The Flyfish Journal • The Flyfish Journal 13.4 • FIBERGLASS DAYDREAM

Placer gold has been mined in the Fortymile River drainage of eastern Alaska every year since its first discovery in 1886. The region’s Arctic grayling, however, are a bit more overlooked. Abundant and pristine, they are what flyfishing dreams are made of—especially those that involve fiberglass and hip boots. Photo: Emmie Jackson

I’m sitting there listening to a virtual training about virtual teaching, which is somehow even less interesting than it sounds. It takes approximately seven seconds for my mind to wander.

This time last year, I’d used most of my surplus funds (with a nice injection from Christmas and birthday money, which apparently people still feel sorry enough to give me) to buy my first fiberglass rod. I had no idea about rod tapers or parabolic actions or anything of that sort; all I knew was I wanted a devoted Alaskan grayling rod that was soft, could cast short leaders, and did justice to a lovely fish that’s not known to be scrappy, but can be. My grandpa fishes with a fiberglass of the spinning variety, and it’s entirely possible his old Eagle Claw was the first one I ever held. Maybe it’s the weight of that thought—maybe it’s just my imagination—but my own glass feels nostalgically familiar, as though an imprint of my thumb were already worn into the cork despite the rod being brand new.

It’s a rod made for quiet, slow and unnamed places; places like Alaska’s Fortymile River Valley, where gold once flowed but which now feels more like a circus after hours. Here the creeks run like rivulets of mercury through unbroken taiga, and the grayling live and die without anybody ever knowing it. This is the place where the new fiberglass shines. I let it assume the shape of willows in a breeze. Drop the cast. The tub where the old grayling sits is smaller than a kitchen sink.

The fly is orange thread and snowshoe hare’s foot. I stomped through 20-below back in January with a snappy little rimfire just to harvest the critter. It’s amazing how that white fur disappears in the snow; it’s amazing now how quickly it vanishes in the grayling’s rise.

Water here is both restless and patient. Fiberglass is the same. To that end, it’s kind of like I am—practically bursting with latent energy but just old enough to be patient about using it. The line that connects to grayling connects to this faux philosophy, too, and even though it might be crap, somehow it sounds right. Back in the ’40s, rod companies first started making their sticks out of fiberglass rather than the split-cane standard. Cheaper material made for cheaper rods. Accessible, expendable, even then defined as “whippy.” The prime of glass lasted until the ’70s, when graphite and boron emerged and people realized you could hit 70-foot casts without being Joan Wulff. I think I may have caught the beginning of some fiberglass revival wave, a period in which millennials get sentimental and want to fish something softer and more contemplative—like what their grandpa used, for example. It’s kind of like cars; there are always those genuinely ancient folks longing for “how they used to make ’em,” their voices invariably echoed by a cast of young squirts who crave some classic their generation was deprived of.

Just like they don’t make ’em like they used to, in most places the fishing ain’t as good as it used to be. Not here. I’ve seen exactly one other fisherman in just over 200 miles of road. People are fishing bigger water for bigger fish elsewhere, likely with graphite. The grayling in my net is sequined in sky blue, honey gold and silver as pure as Spanish doubloons. All fish are exponentially prettier in the water than out, but this is especially true of Arctic grayling. They’re not made to be removed. I let him vanish from the world and I move upstream, savoring an atomic sun and the fact that, as far as my hip boots and I are concerned, this creek goes forever.

The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 13.4

FIBERGLASS DAYDREAM

Issue List

The Flyfish Journal 13.4