I parked my car at the familiar gravel pull off. Without waders or fly rod, I walked up the road to a low bridge that crossed the stream. I had plans to write a number of articles featuring the spring creeks I fished so often when I lived in Pennsylvania. Standing on top of the bridge, I took some pictures facing downstream. I crossed the one lane road and took more pictures looking upstream. The photos looked good. But I had a particular shot in mind: a good shot of the creek meandering up through a willow-lined meadow.
This required me to climb down the side of the bridge and get positioned on the ground, at creek level. Jumped over the guardrail put me right where I wanted to be. It also put me someplace I didn’t expect.
When you’re on the bank of a trout stream, you’re probably used to thinking in terms of three of your senses. Whether it is wholly conscious or not, you’re relying on feeling, hearing, and seeing.
Sight is obvious. It is necessary to see fish. More often, you simply see where fish should be.
Touch is vital. Casting, wading, and detecting strikes all depend on tactile accuracy.
Hearing also plays in important role. Fish splash indicating their presence and line whirrs as it passes by your head.
Those three senses are what you can count on using when you’re trying to catch fish. Your body is constantly working, sending data to your brain allowing you to synthesize the unfathomable number of variables that go into fly fishing. Taste isn’t really a factor, unless your beverage or snack of choice is a must-have.
Smell, on the other hand, can be a powerful sense.
Psychologists and neurologists have long understood the strong link between our sense of smell and memories. Physically, our olfactory bulb has a direct connection to the amygdala and hippocampus. These brain areas are stimulated when we recall memories or experience emotion. A perfume, a food, or a tree can quickly snap us back to a place or sentiment in ways that even sight can’t necessarily replicate. Our nose is for nostalgia.
Fly fishing is full of smells: The resin of balsams in the north woods. Muddy flats on low tide. Algae covered rocks baking in the sun on the river bank. Waders that haven’t quite dried out from the last trip. The indescribable melding of scents encountered on a cool spring creek on a hot summer evening. Scents don’t often translate directly to angling techniques or calculating fly presentation. The science underlines their place in forming the overall experience.
And the experience is often why we fish.
As soon as I hit the ground, the scent of the river brought memories flooding back. It was unexpected. It was powerful. It was even emotional.
The impact of the smells and the impact of the moment was suprising. But I thought about trout I had caught. I remembered conversations I had with fishing buddies about trout and things much more significant. I thought about trout I had missed. There was a lot of nostalgia in less than a minute.
I cannot claim to understand the implications of the olfactory-amygdala connection, I appreciate the practical conclusion. I know the coniferous smell of a mountain brook trout stream. I know the hot over-fertilized bouquet of subdivision ponds. I know the brackish whiff of tidal marshes. And while images and words help me remember, it is the scents that actually take me there.
This article is a reworked piece from 2016 called “The Scent of a River.” I encourage you to check out the original article. From time to time I like to edit what I’ve written to reflect my current perspective and writing methods. For example, the piece above altered the order of the original while also shaving off 200 words. Enjoy!