The Newbie
June 9, 2009
I picked Mike up at the bus stop at six in the morning.
Mike didn’t have a car, so meeting him at the river wasn’t an option. It wasn’t a big deal (though it was the opposite direction from the water) and, as he didn’t own a single piece of fishing equipment, he traveled light. He clambered into the van with a sheepish smile and asked if we could drive back to where he had caught the bus, which turned out to be several miles closer to my house, to pick up a library book that he had accidentally left there.
No big deal.
If we had been blasting across the state to catch a stonefly hatch on the Deschutes, I might have been forced to tell him that sometimes life sucks and maybe someone would send his book back to the library for him.
Luckily, we where headed to some local water, familiar and un-crowded, for an easygoing day of catching hungry smallmouth that come to the hook with the sweet innocence of a well loved puppy.
Given the laid back nature of the plan, I chose to be gracious and drive back into town. 
The abandoned book, one of those novels that Stephen King has referred to as the “sex among the cavemen books,” was right where he had left it, and soon we were pointed East again and eating up miles and cold McMuffins.
Mike is a nice guy, quiet and amiable, the kind of guy you would invite fishing before you really thought about it, which I did, and then be glad you had, which I was.
Cranking down the volume on the stereo, I puffed my pipe back to life and, as a thick blanket of cavendish began to fill the van, I asked him how much bass fishing experience he had.
“None.”
“None?”
“Nope.”
“You mean you’ve never fished?”
“Not ever.”
This was a mind-whirling concept on par with alien abductions and honest politicians.
Never fished?
I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.
My own father wasn’t the outdoorsiest of men, but I can still remember any number of camping and fishing trips dotting the landscape of an otherwise misspent youth.
Mike was near my age, somewhere in his mid thirties, and the idea that he had never so much as plunked a worm for bluegills was staggering. As we drove on, he explained that his father had been a computer programmer. While other boys were pitching tents and baseballs with their old men, Mike and his dad had written computer code together.
I tried to smile and nod in appreciation. I’m not sure that I succeeded.
Silence descended and as I sat there, tooling down the highway in my old camping van, loaded with a double potions of rods, waders, nets, fly boxes, and a mad jumble of other fishing flotsam and jetsam, I felt a little sad for Mike. I determined then and there that he would catch a bass today, and he would be able to say something that few of us anglers could, that he had caught his very first bass on a fly rod.
I knew that this meant that I wouldn’t do much fishing myself. After all, I’d done my share of kid fishing over the years. As the unofficial “guide,” you spent most of your time pointing out likely water, tying knots, and untangling line.
I figured that today would be similar, but with the anticipation of a longer attention span and better coordination in my student.
Once the van was parked, the gear unloaded and assembled, and the keys stashed on top the driver’s front tire, we walked over to the adjoining meadow to learn the basics of the roll and false cast. Mike turned out to be the best type of student possible, quick, attentive and with absolutely no preconceived ideas as to how things were done.
Most bass anglers, on first picking up a fly rod, must overcome the ingrained habit of trying to “cast” the fly like they would a spinner-bait or lure. After a couple of decades of lobbing hardware on a weightless line, correcting this snap of the wrist can be an exercise on par with learning to write with your opposite hand.
You’re fighting instinct.
Mike, having never cast any type of fishing equipment, was a blank slate, completely unconditioned. It was like teaching a youngster who had the mental capacity to immediately understand, and the musculature to perform the actions you’re showing him, 
without the underlying suspicion that the funny colored line really might go further with a little extra oomph.
All in all we spent about twenty minutes casting a fly-less line across the knee-high weeds and by the time we had finished, his back cast had stopped slapping the ground behind us and he was roll casting, if not as accurately, at least as far, as I could.
Heading to the river, I found a long, slow drift that started as a short fast riffle, then flowed several dozen yards over fist sized river rocks to drop a foot into a deep blue-shadowed pool. Given Mike’s proficiency with the roll cast, we tied on a Joe’s Hopper, a single split shot, and started him casting into the milky swirl at the head of the pool.
The river here flows under a high, narrow stone bridge that, once a major thoroughfare between the small towns that are laid out like traffic cones every ten miles across the valley, became a less frequented by-way decades ago when I-84 was completed.
