Epiphany.
Though I love the word, it’s not all that often that I would classify the thoughts thundering through my skull as anything nearly so substantiative as an epiphany.
Yet just yesterday afternoon while standing nearly waist deep in a run on the Lower Madison, I actually had an epiphany. Now that I think about, the scene yesterday actually could just as well have been set in early July as mid-April.
Real world work had kept me chained to the desk yesterday morning; it seemed the greater the effort I applied to my work tasks, the louder the bird song played from outside my window. It was unusually warm yesterday morning, in the mid-60s by 11 or so, and Jake’s emails that we needed to go fish the lower Madison and scout some locations for a commercial project we’re working on were more distracting than usual.
The inevitable work-day fires were controlled by 12:30 (a daily peril of owning and running several small businesses); I decided that it was now or never for a 4 hour break to hit the Lower Madison. It’s 27 miles from my house to the turn-off from Highway 84 in the canyon to drive upriver to Beartrap, on a good day that’s about 23 minutes.
Both bank temperature signs were reading 70 as we left Bozeman a little after one, and it was obvious that a brisk west/southwest wind had kicked up. That always prompts a bit of concern when headed for the Lower Madison, as the orientation of the canyon can transform it into a wind tunnel when the southwest breezes kick up.
As we drove through the lower most canyon we noted more than one drift boat / raft party sullenly holding rods while a grim faced guide rowed to beat hell trying to hold boats in the lee of the western shoreline; every brushy island had at least one drift party tucked in out of the wind on the lee side with the sports out wading. OK, so it was windy, and we knew of several curves in the river that fish a bit better in the wind. Further proof of the wind’s power was soon evidenced – now and then a particularly effortful gust would blow my landing net out to a 60 to 70 degree angle from by body. My hat and sunglasses (prescription, dammit) both blew off at one point.
So at what point was I struck by my epiphany?
I had started off throwing a streamer in the stained water, though to no avail. Given the runs before me at that time (3 to 4 feet of water, large weed beds, and several truck sized rocks with heavenly slicks behind them), it was time to change over to a double nymph rig and take my chances in the wind.
Trained by years of rowing my kids, friends, and extended family in a 17.5 foot high sided drift boat, without thinking about it I turned quartering to the wind, changed my casting angle, tweaked my backcast timing, and was able to manage the wind.
The reward? A five inch leviathan. My only fish of the day. And a flash to the readings I’d been doing for my real world work – particularly comments from a psychologist by the name of Anders Ericsson who studies the field of ‘performance excellence’.
Ericsson’s main premise is that raw talent is far overrated, as are ‘superior genetics’. He finds that experts in a given field (any field – music, medicine, or fly fishing) ‘get there’ – attain excellence – primarily through what he calls ‘deliberate practice’.
His tenants of ‘deliberate practice’ –
- Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
- Set specific goals.
- Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.
As these thoughts flooded back into my consciousness, I actually stopped casting for a moment or two and let it sink in. Maybe, finally, despite so-so genetics and a decided lack of raw talent, through ‘deliberate practice’ for twenty-plus years I had finally become a competent fly caster. Wow.
With a self righteous chuckle and oblivious to the winds gusting down the canyon, I deftly lifted my line and promptly hooked myself in the back of the neck with my bead head hares ear on my first forward casting stroke.
Damn. Time for more ‘deliberate practice’. Jake’s feedback was prompt, but not good.
