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Speaking the language of love . . .

By Steven J. Meyers

Found in: | Outside | Fishing | Fly Fishing |

"The next time you hear an angler cussing after breaking off a good trout, don't feel sorry for him."

I can still hear it, even though it's been a few years since Jon and I found ourselves in the depths of the Black Canyon together, fishing. I can hear it, even though the echoes off the sheer rock walls have long since faded. I can hear it above the sigh of the canyon wind through streamside cottonwoods, above the deep rumbling roar of bloated rapids, hear it in the distance, around a bend, coming from a long way upriver where Jon has broken off, yet again, what he is certain would have been the largest rainbow trout he'd ever landed - if he'd been able to land it.
Sonovabitch! Motherfu$%er! Sh#t! Ass!@le!!
It's not like it happened just once. For nearly a decade, every fall, we'd trek down to the bottom of the canyon. We'd separate to fish - sometimes finding ourselves a good distance apart - and always, late in the afternoon, usually after we'd each landed a few good but perhaps not huge trout, the rock walls would carry Jon's outrage to me in the form of uncontrolled and uncontrollable profanity. Explosive, outrageous profanity. There, in one of the most beautiful places on earth, language as seemingly ugly as any a man can produce.
Every year, he'd plot and plan. Prepare for that trip. Think about the canyon and the ones that got away. He'd explore leaders, studying the attributes of new materials. He'd tie flies specifically for that canyon and those trout - on stout hooks. He'd contemplate the addition of a bit of stretchy bungee between line and leader to absorb the shock of a sudden run or head shake. He'd acquire fly rods with flexible tips. One year, for his birthday, his wife Jean bought him a very expensive, space-age reel said to have no start-up friction - specifically for the trout of the Gunnison Gorge. In spite of it. In spite of the planning, thinking, scheming, buying, gifting - every year, the scenario would repeat. We'd work our way to the bottom. We'd separate to fish, and sometime in the afternoon I would hear Jon's swearing, uncontrolled because uncontrollable, loudly echoing off the walls of the Black Canyon.
It took me years to realize what those words meant, how beautiful those outbursts really were.
To understand any of this you need to know two things. First, Jon is no duffer. He's probably the finest all around angler I've ever fished with. A hugely intelligent man, he's worked hard and arrived in a place where he has both the time and the means to support a rather sizable, almost obsessive, fishing jones. He lives and works in New York City, but he also owns a home in the Catskill Mountains. He's on the board of one of the most famous trout fishing clubs in the east, the Henryville Flyfishers of Pennsylvania. He vacations in the summer with Jean, coaxing picky fish from the waters of the west, often spending weeks on the famous and demanding spring creeks of Montana. He has done all of this for many years. He fishes fabled rivers regularly, and he fishes them well. His outbursts in the depths of the Gunnison Gorge are not the excuses of a bumbling beginner.
Adding to the seeming incongruity of his explosions is the beauty of the canyon, one of the most extraordinary places I've ever fished. The gorge is deep and narrow. The near vertical light gray, sometimes russet rock is painted in places with broad slashes of black. Half a mile below the rim, ringtail cats scamper and peregrines soar. And yes, Norman, a river runs through it. A river of alternating pools and powerful, sudden, boulder-strewn drops. Hard against the most violent rapids, calm eddies circulate, and in the seams where rapid and eddy meet, trout often sit, sipping insects. It is a river full of life. Full of bugs. A river full of fish. Big fish.

In the 19th century, a Brit named Halford wrote a short story about an angler who dies and awakens beside a beautiful trout stream. An angel appears with a lovely fly rod. Attached to the leader is a delicate dry fly. The angel points to a place behind a rock where a trout is rhythmically rising. Taking the rod, the deceased angler casts to the fish and hooks him on the first cast. He lands the fish quickly.
The angel points, where the trout is rising again, behind the rock. The angler casts again, hooks and lands the fish.
After a while the fisherman becomes bored and asks to move on. The angel forbids it. The fisherman asks to find and cast to another fish. The angel forbids it. He asks to stop and rest. The angel forbids it.
It is too much of a good thing. The fisherman has awakened in angling hell.
In order for angling to be heaven, there must be variety. There must be failure mixed with success.

Sometimes, in the throes of love, in moments when we lose all restraint, lose the ability to control words, our ecstasy erupts from our mouths not in the acceptable language of more mundane joys, but in blissful bursts of profane language. And so it is with Jon. There. Deep in the canyon, after a day of fishing in the shadows of sheer walls, in the presence of immense possibility, a huge, powerful fish will eat his fly and fulfill his dreams. For a moment.
I've written about all this before. The place. The fish. The annual trips with Jon. But I never understood the outbursts of profanity until this morning. The outbursts are not expressions of disappointment. They are ecstatic release.
The next time you hear an angler cussing after breaking off a good trout, don't feel sorry for him. The next time you cuss after breaking off a good trout, smile. Rejoice. You're not in hell, you're in angling heaven, speaking the language of love.

STEVEN J. MEYERS is the author of On Seeing Nature, Lime Creek Odyssey, Streamside Reflections, The Nature of Flyfishing, Notes from the San Juans and San Juan River Chronicle.