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Listening to the water trip over the rocks beneath the old wooden footbridge, I feel the early April sun warm my hands and face and I’m once again reminded why fly-fishing in a river holds a special place in my heart.

Standing in the cool stream, I feel the weight of the water press the wader’s fabric against my legs and look back to see it curl downstream. Life threads its single strand through me, connecting me with the sky and water and the life beneath its surface. I am positioned downstream of feeding fish and they are unaware of my presence as I watch a smaller trout move sideways in the current to sample a bug. A pleasant sensation lingers inside of me before it moves on. It is a feeling that visits me from time to time when I am quiet and still with nature. It is a consciousness––a heightened yet delicate awareness that is far bigger than myself.

The silence and stillness is interrupted by the sound of the drag clicking as I pull line from my reel. A few false casts overhead and my fly lands gently at the base of the footbridge. The fly’s downstream progress is briefly interrupted and I instinctively raise the rod. I intend to strip my unseen quarry towards me but it takes only a fleeting moment to feel the fish’s power and size and realize that we each have far different plans in store for one another. I’m using a light leader–– perhaps too fine––and it takes some finesse and effort to raise the stubborn trout from the streambed and turn its head downstream. When I first glimpse the fish broadside near the water’s surface and see its deep flanks and iridescent markings, I’m shocked at its sheer size and yell something incomprehensible. There are times that you lose fish that you never have an opportunity to see, playing it briefly before the line goes slack. Losing unseen fish I can take. After seeing this particular fish, it would’ve been heartbreaking to lose it after I’d clearly gained the upper hand and began to control the outcome of the fight. Vivid images of a big trout I lost last fall on the Rush River raced through my mind when the fish spied the waiting net, turned tail and put on one last burst of speed.

On this occasion, the fish did not get away. I was able to experience the satisfaction of briefly holding and admiring this powerful rainbow trout in my hands before slipping it back into the water unharmed. On this day, a friend that works for an outdoor publication burned the memories of those rare moments on video and film. Viewing the footage later, I was surprised and somewhat ashamed to watch myself behave like a fool that’d seemingly never caught a large fish before. It was a moment of unbridled joy and behavior that you might not expect to see in a grown man, but rather a young boy.

There are precious few things we engage in as adults that can instantly transport us back in time and allow us to look upon the world with wonder. Fishing and the thrill of hooking fish do that to me. With a fly rod in my hand, I’m free to experience a peace of mind and a oneness with nature; to do only that which is necessary to fool fish in the here and now, in a particular time and space. Thoughts of yesterday or last week or what may or may not happen tomorrow evaporate and cease to exist. Leonardo da Vinci once wrote: “In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” To live life honestly, without regret for the past or worries for the future, each of us must immerse and surrender ourselves wholly in the present.

For me, that experience takes place in a river fishing for trout.

Dan Brown’s weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie’s Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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