It’s akin to the writer’s voice, how each fisherman develops a comfortable and unique cast via fishing experience, muscle memory and hook avoidance.

That cast lasts him forty years, before he’s forced to modify it.

The start of each season is a reminder of known foibles, the strains on ligaments and soft tissue, and the subtle modifications of form necessary to throw the fly all day. Brute force is enough when young, but that resilience disappears over time.

I started work on modifications last year. I’d been gripping the cork too tightly, using too many false casts and heavy handed roll casts to lift the  head out of the current, simple things I’d merely muscled through that result in a litany of aches that required repair during the following work week.

On a seasonal fishery lessons never start where we left off, nine months pass and we have to reawaken all our past sins – and like other athletes, get a little tone and a few tender spots to remind us why we’re tinkering with something we think isn’t broken.

My river was too high, the water too cold, and fish or no, an hour or two of casting practice would allow me to start regaining last season’s form and start the toning process that would take the soft out of middle aged ligaments and connective tissue.

Pulling a couple extra feet of head into the guides had worked wonders on the pre-cast thrashing, and a Full Wells grip had replaced the cigar that had me choking life out of the cork grip – and destroying mine in the process.

I was working the stiff arm tendency, running line being slick and wet, and throwing a head with too much of it out of the guides invokes the power-stealing hinge – where you know the cast is falling apart and muscle the release just to get that sharp hook away from your ear and airborne.

Using strength in any form is a Band-Aid for some other ill. I need to focus on less effort and better timing.

… and you’ll get to that eventually, after you untangle 200 feet of small-arbor Amnesia you forgot to stretch, replace the chewed leader you didn’t check the night prior, and forgetting you’re waist deep in water – pulling the double haul vertical, just to see how cold – cold can get. All those things we don’t get to practice at the club or on the lawn – before taking a fast rod in Harm’s way.

An hour later the running line was starting to behave and the fingers had remembered how to thread sixty feet of running line so the current had less to play with. I’m standing in dawn’s chill wondering why painful can be so much damn fun.

There’s a parallel in fly tying. After a couple of decades we start feeling skilled and attempt the most torturous and exacting flies, when we’d be better served getting the lumps out of our dubbed bodies.

Elegance is a single roll cast to surface the line, a single pull to force the line into the air and behind, and a single forward motion that releases the fishing cast. I don’t need distance or line speed, I just need to transfer the work to the rod and away from my arm.

I could do that all day, and after throwing heads for 30 years, I’m focused on removing the lumps – so I can fling them another 30.

The venue may have been different but I couldn’t help wonder how many others were massaging something tender back at the campsite, while repeating a similar promise this weekend.

… and while I’m smiling at the thought, there was a pause where none belonged. Some big hen comes clean out of the water with a Pink Pee Wee wedged in her upper lip, and while I’m gazing in disbelief – the reel handle starts barking every knuckle available reminding me of everything else lawn casting can’t provide.

Everything I had remembered on the pre-trip ritual worked flawlessly, the freshly oiled reel, the re-tied knots from last season – and as the scream of the reel brought sleepy homeowners out to watch from their deck – there to witness a grinning angler attached to a purple and silver herring – the fish went airborne, and the fly came out cleanly.

It’s reinforcement of that which is unspoken, if you can brave the elements and chuck fluff all day – there’s a willing accomplice somewheres …

… who’ll return to the depths nursing something tender.

Tags: fly fishing, American Shad, shooting head, Pink Pee Wee, practice makes perfect