Notes from the feild: Doing what I love; fishing is cool

By Matthew Neal
Thursday, February 28, 2008 10:25 AM PST

Submitted photo The author (Matthew Neal, Argus Observer Outdoor reporter) shows off a brown trout caught during a fish-off between spin fishermen and flyswatters. Results were not yet in but fly-fishermen have been deemed cooler, if less effective. The fish was subsequently put back but would not go after a woolybugger.

After going stir crazy all winter in the cold and snow the warm weather has been a welcome change. I have finally gotten the chance to get out and do what I love more than anything: fishing.

I usually don’t like to mention names but in this case it’s not like the secret isn’t out. After all, the Idaho Statesman prints info on this particular river every week. So I’ll just come out and say it. Owyhee.

Even the name of this river is cool. The Owyhee river is the coolest place in eastern Oregon. The landscape alone makes it well worth visiting. Of course, if you chance upon a big German Brown trout, then everything is cool. Really, really cool.

If you can catch a couple fat browns on a spinner while your fly fishing buddy never lands a fish then you are the coolest kid in town, though your buddy definitely won’t think so.

If you really want to elevate your coolness to another level, rub it in your buddy’s face. Just for kicks, show your friend the ripped holes in your thumb that the teeth of a big brown trout stabbed you with while taking a spinner out of its mouth, and ask him, “do you have a band-aid?”

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Or, just say something cool like, “maybe try casting over there by that rock.” Give an observation like, “the difference between you and I is that I like catching fish and you like casting all day.” Surely either of these comments will motivate your buddy to catch a fish. If not, then you should offer some advice like, “maybe they don’t eat woolybuggers so much on this river.”

By that time, your buddy should be good and ready to catch a fish (or to throw a punch) and you can just keep being cool as can be, catching fish.

You stand there listening to the burble of the water. You gaze up at the purple-red cliffs, just relaxing in all your coolness, about to make your next cast. You click the bail and hold the line with your finger and swing the fishing rod backward. You flip it toward that beautiful riffle where you just saw another big brown trout flash on its side. Everything seems so perfect. Your so cool as you let the line go. You watch the sunlight glint off the blade of your spinner as it zings through the air over the river. Your cast was so good it went all the way across the river into a bush and along with it, the upper half of your fishing pole.

A cloud moved over the sun and it got cool, cold in fact. Suddenly the perspective changed and being cool no longer mattered so much. It has always been tough to be a fool and be cool and as I walked over to get my fly fishing buddy, with the pair of waders, to ask, I mean beg for him, to see if maybe he would walk across and get my spinner and the other half of my fishing pole, I got what I expected: laughter.

He went over and got my lure but he sure didn’t need to laugh all the way over to the other side while he did it because that just isn’t very cool.