Once, as a younger man, I got into an argument. This isn’t to say that I hadn’t quarreled prior to or since. That has happened plenty of times. This particular squabble has pertinence to our discussion today: fly fishing.

An opinionated fellow was trying to say that there was one way to cast a fly. One way. Anything else, he said, might be fishing but it certainly wasn’t fly casting. The whole set up to my finally speaking up for sanity felt like a joke that was being played for too long. There was no punch line. He was serious. He was as earnest as I was incredulous. My disbelief manifested in a stunned “are you… do you mean that?”

What followed was an unfruitful exchange that skipped from semantics to history to preference to mild character assassination. All of that to say, some people think that you can cast a fly and try to catch a fish the wrong way.

This, of course, is stupid.

Let me be clear. I am not saying snagging or poaching or harassing spawning fish is legitimate. I am not advocating any sort of illegal activity. What I object to is the unwritten rules. Rules like “don’t retrieve a dry fly.” Or “don’t wear bright colors.” And “casts must follow a strict 10-and-2 motion.”

Recently I caught a handful of trout the wrong way. Standing upstream of the hole I wanted to fish, I cast a dry fly downstream. After it landed I swept my rod tip to the side so that the fly peeled upstream and into the seam I was targeting. Right before the fly began to drag, I’d give it a quick pop with my line hand so that it would go airborne. Using the rod tip, I’d try to facilitate a soft landing above said seam. To reintroduce slack, I put the rod tip just above the current and wiggled line out of the guides.

Textbook fly fishing, no?

By all formal fly fishing education standards I was doing nothing right. Nothing. “F-” nothing. But I had no option. The hole was in front of a bridge, the downstream side being posted. On either side were thick thorn bushes. The current shot hard right, creating a slack seam straight in front of me… but under a leader hungry branch. What is more appropriate, acceptable, and auspicious? Counting my losses or solving a problem?

I’m here to tell you that the latter is what I’ll do 10 out of 10 times, whether I’m all by myself in the woods or on display for the fly fishing world to see. Because fly fishing is about getting a fish to eat a fly. That isn’t always as easy as wade, cast, mend, set. Sometimes it gets messy. Sometimes it gets weird. Sometimes it is the wrong way. You should know how to do it right, but you should be flexible enough to get your hands dirty to go after that one fish.

And for the record, I was right and I am still  right. You can cast a number of ways and do just fine. But the ‘ol 10-and-2 should be part of your repertoire.