The Perfect Angler

We all fall short--but some fall shorter than others. . . .

Editor's Note: "The Perfect Angler" is, in our opinion, one of the finest essays ever penned on the subject of fly-fishing. Right from the start, author Sparse Grey Hackle (aka the late Alfred W. Miller) immediately confesses that his "perfect" angler is purely hypothetical. But that doesn't stop him from describing all the many qualities of mind and body that would comprise such a person if he did exist. It is an array of talents and aptitudes--some natural, others acquired--that will have most fly-fishers checking off the boxes on an invisible scorecard to determine how close they (and all their fishing companions) come to this Angling Ideal.

"The Perfect Angler" was published in 1971 as part of Fishless Days, Angling Nights, Sparse's classic collection of angling stories, reminiscences and lore. The entire book is just as valid and valuable--and every bit as crisp and precise a read--as it was when it first came out. Unfortunately, it is also out of print. Although The Lyons Press issued a paperback reprint in 2001, the publisher recently told us that around a dozen copies remained in inventory, and that there were no plans to return to press with it. To which we say, thank God for the Internet and the vast secondhand book market it supports. . . . In any case, please write us or send us an email at editors@flyrodreel.com to let us know whether you agree with us about "The Perfect Angler."


I never saw him; if anyone else ever did, it has not been reported. I don't believe he exists. But if he did, what would his attributes be? If we accept the little girl's statement that piano playing is easy--"You just press down on those black and white things"--and apply it to trout fishing, all it involves is: 1) Finding a fish 2) Deceiving it into taking an imitation of its food 3) Hooking, playing, and landing it The first requirement is the most important; my guess is that finding a fish is anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of catching it. Overwhelmingly, the reason why so many experienced and well-equipped fishermen catch so few trout is that most of the time they aren't fishing over fish. Bill Kelly, a research aquatic biologist and a skillful, experienced angler, says I should specify a feeding fish. If he means a big fish, I agree.
   
"To catch a five-pounder, you must be there when he's feeding," Ed Hewitt once told me. And experts like Herman Christian agree that a good hatch of big flies must be on for about half an hour before the larger fish, over sixteen inches, will come on the feed. Also, if Bill means the rich Pennsylvania limestone streams or the lush British chalkstreams, I agree.

But most of our eastern trout waters are hungry streams in which the smaller fish, up to maybe twelve inches, tend to harbor between hatches close enough to a feed lane to seize anything edible that may come riding down the current. Anyway, finding a fish is the problem; the rest is patience. Fish-finding is done by sight; by knowing the kinds of places in which fish harbor or feed; or by the simple hammer-and-chisel process of fishing one stretch so often that eventually one learns where the fish are, without knowing or caring why.

The first method is the rarest, the second the most difficult, and the third the easiest but most limited. Really fine fishing eyesight is a gift of the gods, the rarest and most enviable attribute a fisherman can possess, and I have never known a truly great angler who did not have it. Edward R. Hewitt had the eyes of an eagle, right up to his death; so did George M.L. LaBranche.

And Ray Bergman's ability to see fish was so instinctive that he never could understand why everyone couldn't do it. The hawk-eyed angler sees not only the fish themselves but the faint, fleeting signs of their presence--the tiny dimple in the slow water next to the bank, which indicates a big fish sucking down little flies; the tiny black object momentarily protruded above the surface, which is the neb of a good, quietly feeding fish; the slight ruffling of the shallows by a school of minnows fleeing from the bogeyman.

George LaBranche claimed in The Dry Fly and Fast Water that the knack of seeing fish underwater can be learned by practice, but I am inclined to believe that either one is born with sharp eyes or one is not. On the other hand, there is a mysterious mental aspect of eyesight; sometimes it seems to be a quality separate from mere keenness of sight--visual acuity. Resolving power, the ability to see what we look at, seems to be a mental as well as a physical attribute. How else can we account for the almost-incredible ability of the great British angler-writer G.E.M. Skues to discern whether trout were nymphing immediately under, or taking spent flies in, the surface film, when we know that he was virtually blind in one eye and had to aid the other with a monocle? Of course, knowledge plays a part. "The little brown wink under water," as Skues called it, means a feeding fish to the initiate but nothing at all to the tyro, just as the Pullman-plush patch in yonder bush, eighteen inches above the ground, means a deer in summer coat to the woodsman but is never noticed by the city yokel looking sixteen hands high for a hat rack spread of antlers.
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