fishing has evolved over the centuries, anglers have thought of more and more sophisticated ways to handicap themselves, until now I think there is nearly universal agreement that the ultimate form of sophistication has been reached, and that is fly fishing. Fly fishing demands physical, intellectual, and observational skills of the highest order, and together these raise it beyond the realm of sport to something that might even be considered art. I mention this only because I am a fly fisherman myself—I think it was genetic in my case, since my father and mother both fished with flies—but, in any case, my remarks undoubtedly reflect my prejudice.

  I can testify that fly fishing is an all-absorbing activity capable of inspiring mystical, almost religious devotion. Yet in that respect it is not much different from other forms of angling, even the most primitive; each inspires deep devotion among its followers. The truth of this is evident in the fact that fishing, especially fly fishing, has produced a more extensive body of literature than any other sport, unless you consider chess a sport.

  As that literature has evolved, many different writers have tried to answer the question of just what it is about recreational fishing that makes such fanatics of its followers. I’d like to read some of their answers, not only because I think they are instructive—and sometimes amusing—but also because I think they bear directly on the question of whether recreational fishing is a legitimate use of the seas.

  The first known English text on the subject of fly fishing is usually attributed to a woman, Dame Juliana Berners, a shadowy figure who may or may not have lived in England early in the fifteenth century. Scholars still debate whether she actually wrote the treatise attributed to her, or whether she actually existed at all, and the truth probably never will be known for certain, but there is undeniable charm in the notion that in a sport so long dominated by males, the first one to write about it was a woman.

  In any event, Dame Juliana—or whoever wrote the treatise—advised that fishing, and particularly fly fishing, was an “artful” sport, one not to be used “merely for the increasing or saving of your money, but mainly for your enjoyment and to procure the health of your body and, more especially, of your soul.” This idea that fishing was good for both your physical and spiritual health has since become one of the most enduring themes of angling literature.

  Izaak Walton, who came two centuries after Dame Juliana, was the most famous angling writer who ever lived, and his Compleat Angler, first published in 1653, has gone through more editions than any other English-language book except the Bible. We know today that Walton was a plagiarist of the first order, but unlike most plagiarists he considerably improved the material he borrowed from other writers, principally from William Samuel. In Walton’s words, the sport of angling was “an employment of one’s idle time, which was then not idly spent.” And he added this homily, which has since become one of the most famous statements on the nature of sport fishing:

  “We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: ‘Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;’ and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.”

  Jumping ahead from Walton to the twentieth century, we find some other statements about the appeal of angling. The late Arnold Gingrich, founder of Esquire magazine, said that fly fishing “is the most fun you can have standing up.” A more eloquent testimony came from the late John Voelker, a Michigan State Supreme Court justice who wrote under the pseudonym Robert Traver and is best known for his novel, Anatomy of a Murder. In a piece called “Testament of a Fisherman,” Voelker wrote:

  “I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly; because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape; because, in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion; because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience … because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there; because maybe one day I will catch a mermaid; and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant—and not nearly so much fun.”

  Another writer, whose name escapes me now, has said that on the cosmic scale of things, fishing—especially fly fishing—should not be considered any more important than life, death, sex, or drugs.

  So what we have here is a mixed bag of ideas and observations: that recreational fishing is good for your physical and spiritual health, that it is a calm, restorative activity, that it has deep connections with nature, that it gets us closer to what’s real and farther away from what’s not, that it’s as good as strawberries and as important as life or death. And those are all reasons why people are devoted to fishing.

  What does this have to do with the question of whether sport fishing is a legitimate use of ocean resources? I think the common denominator in all these different observations is that angling is a quality-of-life issue. It’s another way of saying that you can mine the oceans for all the food, minerals, and energy you might want, but if that’s all you have, then you’re merely surviving, not living. In order to live, you need to get in touch with nature, and from the point of view of an angler, there’s no better way to do that than to go fishing.

  But that’s a pretty soft, squishy answer to a hard question. And it doesn’t cut much mustard with the people who make resource-management decisions. You don’t gain much ground going before a congressional subcommittee and testifying that “I fish because it sure as hell beats working,” or “because it makes me feel closer to God.” In fact, both of those things may be absolutely true, but they are difficult to measure.

