The trout was holding just on the far side of a deep cut in the middle of the stream. Flitting back and forth, it would dart into the fast water to quickly eat an insect before returning to the gentler current. I watched the fish range a good eighteen inches into the swifter flow. My cast wouldn’t need to be perfect. It would just need to be close enough. I had already caught a handful of fish on a weighted, peacock hurl-bodied nymph. It seemed like the pattern for the day. This fish was certainly game to eat something.
Viewing the fish like a hawk, mentally preparing to set the hook even before I made the cast, I swung my rod behind me. I felt the weight of the line pull the rod tip back; quickly followed by the tightening flex of the mid-section. At the precise point required to project the line with a trajectory that would place the line 20 feet in front of me I shifted my forearm and wrist forward.
Then, everything froze.
I was perfectly still. The fish barely moved. The cast hung in the air. Literally, the cast hung in the air: I had hooked a branch.
The apparent suspension of the temporal nature of reality altered my ability to reason well. I surmised that something like brute strength was required to break out of the predicament I found myself in. My plan had been to utilize the well-known forces of physics to weave together wind, graphite, water, and nylon to catch a trout. The branch was in the way. More force would certainly rectify everything.
A snap was expected. The tensile strength of the monofilament and fly line was, according to my plan, strong enough to snap my fly free from the tree limb. But the snap was immediately followed by a sensation of weightlessness. Glancing upward, my eyes passed something falling towards the earth.
The top two feet of my fly rod hit my right hip before slinking down the limp line to the ground. It had broken. I had broken it.
This happened nearly 25 years ago. I’d like to say that I’ve stopped trying to free flies from limbs and other snags in a much more rational and gear-conscious manner. To be honest; sometimes I do. But I do also routinely try to muscle a bad back cast into shape.
It is because I haven’t changed.
For one, I know why I got hung up all those years ago. My focus was inordinately placed on the fish. The rearward obstructions were in my mind. But they were not prominent enough in my thoughts. Without fail, I catch my fly on some out-of-water entity when I’m just about to make that perfect cast. I consider it to be so routine because it feels like it happens a lot. It does happen on a disproportionate number of high-pressure presentations. The energy and effort shifts from a holistic fishing perspective to a narrow catch that fish tunnel vision of foolhardy proportions.
Surprisingly, I haven’t broken another rod in this way. But if I were a betting man, I would have to say that another snap while staring at a feeding trout is in my future.