Rolling your own
If you wish to make a fly rod from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
CFS folk: One of my favorite aspects of fly-fishing is the idea of rolling your own. Applying your own creativity to improve your fishing tools or technologies. This week, we've got an exciting video featuring craft excellence at its best, some advice on roll casting, a successful fishing report, and a river book roll call. Roll on for more: 🌀
1️⃣ Spring class is filling up.
Section 1 is almost full, but there's plenty of room in Section 2. Start the season strong by indoctrinating a friend into the ways of the water...
2️⃣ Tune Tuesday night for smallmouth
For PDX-local folks, tomorrow night local guide Colby Olson is presenting his approach for targeting smallmouth bass at our TU chapter meeting. The presentation starts at 7:00 at Hopworks Urban Brewery on Powell, after a good :30 of kibbitzing and chat. Or you can Zoom in here from anywhere in the Zoomiverse
The roll cast: another cast for your quiver
Nick Parish
Tired of the metronomic monotony of the overhead cast? Switch it up and throw some darts with the cobra-strike roll cast. Add the versatile roll cast to your arsenal.
Watch 📽️: "SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING"
One of the greatest parts of fly-fishing is that you and I can still govern our technology. We can roll our own stuff.
By that I mean, we could, without much specialized equipment, create every aspect of the gear we need to catch a fish with a fly.
It seems farfetched, but it's true. And if the Primitive Technology YouTube channel ever chooses fly-fishing as a topic, I volunteer.
We could weave a tapered line from a stallion's tail.
We could shape a piece of cane to form a long tenkara-style rod.
We could find some feathers, straighten a wire, spin some thread, and tie a fly.
It would take trial and error at first, but it's possible. Italians have been doing it for centuries.
This aspect of fly-fishing means it's possible to quickly find your craft-place in the sport. What do you like to make? Flies? Rods? Boats? Art? There's a place where you can apply your creativity to make something to enhance the fishing experience of yourself or others.
And there are lots of adjacent skillsets that come along and make a difference in fly-fishing, where people who've mastered one craft skill apply it to the fly-fishing world seamlessly.
Here's a short video I just adore from The Flyfish Journal, about rodmaker Olivia Elia, accompanying a feature on Elia in the current issue. Elia makes bamboo fly rods but also happens to be an incredibly talented luthier. She makes bamboo fly rods and high-end guitars, the latter for Thompson, a renowned company creating instruments for the likes of Billy Strings and other influential Americana and bluegrass musicians.
Both are instruments channeling intent through powerful fibers, making sweet music. What's not to love?
Pick up issue 16.1 of The Flyfish Journal to read the whole story.
Fishing report
This past Winter Term we set a new record in class: youngest participant.
Wolfie, an avid beginning angler, joined his dad, Robert in class.
After taking patient notes, asking lots of questions, and making a plan, Wolfie and his dad went to visit our practice area, St Louis Ponds. And they had some success. Here's Robert to tell the story:
Wolfie and I went to pond #6 at St Louis Ponds. We saw some really big trout jumping above the water's surface and had plenty of time to cast.
I even caught a fish! Sure it was a tiny crappie and I almost recast the guy back out, but the indicator dropped and it worked! Wolfie grabbed the little guy from the weeds and put him back in and he swam away in good condition.
We applied everything we learned from your class: observation, tying knots, casting techniques, and having a good time on the water's edge.
I had some untangling time and we lost some gear due to bad knots and snags, but overall it was a huge success!
Great job, you two! Got a fishing report? Send it over!
Reading the room
Thanks for all the book recommendations from last week. Based on the response, it's clear a lot of you like books about fishing-adjacent stuff. So we're gonna try something.
I'm starting In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings, and want to invite anyone interested to read along. Maybe in a month we can see if it's worth a discussion. Zoom? Open comment thread? Discord? Who knows: let's see what feels right.
If you're not familiar with the work of James C. Scott, he was an anthropologist and political scientist who concerned his studies with how power shapes societies. He wrote a foundational book titled Seeing Like a State How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, which details how various attempts by governments have tried and failed to quantify various things, and improve people's lives. Seeing Like a State is a theoretical touchstone to all sorts of folks, from eco-anarchists to crypto bros and in some ways an enormous unwrapping of Polish-American philosopher Alfred Korzybski's maxim “the map is not the territory”. But, however much I find that earlier work influential, we're reading Scott's new book!
This recommendation comes courtesy Graydon, and it seems like a doozy, in a David Graeber Dawn of Everything vein, but starring rivers. Just flipping through, there are a host of fun maps and charts to go along with the analysis.
In Praise of Floods was published posthumously, so the chance of convincing Scott to stop by any koffee klatsch we ultimately get to with CFS is slim, but maybe in the future we can invite an author to participate.
If you're into joining some sort of discussion, nothing to do now except to get your mitts on a copy of the book, from your local library, bookshop, or wherever. Drop me a line if you want to confirm you're up for a chat, or have thoughts on what the best way to convene might be!
Current Flow State is a weekly newsletter from me, Nick Parish.
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