Now it’s a pretty little back road that makes for a scenic Sunday afternoon drive when you’re headed nowhere in particular. In the fall, multi-hued oak leaves drift down like snow, squirrels scamper along the telephone lines and you round corners with one foot on the brake, ever watchful for mule deer or maybe an escaped heifer.
It’s a scantily fished river, despite it’s relatively well dropped name, probably because bigger bass can be found within an hour’s drive in any direction.
I’ve caught smallies here beyond number, a couple of hefty large-mouth, and a single shell-shocked brown trout that I found finning half-heartedly in the warm shallow current, with no explanation to his origins.
We have a number of fine trout rivers in the area, but this isn’t one of them.
Still, there’s plenty of warm, braided water to cast a black cricket or, in the spring, a hairball leech. The smallies gulp the fly decisively and usually perform an outraged aerial display before coming to hand.
As Mike continued perfecting his roll cast, I set up my tiny portable stove on a flat boulder under the bridge, and started a pot of water boiling for coffee.
This is something I’ve learned to treasure. I have finally passed that place in my angling life were I spend my day in a constant race with the sun, rushing from hole to hole to get in as many casts as humanly possible before the sky darkened and I had to head home, often with only a vague, blurred impression of lots of water and maybe a couple of the better fish.
Now I like to relax a little. I’ve started smoking a pipe as a discipline in patience, forcing myself to pack, light, and smoke when I first arrive, puffing slowly and watching the water, instead of blundering into the current (and often the fish) while still stringing up my rod.
This has accomplished both a better catch rate as well as a deep and abiding love for dark, strong tobacco.
Once the coffee is seeping in my dented aluminum pot and smoke is coiling from the bowl the pipe, I wander back down to the river to see how my fishing partner is doing.
Like any other of a number of firsts that I could mention (but won’t), the key is to go heavy on the praise, light on the critique, and never, ever laugh. In that same line of thought, remember that the fishing that your newbie experiences today will be the standard by which future angling adventures (or lack of them) will be weighed.
Be gentle.
In a short time, Mike had accomplished that great first in life, as a chunky 10 inch small-mouth fought bravely, if vainly, against the ultra-light tippet. Keeping on the gravel bank, I show Mike how to release a bass, spouting the catch and release boilerplate about the good fish this time can be the great fish next time, which is true, and he accepts this with a nod, commenting that he doesn’t like to eat fish anyway.
I bite my pipe (and my lip) and chalk this up to his unfortunate void of fishing experience; after all, if he’d never been fishing, who would have pan fried him a couple of fresh bass fillets in flour and garlic butter until they were crispy brown?
I felt myself getting sad again, and slapped Mike on the back, congratulating him on his first fish and offered him a hearty handshake (which he accepted) and a good Fuente Robusto (which he didn’t) then broke out the popper box to take him to the next level.
Half way up the long slick, a single haystack-shaped boulder interrupts the current and creates a short wide pocket about the same size as the trunk of an imported economy car.
When there isn’t a blue heron perched on the rock throwing the shadow of doom across the pocket, I’ve caught some better than average (for this river) smallie from this spot, puddling leader and tippet between the divided current for a short, five second drift. I added two feet of light tippet to his line and handed Mike a small foam-ant which he tied on himself and proceeded to bounce off the boulder on his first cast.
The little fly hit the foam, twirled twice in the fast water and disappeared in a gulping swirl and a flash of green. I watched Mike, Mike watched his line, and the fly appeared (sans fis) a moment later at the foot of the pocket. I asked Mike if he had seen the take, he said no.
I asked him if he knew what he was looking for, and he said no again.
I apologized for being an idiot and explained to him some of the different ways that a bass can take a dry fly off the surface. Mike’s impression had been that the fish would rise, tarpon like, from the river, shaking its head angrily before splashing back into the current. His second cast bounced off the boulder about a quarter of an inch from the first, twirled once, and when the boil came this time, he pinched the line between thumb and forefinger and raised the rod, setting the small hook perfectly in the jaw of a fat ten-inch smallie.
The spirited bass and the weight of the current combined to strip a little line from the dragless reel, and Mike laughed when I told him that this was the sound we’d gotten up early for.
Releasing the fish with only minor difficulty, Mike went back to casting and I poured myself a cup of coffee and started stringing up my fly rod.
The newbie had gotten the basics down fast, and watching another fisherman catch two fish while my fly rod lay on the bank was about the upper limit of my patience. I decided that I would torture myself no longer, and fish within sight of Mike for the rest of the day.
