“What is the little white stuff on it’s back?”

“It is supposed to imitate a wing case or something.”

“It looks like it has a starched collar. Are the fish going to go for that?”

The fly shop owner peered over his newspaper at the two young men picking through the fly bins. The less-than-entomological assessment of his prince nymphs didn’t phase him much. Being the proprietor of a hardware/outdoor/variety store on what had become a sleepy main street, he was hardly bothered to the point of criticizing the casual conversation of  teenagers.

“We’ll take these flies.”

“And… two cigars?”

The fly purchase was necessary. It also greased the skids for the tobacco purchase.  17 is almost 18. But in their minds, ten dollars worth of flies would be enough to assuage any vigilance from the shop keeper. After all, he was smoking a pipe. There was solidarity along with the financial incentive. It worked.

The bell over the shop door clanged. The doors to the old Jeep Cherokee slammed shut.  The engine turned over and the Cat Stevens CD kicked in. Hard Headed Woman. Swinging a tight U-turn on the main street was much riskier in theory than in practice, given that it was sleepy. By the time the Jeep was up to speed and the mountains began to rise higher through the windshield Cat Stevens was strumming hard.

“Let’s park before the bridge. You like fishing that pool and I’ll fish down in the…”

“Shh!  ‘And if I find my hard headed woman, I know my life will be as it should, yes, yes, yes.'”

At that age it is acceptable to cut someone off because you want to sing a particularly  poignant line in a song.

“Sorry. Where did you want to park?”

“If we part before the bridge, you can fish the pool downstream and I can head into the valley. Those nymphs we bought will get down to some of those fish that hold deep in the plunge pools. No dries today.”

“No dries? What if they’re rising?”

“Nope. I’m going to nymph them up.”

“That isn’t a verb.”

“If you know what it means, it is a verb. It is language, anyway.”

“Whatever. I’m fishing dries.”

They split up. The true pleasure of fishing together is realized when fishing not exactly together. Some people fish right next to each other. But on mountain streams, the kinds with plunge pools and tight rhododendron tunnels, you can’t fish right next to someone. One person can fish and the other can watch. You can take turns. You can leapfrog. But you can’t fish right next to each other. So fishing together isn’t exactly together.

Inevitably, someone will pop up after a few hours. Popping up never happens because of productive fishing.

“Catch anything?”

“A few. They’re rising, but not a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“You?”

“Nope. What is a prince nymph supposed to imitate, anyway? It’s all shiny and all I see are those pointy white things. I figure the fish are looking at them too.”

“Did you change flies?”

“No. I mean, I just bought those flies for today. And I was humming ‘Hard Headed Woman’ the whole time.”

“That is what you get for talking over the song.”

“Yeah. It is stuck in my head. But I also was going to be stubborn and not change flies.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

A little more fishing; truly together now. The streamside conversation turned to how music helps or hurts your fishing. The consensus is that having one line of a song is the worst thing that can happen to an angler. You want full songs. Singing out loud depends on how remote the stream is. Coming up with parody lyrics about fishing is good, but it takes a lot of concentration. It is usually the sign of checking out as the day gets difficult or long.

“I’m looking for a hard headed brown trout, one who’ll take my prince nymph.”

“And if I find my hard headed brown trout, I won’t need nobody else, no, no, no.”