  That’s why it’s necessary to quantify the value of sport fishing in economic terms. Personally I hate doing this, because I don’t think of fishing in those terms; but dollars and cents seem to be the only language that bureaucrats and politicians are capable of understanding, so in order to make a case for the legitimacy of angling, we have to measure it in those terms. And that has been done.

  The American Sportfishing Association, an organization supported by tackle and boat manufacturers and many angling groups, recently published a study showing that American anglers spent $8.7 billion to participate in marine recreational fishing in 1996, the most recent year for which figures were available. Those dollars rippled through all sectors of the US economy and generated a total economic impact of $25.1 billion, according to the ASA study.

  The same study estimated that marine recreational fishing supported 288,000 full-time equivalen
t jobs and generated $1.24 billion in state and federal taxes in 1996. During that year, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, 9.4 million Americans aged sixteen and older fished in salt water. If children under sixteen are included, the total number of anglers exceeded 12 million.

  Based on these figures, the ASA concluded that “while marine fishing is an enjoyable recreational sport for millions, it (also) has important economic benefits. Pursuit of the social, psychological, and physical benefits of sport fishing has given rise to an industry focused on supplying the goods and services necessary to meet angler demand and ensure satisfying recreational experiences … Several sectors of the economy, ranging from the sporting-goods industry to the travel and tourism sector, are to some degree dependent on sport fishing. In many small communities, sportfishing-related businesses are crucial to overall economic health and growth.”

  In our own state, marine sport fishermen spent more than $201 million in 1996, generating total economic output of more than $400 million and earnings of $108 million, and recreational fishing supported the equivalent of 4,605 full-time jobs. The state received $13 million in sales-tax revenues from marine sport fishing and the federal government received $11 million in taxes.

  Now these figures may not quite equate with the economic impact of a Boeing or a Microsoft, but they are substantial. And historically, before pressures on our fisheries resulted in declining catches and declining participation, the economic impact of marine sport fishing in our state was undoubtedly much greater than it is now.

  While we’re on the subject of our own state, a 1991 US Fish & Wildlife Service study of Washington saltwater anglers found that 503,600 people spent 3,557,000 days fishing that year, an average of 7.1 days per angler. Not surprisingly, salmon accounted for the largest number of anglers—306,694—and the greatest number of days, 2,081,903.

  I think it’s kind of interesting that in the same survey, nearly 10,000 anglers reported they had fished for striped bass, which they might well have done, but I would guess their rate of success was pretty low since there are no striped bass in our state’s waters. Yet the survey also revealed that striped-bass anglers in general have less education than other fishermen, with only slightly more than half having graduated from high school, so maybe that explains it.

  Among the Washington anglers who fished for salmon in 1991, 72 percent were male and 28 percent were female. The same survey showed that 72 percent were married and 28 percent were single. Was this just coincidence, or could all of the male anglers have been married and all the females single? Or vice versa? The survey doesn’t say, but it makes you wonder if there was something going on here besides fishing.

  The survey showed that nearly a quarter of the salmon anglers had annual household incomes of more than fifty thousand dollars, and more than half were college graduates, so on the whole they appear to be a rather well-heeled, well-educated bunch. Maybe that helps explain why other studies have shown that the economic value of a sport-caught salmon or steelhead is much higher than that of one taken by commercial methods. In fact, the most recent studies estimate the value of a salmon or steelhead caught by an angler is anywhere from twelve to twenty-six times greater than a fish taken for commercial purposes.

  They could be worth even more. In this state, you can buy a license to fish for salmon and other species in salt water for only eighteen dollars a year. Add another seventeen dollars and you can also fish for sea-run cutthroat trout. Add yet another eighteen dollars and you can fish for steelhead. If you break these figures down on a daily basis, you will find it costs only five cents a day in this state to fish for salmon and other saltwater species, and if you add both trout and steelhead, it costs only fourteen and a half cents a day. A politician once said that what this country needs is a good five-cent cigar. Well, we still don’t have that, but we do have a five-cent-a-day fishing license, and if there’s a greater bargain in existence, I don’t know what it is.

