Someone once called me an “avid outdoorsman” in public, and I still haven’t been able to live it down. Several of my friends call me an “avid outdoorsman” every chance they get. Of course, it’s important that you understand that this title is intended by them as a taunt, not a compliment. Some exhibit their verbal skills by finding rhymes for “avid” – words like “pallid” or “putrid” – and sharing them with me via email. Thank goodness for the delete button. Occasionally, they taunt me in the foyer at church. While our families are inside praying or singing, I’m in the foyer withering under their relentless verbal attack. We’ve even had some stern looks from bystanders in the receiving line at a funeral. I guess phrases like “old mule” and “girl scout” followed by giggles aren’t acceptable in some venues.
I must admit, I was a little embarrassed by the description – until I looked up the word “avid.” In the dictionary you see words like “enthusiastic” or “zealous.” Words you don’t see are “competent” or “expert.” So, yes, I suppose you could call me avid. But I’d rather you didn’t. My friends would still jump at the opportunity to put me in my place.
Occasionally I’ll do something that fits that definition of “avid” perfectly – that is, enthusiastic but not necessarily competent. The usual result involves me lying flat on my back on a slippery rock or face down in the dirt or neck deep in a river.
Exhibit A: I was recently fly fishing in a local tailwater (the river below a dam and its lake), casting to a rising trout. After about 15 minutes of fruitless casting, accompanied by several changes of flies and leaders, I decided to wade into a different position further upstream from the fish, so I could get a better drift of my fly over the spot where the fish was feeding. I had been standing in the middle of the river, about waist deep, so I moved toward the river bank into what should have been – should have been, but wasn’t – shallow water. Apparently, for no good reason, there’s a hole between the middle and the riverbank. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now.
Half a second after I discovered the hole, I was up to my neck in COLD water. My waders were full of water, I couldn’t touch the bottom, and I was holding my fly rod in my right hand. So I did the only thing I could do – the dog paddle, a splashing, thrashing, noisy dog paddle. I made my way out of the hole and onto shallow ground with my rod still in my hand and my line and fly dangling and jerking downstream. As I was finally able to stand up again, I noticed that my fly line was hung up on something downstream. It felt heavy. Then I noticed that the heaviness wasn’t the heaviness of a log or rock; it was a living heaviness. Yes, it was a fish. A trout. The trout. The same one I had been carefully pursuing for the past 15 minutes.
So, the end of the story is that the only fish I caught that day was the one I caught while doing the drowning dog paddle. Of course, I told Tim and Keith that it was a special technique that I had been working on and had only recently perfected. After all, the books and manuals all say that technique – the word we use in fly fishing is “presentation” – is more important than fly size and style. So, the dog paddle technique is clearly the secret weapon that all fly fishermen are seeking, and now I’ve made it public for the first time. I’m calling it the drowning dog paddle or DDP, for short. I’m sure you’ll be reading about it in Field & Stream in the near future.
It’s something that only an avid outdoorsman, such as myself, could invent.
I must admit, I was a little embarrassed by the description – until I looked up the word “avid.” In the dictionary you see words like “enthusiastic” or “zealous.” Words you don’t see are “competent” or “expert.” So, yes, I suppose you could call me avid. But I’d rather you didn’t. My friends would still jump at the opportunity to put me in my place.
Occasionally I’ll do something that fits that definition of “avid” perfectly – that is, enthusiastic but not necessarily competent. The usual result involves me lying flat on my back on a slippery rock or face down in the dirt or neck deep in a river.
Exhibit A: I was recently fly fishing in a local tailwater (the river below a dam and its lake), casting to a rising trout. After about 15 minutes of fruitless casting, accompanied by several changes of flies and leaders, I decided to wade into a different position further upstream from the fish, so I could get a better drift of my fly over the spot where the fish was feeding. I had been standing in the middle of the river, about waist deep, so I moved toward the river bank into what should have been – should have been, but wasn’t – shallow water. Apparently, for no good reason, there’s a hole between the middle and the riverbank. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now.
Half a second after I discovered the hole, I was up to my neck in COLD water. My waders were full of water, I couldn’t touch the bottom, and I was holding my fly rod in my right hand. So I did the only thing I could do – the dog paddle, a splashing, thrashing, noisy dog paddle. I made my way out of the hole and onto shallow ground with my rod still in my hand and my line and fly dangling and jerking downstream. As I was finally able to stand up again, I noticed that my fly line was hung up on something downstream. It felt heavy. Then I noticed that the heaviness wasn’t the heaviness of a log or rock; it was a living heaviness. Yes, it was a fish. A trout. The trout. The same one I had been carefully pursuing for the past 15 minutes.
So, the end of the story is that the only fish I caught that day was the one I caught while doing the drowning dog paddle. Of course, I told Tim and Keith that it was a special technique that I had been working on and had only recently perfected. After all, the books and manuals all say that technique – the word we use in fly fishing is “presentation” – is more important than fly size and style. So, the dog paddle technique is clearly the secret weapon that all fly fishermen are seeking, and now I’ve made it public for the first time. I’m calling it the drowning dog paddle or DDP, for short. I’m sure you’ll be reading about it in Field & Stream in the near future.
It’s something that only an avid outdoorsman, such as myself, could invent.
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