GONE FISHIN’

Some years ago, unaware I was suffering from a depression of considerable proportions, I found myself going fishing. One or even two days a week I’d drive out to the creeks and streams surrounding the Los Angeles basin, and then at night, as often as not, wander out to the Venice or Santa Monica piers to fish or watch others fish and listen to their stories. Still, something in me wanted more. In order to surround myself with water, I began to read books of fishing stories and instructions on how to fish, and when I slept I dreamt of streams. It was what I needed in those days--escape, pure and simple.

But along the way, I discovered something I hadn’t bargained for, and that was the special quality of much of the writing done on the subject of fish and angling. The Austrian poet and dramatist, Von Hoffmansthal, once wrote that what he loved about singing was that it was the only time the human voice ceased to be an instrument of pure self-serving; and strangely enough, those who write about their fishing experiences seem to share this selfless quality.

As a teacher of writing I had been only too familiar with the often self-promotional and self-declarative aspects of literary writing, where one of the writer’s eyes is on the subject while the other watches the audience. Those, it seemed to me, who wrote about fishing appeared to be a gentler breed, not concerned with winning or losing, or being right or having power or creating an image they could parlay into a following, but simply to share with others what happened on the water.

To tell the truth, my first memory of the sport is of a fool (it may have been from a child’s alphabet) who is sitting patiently dangling his line and a bobber in a bucket waiting for a bite, and to this day, I think that’s what I like best about the sport: foolishness and concentration. I think some of the happiest hours I ever spent were (mercifully) without witness, wrapped in a cocoon of fly line or unraveling explosions of monofilament from my reel, slapping bugs, ripped by thorns, reddened by nettles and grinning like a you-know-what. And when, inevitably, mere time and repetition made a more competent angler out of me I grieved, and still do, the loss of those earlier moments of pure imbecility. The writers I love best understand that fishing is not at all about catching fish, but wading or floating above something greater than one’s self, in fact the very source of life, then throwing in a line and waiting to see what bites. (My own favorite fishing adventure was one January when I caught only two pathetic trout, but so lost track of the hours that I was unable to return to camp by dark, and was forced to spend the night, cold and shivering, wrapped in a large English setter.)

Here, then, is a sampling of a few writers and books, some out of date and out of print (though available in libraries and used book stores) but all, at least to me, sharing the qualities of intensity and innocence that make them, no matter when they were written, an enduring pleasure.

Bill Barich: His long piece, “Hat Creek and the McCloud,” in “Traveling Light,” catches much of the attraction of the sport, and he is a beautiful writer. Here he is starting the day on the Fall River: “There was frost on my windshield when I left the lodge the next morning. I was tempted to go back inside, crawl under the covers, and read Family Circle until the sun was higher in the sky, but I pushed myself forward into the wintry air and then out into the valley. A man and his son were launching a skiff into the Fall, and they both waved and smiled blowing clouds of breath. The leaves of the Aspen along the river had died some more during the night and they were a brighter yellow than ever.”

Harold Blaisdell: “The Philosophical Fisherman.” The title tells it all. I’m not really sure how great this book is (it was the first book I happened to pick up), but the philosophy is forgiving and there is something wonderful about a grown man 1) trying to figure out how to get a six-inch perch to take his hook, and 2) believing others are just as interested. If, he writes, a fisherman “attains the proper state of objectivity, he will see in himself all the ludicrous qualities which made him the human being he is. . . . And, no matter how puny and contrived, he will not be ashamed of his efforts to make something of his nothingness.”

Russell Chatham: A fine artist and writer. A man with a colorist’s eye and a meticulous sense for detail. “The many birds so obvious earlier could no longer be seen clearly and the shoreline was becoming indistinct behind a bluish haze through which only an occasional light sparkled. The earth was immersing itself into the pearly liquid of dusk. Exposed shoreline crackled and Inverness Ridge loomed blackly, its forest of ancient pine standing in sharp contrast to the sensual, easy slopes of the hills to the east. In the distance a chain saw whined, and behind the town thin columns eased skyward as the night began to fall.” “The Angler’s Coast,” and “Dark Waters: Essays, Short Stories and Articles” are two superb books.