One hour later, I glanced up to see Mike sitting in a patch of sunlight beside the river, reading his novel. An hour later (and two more smallie in hand), he was still engrossed in the book, my spare rod propped carefully against a sage bush beside him.
I was ready to reel in and walk back to him when something smashed my #10 hopper hard enough to put a healthy backlash in my reel. I’d been drifting a grungy, weather-beaten old Dave’s Hopper against the far bank and under a long patch of overhanging wheat stalks. I’d seen a couple of half hearted refusals and kept fishing the hopper anyway because it was now noon, hot as hell, and I didn’t know what else to try.
The bass was a good one and I figured that, even adding two or three inches for the deep current of the channel, I had a smallie on that would go better than a foot. That’s a good green-back for this stretch of river.
I played him with a firm hand. As much as I love the sound of a protesting reel, I’ve also fought way too many smallies hard, released them quick, and then come back a few days later to find a large carcass bobbing in the shallow weeds that could be, almost certainly was, the same fish.
Make no mistake; I’ll kill a couple of small bass when the thought of a pan fried breakfast, like an itch that must be scratched, won’t go away.
I’ve read essays by anglers who say that they kill fish on occasion, but feel guilty about it later, and I guess I don’t understand that…fish are going to die, sometimes regardless of how carefully and lovingly we play and release them, sometimes to satisfy our own hunger both for food and for a deeper primal instinct that makes us yearn to hunt and fish and sustain ourselves.
If you’re going to feel guilty about it, don’t do it.
If an angler feels that he should put every fish he catches back, and does so, then I respect his ability to live by his ideals. I don’t understand him, but I respect him.
I, however, have this great seasoned-flour recipe and a perfectly cured skillet.
Mike wandered over to watch me land the big small-mouth, which proved to stretch a full two inches past my conservative estimate. He commented to its size and then meandered back to his perch to reenter the world of Cro-Magnon man. He seemed happy enough to just sit and read, and told me that he was pretty excited about catching his first two fish and that he’d had a lot of fun.
There was a certain emphasis on the word had, that inferred that while it was fun, it was also over.
That was okay, too. Make someone do something past the point where they’re enjoying themselves and you should be ready with a paycheck for them, because that’s called work.
However, an hour later when I mentioned, as we ate ham sandwiches and smacked mosquitoes, that the really good hatches usually came just before dusk, Mike looked hesitant and mentioned that he had hoped to be home before that.
Be gentle, I thought to myself.
Nothing had prepared Mike for a marathon, dawn to dusk day of a fishing trip.
Chris Renner, a longtime bass fisherman and hunter in the Pacific Northwest has been known to tell me, across the glowing coals of the campfire, that a real fishing trip doesn’t even get started until the second morning. I tend to lean more towards this all-day, while-there’s-light-you-fish, type of commitment, but I could easily understand how a newbie could get bored with the constant casting and the endless flow of water.
(Okay, I don’t understand it, but I’m willing to accept it, isn’t that enough?)
Mike was home before dark.
I was home shortly after, having assuaged my pain of missing the evening bite by stopping at the local sporting warehouse, perusing the bass flies, and buying a new net.
My wife ran into Mike the next day and reported back to me that he’d had a great time fishing. She had struggled not to laugh when he’d commented, somewhat incredulously, that I had actually wanted to fish until dark.
“Mike,” she told him, with much rolling of her eyes, I’m sure, “You have no idea.”
Give me a few of more trips with him, a couple of more big bass, and he’ll be fishing until he’s squinting into the encroaching dark, trying to pick out the upturned wings of a #18 foam hopper in rippling water.
‘Course, by then, he won’t be a newbie anymore.
About the Author: Novelist, blogger, and award winning travel writer, Perry P. Perkins is a stay-at-home dad who lives with his wife Victoria and their year-old daughter Grace, in the Pacific Northwest. Perry has written for numerous outdoor magazines and anthologies such as: Bassmaster Magazine, North American Hunter, Bass West Magazine, Northwest Fly Fishing, Salmon Trout & Steelheader Magazine, The Local Fisherman Magazine, North American Fisherman, Pop Up Times, & 52 Perfect Places. His inspirational stories have been included in eleven Chicken Soup anthologies as well.
Examples of his published work can be found online at www.perryperkinsbooks.com.