The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 14.4
DRY OR DIE
Words: Cameron K. Scott 2023-06-16 10:08:39
Sunny summer days and clear water don’t always mix well in the Wisconsin Driftless spring creeks. However, with the right approach, one can slap a big foam bug down and receive a spectacular surprise, as was the case here. Photo: Kyle Zempel
Most evenings, while scrolling through social media—and less occasionally on crowded rivers—I see fish held up to the light, their glinting scales exposed, their mouths agape and hungry for water. Water in which they hide themselves like thieves: their beauty and mystery withheld from the world, dragons jealously guarding the treasures of themselves. Praise be to fish! Upon wrestling one from the watery depths, what better thing to do than hoist it up, glistening, for all the world to see? The catcher has a quarry, a worth, something to fill up the table, a story and a lingering sense of discovering something valuable in a dull and valueless world.
For fish belong not in the water in which they live, but instead in the air. I, who held fish in the hot August sun of my youth, exposed face burning as surely as fingers on a wood stove, proudly lifted them up to the sun, as if trying to instigate an instant fury of celestial jealousy. There is a sadness, a wet-sock slump, to the bodies of these fish, squeezed in the loving grips of their finders, and yet an abounding joy, a chest-thumping boo-yah on the faces of those who hold them. I have come to only one conclusion over the decades: for the sake of all mankind, we must bring fish forth from their lives of seclusion and solitary slipping away and place them rightly in the center of the frame, arms outstretched in worship of size, for photographic snaps, hashtags, tags, mentions, nudges, winks, shares, sends and saves. The constant @. Where you @? What you @? In a galaxy far, far away, @-@.
Think about it for a second: the height, depth and breadth of these bodies of current caught forever in the endless stream of social media posts. Our lives are short, the lives of fish even shorter. What may be dead tomorrow from neglect, drought, dams, rising temperatures, garbage intake, toxic spills, we can etch into the digital memory of forever. We can hold onto this endlessly slippery desire—by tail, by belly, by gill, by lip, by gaff, by stringer. These pieces of water made manifest, to immortalize something so difficult to hold onto, to hold on to a shard of river for your dear life.
We hold them so dearly for they have in themselves a stable barrier against pathogens in their slime. How many have lost a fish mid-grip, sending the flapping, flailing body into the air, or worse, into a faultless bag of Cheetos? Perhaps we, too, once covered by their mucus membranes, may also resist our own fearsome eye-popping pathogens. There is a frenzy among us, for the more fish we can catch, the more fish slime we might find ourselves covered in, and the better our chances might be at surviving an untimely demise. Quite simply: hold on for dear life, for when we let fish simply slip back into the water unscathed, we also lose ourselves.
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.
DRY OR DIE
https://digital.theflyfishjournal.com/articles/dry-or-die