  Yet many people complain that fishing licenses cost too much, without realizing they probably spend more to gas up the car for a single day’s fishing trip than they spend for a license that entitles them to fish every day of the year. If we raised the license fee to $365, which we ought to do, that would still mean a day’s fishing would cost only a dollar—and that would still be an astounding bargain. It also would make recreational fishing even more valuable to the economy than it is now, and perhaps generate the funds that are so sorely needed to manage our fisheries properly. Of course, there would have to be a student discount for fishing licenses.

  The whole point of all these figures is that marine recreational fishing in the United States is a big business, constantly getting bigger. And on a worldwide scale, the US is only one slice of the pie; salt-water fishing is growing rapidly throughout North, Central, and South America, in Australia and New Zealand, in Africa and Europe, and even in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. It is an economic force to be reckoned with, and if, in the eyes of bureaucrats and politicians, economic value is tantamount to legitimacy, then sport fishing is very definitely a legitimate use of the world’s oceans.

  So, if you accept these conclusions, sport fishing has a justifiable claim to its share of the sea’s resources for both quality-of-life and economic reasons. Yet there’s still another reason, one perhaps even more practical than either of the others, and that is the potential of sport fishing to be a totally non-consumptive use. Sport fishing offers the opportunity to catch fish and release them, to let them go safely after their recreational purpose has been served, and many forms of marine fishing are moving rapidly in that direction. This is especially true of fly fishing, where catch-and-release is now the rule rather than the exception.

  This is a classic case of being able to have your cake and eat it too. Using proper tackle and techniques, it is possible for anglers to hook, land, and release most saltwater species with little or no harm, thus subtracting nothing from the resource. Except possibly for whale watching, what other use of the oceans can make such a claim? Virtually every other use is, in some respect, either extractive or damaging or both.

  Globally, we are now taking many more fish for food than the stocks can sustain. We also take oil and minerals from the sea floor, and once these are taken they are gone forever. We use the seas for commerce, which means oil spills and other forms of pollution. We fill in estuaries to make way for industry and in the process destroy the most productive biological habitats on the face of the earth. And the list goes on and on.

  But recreational fishing has the potential, which is rapidly being realized, for taking nothing, for using the resource without using it up, for adding immeasurably to our quality of life and greatly to our economic health without extracting or damaging anything. To me, at least, that is a powerful moral imperative for its legitimacy, one that can’t be matched by any other competing use of the seas.

  In the future I assume that many of you will be in positions of responsibility for setting policy over our use of the seas and our management of their resources. As you face the difficult task of weighing all the competing demands for these resources, I hope you will remember these arguments for sport fishing as a legitimate use—not necessarily to the exclusion of others, but at least as an equal among many.

  And when all the economic and practical criteria have been evaluated and applied, I would also urge you to remember what fishing means to the individual angler, the one who goes out day after day in all kinds of weather searching for an experience that cannot be obtained in any other way. For the thin line that connects an angler to a fish is ultimately like an electric wire, a wire that carries a magical current momentarily joining two very different beings. For the fisherman, that connection provides a brief glimpse into the world of an alien creature, a wild thing, a thing of beauty, strength, and instincts completely different from our own. It joins us with nature in a thrilling way that nothing else ever could, and changes us in ways we can never completely understand or fully e
xplain, even to ourselves.

  Perhaps, in the final analysis, fishing is simply our way of reaching out to the universe. I hope we will always have the opportunity to do that.

  THE SOPHISTICATED ANGLER’S TEST (SAT)

  TESTS ARE usually serious matters. If you do well, they might help you get into the college of your choice, or maybe land a job. This one, however, is mostly just for fun, though it will actually test your fly-fishing knowledge. You’ll have a pretty good idea how well you did when you finish, so you don’t even have to keep score unless you want to.

  If you don’t do very well, it’s probably time you started getting out on the water a little more to sharpen your fly-fishing knowledge and skills, because that’s where you learn the most. It also wouldn’t hurt to read a few more fly-fishing books.

  All the test questions are multiple-choice. Each question has at least one genuine actual correct answer, more or less, although in a few cases there might be more than one correct answer. This means that even if you just choose answers randomly, you should be able to get at least 25 percent right. No fair asking Alexa or Siri or another one of those digital voices, though. Looking things up on Google or Wikipedia is equally verboten. Use your head; that’s why you have one.

  If you decide to write down your answers, please do it on a separate sheet of paper. You wouldn’t want to mess up this splendid book.

  You’ll find the real answers at the end of each test category so you can see how you did.