You Ain’t Fishing If You Ain’t Fishing Cane

All day long I watched the fly. My arms ached; I had a crick in my neck; I was tired and hungry … but determined not to quit. My father, watching from the lake’s edge as he grilled hamburgers, thought I was wasting my time. Even a kingfisher seemed to smirk at the futility of my efforts as he preened himself and whizzed in blue blurs from one cypress knee to another.

“Son, you need better tackle to catch bass, not that worn-out old rod. Even if one did strike, you wouldn’t stand a chance of netting him.” But I was a boy, and boys dream. I loved that fly rod. It was a work of art, fashioned from split bamboo cane. The butt end was brass, with my father’s initials engraved on it. The cork handle fit my hand just right, and its lacquered brown finish gleamed. Whenever I held it, I thought of that old saying about bamboo rods: You ain’t fishing if you ain’t fishing cane. Anglers call really big bass “lunkers.” I had glimpsed my lunker, cruising among cypress knees, searching, with pitch-black, pitiless, predatory eyes, and I was determined to land him with the fly rod. In his famous book, “The Compleat Angler,” Sir Isaac Walton wrote, “…doubt not that angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly?” Even though I wasn’t stalking trout, I wanted to deceive my adversary in the most artistic way possible. “Come in, son,” Mama called. “The burgers are ready.” “Yessum,” I answered, as I placed the fly beside a stump once more. Then I saw him. My heart leapt into my throat: It was boy and bass as he floated up to the fly.

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I expected an explosive strike in the usual largemouth fashion … but no. Inches from the fly, the bass hovered, fins and tail waving, gills cycling, unblinking eyes fixed on the fly. Then, he gulped. The surface barely rippled. I raised the rod, the hook found its mark, and the fight was on. The folks on the bank were pointing and shouting as the fish launched clear out of the water, danced on the surface, plunged, and torpedoed into the air again. By the time I turned him, there couldn’t have been a dozen feet of line left on the reel. His side-to-side arcs shortened, and when he came close I netted him. My “lunker” only weighed four pounds, but no fish has ever meant more to me. I cherish a photograph of me with the bamboo rod in one hand and the bass in the other. That was sixty years ago, and the memory still makes me quiver with excitement. Boys dream. I want my grandsons to dream too. I want to give them split bamboo fly rods someday, and I hope to photograph them holding fish and rod, and hear them say, “You were right, Pappy: You ain’t fishing if you ain’t fishing cane.”