Sparse Grey Hackle: The pseudonym of Alfred Miller. He writes well, and accurately, and what can one say about a person who adopts the identity of a trout fly to write under? His book is called “Fishless Days, Angling Nights.”

Roderick Haig-Brown: Much beloved for the arpeggios of prose he brought to bear on the subject (“The rainbow (trout) is a knight in shining armor, spread from his native Pacific slope to the four corners of the world, known to anglers everywhere as a bold, bright, gallant performer”). The Liberace of sports writing, but there are times when that’s just what’s needed.

Tom McGuane: One of the major American writers. His essays on sport, collected in “An Outside Chance,” happily include several about fishing. Here he is describing a fish: “Only the utterly initiated think the bonefish is handsome. Those new to or stupid about the sport think the fish is silly-looking, but those who know it well consider the bonefish radiant with a nearly celestial beauty.”

A. J. McClane: Author of many books and “McClane’s New Standard Fishing Encyclopedia and International Angling Guide.” I don’t think I can remember a false or inflated sentence, simply a man who spent his life fishing and thinking about fishing, the kind of a guy who has a set of wrenches laid out on the fender of his car and the hood up, and whatever is wrong, he’ll fix it. And he cooks.

Norman Maclean: The much praised “A River Runs Through It,” while only secondarily a fishing story, is great in the same way Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” is great for everything else it includes, namely loss and discovery.

Robert Traver: The pseudonym of John Voelker, a crusty, cigar-smoking judge from the country (who wrote “Anatomy of a Murder”). Rumor has it he turned down a seat on the Michigan State Supreme Court because it would keep him too far from his favorite streams. Of women who fish, he writes: “Avoid them. One kind will quietly outfish you and generally get in your hair, while another variety will come down with the vapors and want to go home just when the rise gets under way. Avoid them like woodticks.”

Izaak Walton: Author of “The Compleat Angler,” one of the most often reprinted books in the English language. A curious fellow in the 17th Century ties strands of horsehair together and dangles them from a 12-foot pole into a river. It’s wonderful to see how little has changed and to observe the continual generous impulse of the human mind to disseminate knowledge, no matter how silly.

Lee Wulff: Modern, clear, practical advice and tales of fishing expeditions. His basic book about fly fishing, “Trout on a Fly,” is my personal favorite place to start (and stay a while) on that aspect of the sport. He writes with the clarity and authority of a man who has thought about the subject most of his life, and is not trying to impress, just to get it down right. “Without the proper fly, a fly fisherman cannot catch a trout. Nothing is more essential to the sport than the thing which induces a trout to try to eat it.”

Ray Bergman: “Trout,” and “Just Fishing,” as well as others. Not the best writer in the group but one of the modern standards, a man who appeared to have a photographic memory for every fish he ever caught, a feat I sincerely find both amazing and slightly crazy in its single-mindedness. Here he is describing the differences in fishing leaders (that part between the fly line and the hook, or tippet): “Under normal conditions on fast water these results show that the lighter leaders accounted for about 15% more rises but that the heavier leaders accounted for 25% more of the larger fish landed.”

Dame Juliana Berners: Reputed (there is some question here) author of “Treatyse of Fysshnge Wyth an Angle,” a chapter of “The Boke of St. Albains.” Written in 1496, it’s the first book on sport in English, though not the most fun to read.

And the rest: Lists are only places to begin, and no doubt I’ve left out books as good or better. There are as many kinds of fishing writers as people, from those intent on seeing who got the biggest or the most, to those who would like to reduce everything to a science. The writers I love understand that it is those days when the fish aren’t biting which create the mystery that makes the rest possible, as in any art, when suddenly, across a seemingly empty pool the line all at once becomes alive with the pull of something wild, uncertain and clearly not human--the actual tug of nature herself.