We have a small river about an hour and fifteen minutes away from our shop (#FFP) It's called the crooked river, for obvious reasons. It's a very picturesque little river winding its way through a deep and inspiring basalt canyon. It's very popular owing to its proximity to several metro areas (Bend, Oregon, Sisters, Oregon, Prineville and Redmond, Oregon) and has a reputation as a very good fishery. It serves as the go to river for our shops walk wade options and we've been fishing it for years.
Lately though, our little river has fallen on what I thought were hard times. A series of ODFW shocking surveys showed a precipitous decline in fish counts. Coupled with the increased population and pressure my enthusiasm for the Crooked was starting to wane. Then along came Tom Jarman. Tom is a professional, as in competitive, angler and guide from Australia. He is very good. Good like a pga touring professional good as observed by someone with a 4 handicap. Tom's approach was radically different from anything that I was really familiar with.
His approach is predicated on the belief that fish are programmed to eat. They will eat just about anything that floats or drifts in front of them. Hence his mantra, " fish the drift." Wait, what ? I spent a great deal of time during my undergraduate college experience studying aquatic insects and their importance of trout food. The hissing noise I'm hearing in my head is the air going out of my entomological self important bubble.
The scenario rapidly resembled old grand dad whittling a stick on his back porch when some spunky young kid comes up with a 3d printed version of whatever it was that grandpa had in mind. Thankfully, grand dad has the where with all not to be to dismissive of the young fella.
Through the day I watched Tom demonstrate his ability and techniques with astounding results and realized that even though I know a lot, what I know a lot about meant very little. The hiss became a pop and my mind bubble blew. But something else of more import was happening as well. He was catching lots of fish. We, were catching lots of fish. I was realizing that my river was not as dead as I thought it might be and my enthusiasm was staring to germinate.
Often, those of us who given fly angling a high degree of import in our lives see it as something rich in metaphor. And so it was with Tom's day of introducing and teaching us his double nymphing technique. Sure, the methodologies yielded amazing results, but the by product of my renewed enthusiasm for our little river I thought dead or dying. It is neither dead nor dying, but stoically standing it's ground and doing it's best to thrive and be vital. Seems like a decent metaphor for this old fly fishing dude too.