Neophyte fishermen can benefit from advice

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One secret to writing about the outdoors (or most anything else, I figure) is that it comes in handy if you know more than you’re willing to admit you know.

And it’s downright deadly to know less than you’re willing to assert in print.

Make sense? It will.

Say, for example, that I go fishing … and I know how to cast a fly expertly, and know where the fish live, and know what they’ll be snacking on (If you read this space regularly, I realize this is getting far-fetched. Bear with me).

If I were actually to sit down and write such a thing, of course, two things would immediately take place.

First, the fishing gods would look down upon me with great scorn and prove me wrong (and they might even make me slip on a rock and tumble downstream for a bit, just to prove a point). And second, you (one of you, somewhere, somehow) would be standing right there when I imbedded a fly in my forehead, or ended up catching a pine tree with four consecutive back casts, or failed to hook any finned critter whatsoever.

Then you’d never let me forget it.

Therefore, I have learned, it’s simply safer to just say “I’ve got a lot to learn,” and leave it at that.

Even if my casting has improved. Even if my stream knowledge is getting better. And even if I’m catching more fish than I’ve ever caught in my life.

When it comes to such matters, I have learned, it is best to listen to the sage advice of others who have been there, done that, and who are more than willing to tell me exactly what I don’t even suspect, much less know.

“Holyoke, you’re a neophyte,” one such man told me last summer, as I sat in his camp and swapped tales after a long day of fishing.

That man, Jim Carter, owns Munsungan Hunting and Fishing Club. And he knows of what he speaks.

In an outdoors world filled with well-read, opinionated, funny folks, Carter is (as I have mentioned before) one of a kind.

He’s that classic Maine combination: Profound/Profane … or something like that. And for the record, I wasn’t just “a neophyte.” I was a … well … a blankety-blank neophyte.

At least that’s what Carter told me. And he’s been around long enough to know.

All of which brings us to this past weekend, when I realized (again) how much I’ve still got to learn … and how much I hope that I never stop learning it.

The scene: East Outlet of the Kennebec River, a beautiful spot full of (we assumed) husky landlocked salmon. The fishing buddy: John Kirk of Winterport, a well-read outdoorsman whose own grandmother dubbed him “the redneck squire” many years ago.

On a thoroughly enjoyable day wading new parts of a river I thought I knew pretty well, Kirk showed me (again) what I didn’t know. Yet.

And he proved that when you’re a redneck squire, there are plenty of ways to keep your secrets secreted.

His flies are pretty standard … I think. Complicating matters (or making things more interesting, perhaps) nearly everything he attaches to a leader has a nickname truly understood only by him and his fly-fishing buddies.

For that matter, even his fly-fishing buddies have nicknames, culled from the Internet message boards that trade in such currency.

His pals include Streamer and Dropper and The Goat (don’t ask).

And his flies may be named The Cheeseburger, or Sponge Bob, or (no surprise here) The Secret Weapon. For all I know, he may even have a fly in his box named after you … if, that is, he’s ever met you, and if your red hair is about the same shade as the marabou he used to tie it.

Kirk is not evasive about which flies are which. Not in the least. The problem is, after he tells you … (or after he tells me, at least) it gets a little bit confusing.

Sponge Bob? Secret Weapon? What?

The one fly (or, more accurately, pair of flies that I’ve been really able to commit to memory is a streamer fly/nymph combo he calls “Why’s-that-bug-chasing-that-fish?”

When the water’s high, you need a “stick” to stay safe. That’s a wading staff, by the way.

When you don’t have a wading staff (perhaps because you’re still a blankety-blank neophyte at heart), you do the “Do-si-do,” whereby the non-neophyte links arms with the stickless sap and helps him across the troubled waters to the lie, seam, or riffle.

Then, you grab a Cheeseburger or a Secret Weapon or a Sponge Bob and get to work.

I think.

Of course, I may be wrong.

I am, after all, still a work in progress.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.