Girl Talk

And other deep thoughts from the river.

“So, what do you do all day in the boat?” Have you ever been asked this question? I often hear this after a fishing trip. Whether I spend one day or two days or four days drifting down the river, someone always wonders what we do all day in the boat.

“We fish.” But they seem to want more than that.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” they’ll respond. “Of course, you fish. But what do you do, other than fish? I mean, what else do you do? Do you talk? You certainly don’t just sit in the boat in silence.”

“Yeah,” I’ll answer. “We pretty much just sit in the boat in silence.”

That’s when I get the rolling eyes. “No, really. What do you do? What do you talk about?”

What do we talk about? What do you think we talk about? We talk about girls, of course. I mean, what else is there to talk about?

Sometimes we talk about music. I once had a long discussion with Vince, my guide, comparing the guitar styles of Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, all the while still casting for cutthroat trout on the upper Yellowstone.

Actually, we talk about a lot of things. We talk about fly fishing. That is the obvious subject to discuss. What fly should we tie on? Should we fish dry flies, streamers, nymphs? Where should I cast? What about that overhanging bush or that foam pocket or maybe that seam there? We talk about other rivers we have fished and other rivers we would like to fish. Sometimes we talk about work, but really, while drifting down a river, why talk about work? The guide, of course, is working. The driftboat is his office, so to speak. And I’m the client. So, yeah, the subject of work can be difficult to avoid. Sometimes we talk about music. I once had a long discussion with Vince, my guide, comparing the guitar styles of Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, all the while still casting for cutthroat trout on the upper Yellowstone. Hell, I’ve even sung in the boat. One-time, on the Madison, we had anchored the boat and were relaxing, taking a scenery break—we just sat back and watched the river flow. I suddenly broke into song: Bob Dylan’s “Watching the River Flow.”

This ol’ river keeps rolling, though.
No matter what gets in the way
Or which way the wind does blow.
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow.

Seemed apropos to me. Vince shook his head and laughed. Then he pointed to an eagle flying overhead.

Sometimes we talk about books we’ve read or movies we’ve seen. We rarely talk about politics; that’s even worse than talking about work. Sometimes we talk about our spouses or our cats and our dogs. We might talk about the Super Bowl or the World Series or the NBA Playoffs. Sometimes we talk about nothing. You know, idle chat. To quote O.W. Smith, well-known angling writer of old, sometimes we talk about “the whichness of what.”

Sometimes we talk about the landscape or the way the sunlight plays on the surface of the water. Or the approaching storm and how the thunderheads gather in the distance, darkening the sky.

We might talk about philosophy. In fact, philosophizing is a pretty big thing while on the river. Not real philosophizing, mind you. More of a wide-open, extemporaneous, off-the-cuff kind of philosophizing. We don’t get too deep. Trying to ascertain man’s search for truth and the meaning of life is all fine and dandy, but we usually let the river handle the deep stuff. We’re there to catch trout, after all.

Sometimes we talk about the landscape or the way the sunlight plays on the surface of the water. Or the approaching storm and how the thunderheads gather in the distance, darkening the sky. Or the way the sun scatters shafts of white light through the clouds. Or the tiny rainbows arcing away from the splashing of the trout as they jump from the water. Vibrant. Pulsing. Quivering. But sometimes it’s better to just look and take it all in. Why waste it with words?

So, yeah, sometimes we actually do sit in silence. A lot, in fact. Just to look. To listen. The quiet. The hush. The river itself. There is a lot to listen to while out on a river. Like Edward Abbey once said, “I choose to listen to the river for a while. Thinking river thoughts.”

So, in answer to the question, what do we talk about while fly-fishing? Well, we talk about girls, of course. I mean, what else is there to talk about?