Magicians, Tricksters, and Gods

Fly fishing is an illusion, but there’s no false bottom, no hidden latch—only the angler, the fish, and the lie they both believe.

A good cast is like a magic trick — a function of skill, yet nearly impossible to explain. If done right, it bends physics, defies logic, and leaves the observer in quiet awe.

I remember the first time I was really impressed by a cast. It was mid summer and I was fishing in Upstate New York. I was living in New York then and had discovered that you could hop on a Trailways bus from Port Authority and be dropped off on Main Street in Phoenicia, a charming Catskills trout town perched on the Esopus Creek. I was without a car in those days and to be transported from one of the busiest corners in Manhattan to a cold trout stream for $40 and a few hours was wondrous.

A short walk from the Phoenicia bus stop is the Black Bear Campground, a simple family-run operation with a gaggle of campsites right along the water. I’d heft my Army-issue rucksack loaded with too much fishing gear, a tent, sleeping bag, and a change of clothes and wander in. The owners, who were usually seated around a campfire sipping homemade cocktails from fat plastic cups chattering with ice, were always friendly and upon seeing my fly rod would direct me to a few ‘honey holes’ and wish me luck. And though I made this trip numerous times during my tenure in New York, every time I stepped into that campground I was greeted as if it were the first.

It was during one of these escapes from the city that I encountered the aforementioned cast. I had waded quite a ways downstream from the campground, taking my time exploring new water. I was watching a sweet little riffle-run-pool waiting for something to happen when I became aware of another angler fishing downstream toward me. Even from a ways off, I could tell he was an expert.

He seemed to dance as he went, moving to the hidden music of the riverbed beneath his feet. I watched him ease the dry fly in different pockets, never stopping or casting to the same spot twice. Every cast was a perfect zinging exaltation which transformed lifeless coils of fly line into precise, energized arcs, at once growing and unfurling, racing yet anchored. They stretched out above the water and landed softly all at once, except the dry fly, which fluttered to the surface a half second later in a natural, graceful descent. Sometimes he’d let the fly sit for a few seconds, other times he’d let it drift, easing the line tension with little flicks of his wrist, like a professional dealer flinging cards across the glassy felt of the stream.

He was on me in no time and when he saw me he politely reeled up and hung his fly on one of the guides. I could see he was wet wading and had only a small chest pack and a pair of forceps clipped to the pocket of a sun faded button up shirt. Brown hair curled out from under his ball cap and grew right down into a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard.

He raised his hand and flashed a toothy smile before making a wide arc around me, disappearing into a rustle of Japanese knotweed and brambles and emerging again several hundred yards downstream. He got right back to his act, shooting the line out over the water and dancing with the current until he was out of sight around the bend.

The whole encounter lasted maybe five minutes, but once he’d gone I was awash with a new sense of purpose. Up until that moment I had believed I was learning the magician’s craft, collecting the right tools, preparing the right illusions. But watching him, I realized I’d only ever been the mark, duped into thinking the spell lay in the gear, when all along, the real magic was in the hands.

***

A cast, no matter how perfect, is only an invitation. The real test is what comes after. The best anglers don’t just deliver the fly — they sell a lie.

Getting a fish to eat a fly is unique in the sporting world. There are close analogues—duck decoys fool birds, game calls lure bucks—but tricking a wild creature into eating something it shouldn’t? That’s a different game entirely.

Consider for a moment that a fish has three core motivations: staying safe from predators, mating, and eating. And to get one to take a fly, you’re not just outsmarting an individual—you’re going against a survival system refined over hundreds of thousands of years. Fish don’t get big by being stupid.

This kind of trickery doesn’t start on the water. It begins in the dark, hunched over a vise, devising a witches’ brew, something out of nothing, a conman perfecting his scheme, a mad scientist bringing his monster to life. Because of this, a good fly box is something to be guarded—shared only with those whom you really trust. Like a little black book, a lockpick set, or a pair of weighted dice.

A few seasons ago an angler friend of mine, Jon, gifted several hundred striper flies to my brother, nephew, and me. The flies were a riot of pattern, style, and color. We were giddy, pawing through them like kids in the proverbial candy shop, filling the handmedown plastic Scientific Anglers boxes he’d included with abandon.

Later that year we fished with Jon, wading the marshes of Cape Cod where he’d spent the last thirty years chasing striped bass. Over dinner the first evening we got to talking fly patterns and we each pulled out the boxes Jon had given us, brimming with flies.

We compared our collections, making bold, unfounded proclamations about which fly would trick the biggest striper. Jon just watched, his wry smile widening between sips of wine. We’d find out later that his fly boxes—the ones he didn’t share—held even better tricks. Flies we’d never seen. Flies the bass hadn’t either.

***

I used to think that the moment of deception was the pinnacle—that fooling a fish was the highest expression of skill. But I was wrong. Trickery is nothing without judgment. Because once the fish takes the fly, the decision is ours alone. And that’s when the game stops being a game.

Some years ago while on assignment for a magazine piece in Belize, I inadvertently killed a bonefish. We’d been fishing in tough conditions for days on end without much luck, trying like hell to get what we needed for a feature print story that was already behind schedule. On the third day we got into a pod of bonefish. I landed a few and we got the images we needed.

But overwhelmed by their numbers, I started casting wantonly into them, stripping the Crazy Charlie through them eager to prove to myself and the crew that it’d been the foul weather, and not my angling skill, that had kept us blank. A couple of casts later I was hooked up again.

I played the fish happily, lapping up the feeling of being the hero as the camera chittered. It ran a few times and then got heavy, like I was playing a wet towel. When I reeled the fish in I discovered that during the fight the hook had slipped into the fish’s gills and it was bleeding out. One of the guides freed the hook and flicked in over the side of the boat. I’ll never forget the image of that beautiful Belizean bonefish floating belly up in the teal blue water. Or how after that, I didn’t catch another fish for the rest of the trip.

When I began, angling felt like a treasure hunt—a spirited search for whatever lay beyond the bend. Then, when I grew old enough to realize there is no bend, I turned to skill as my purpose. But now, I wonder if a time will come when I’ll be held to account for every fish I’ve caught—as if, with each one, I’ve been bleeding out a piece of myself. And someday, without knowing it, I’ll catch the last one.

Every angler keeps a tally, even if we don’t realize it. Every fish tricked, every lie believed, every moment the line comes tight. Over time they meld, blending into a kind of mirror that reflects back to us who we are as anglers, and as humans. But when we finally see ourselves, will we like what’s staring back?