Goodnews River
By Scott Sadil. Published by Stackpole Books, 2019; $26.95, hardbound.
In “The Arroyo,” one of the short stories in Scott Sadil’s new collection of tales that revolve around fly fishing, fly fishers, and the angling life, the narrator of the piece, commenting on Peter Mathiessen’s Far Tortuga, says, “Like all good novels, what happens to the characters and what the novel is about differ sharply.” Sadil’s stories are set in a lot of different angling scenes, from Alaska salmon camps, to high-desert Oregon trout streams, to Mexican beaches, to Columbia Basin steelhead rivers, and he has invented a variety of narrators and narrative voices, old, young, and middle-aged, male and female, dealing with predicaments as diverse as learning to accept a stepfather, not getting laid, finally getting laid in ways that interfere with fishing, the onset of old age, suicide, and the death of a loved one.
In light of what the narrator says about novels, it seems fair to ask what, apart from what happens to all these characters, the short stories are “about.” One answer is that they’re about fly fishing for steelhead. That even includes the stories set in other angling situations, including the Baja surf, because as Sadil treats it, steelheading is not so much a practice as an attitude shaped by the experiences that result from that practice and that shape the psyche of the angler, and steelheading is a prime example of this.
On the one hand, as his characters note in a couple of places, the steelheader does the same thing over and over, because once in a while, it works. This, of course is very close to the popular definition of insanity, and as such, it’s a rich premise for any fiction writer. On the other hand, against this background of repetition, which of course is one way to define “character,” since our repetitions define each of us, what steelheading provides is lessons in the nature of the unexpected — the sudden violations of the order of things, sometimes with joyous outcomes and sometimes with disastrous results, that occur in all kinds of angling, but that steelheading in particular seems to bring into focus.
A better answer, then, to the question of what these stories are about is that they are about the unexpected, artfully rendered and explored. That, too, is an essential quality of good fiction and especially of the genre of the short story. The arrival of some final twist is the punch line that the characters and their troubles set up.
Although the unexpected is part of any good story competently told, I mean it when I say these stories artfully render and explore its arrival. In some, such as “Putnam’s Bend,” the end, the dawning of a possible romance between the narrator and a local woman angler, isn’t an ending at all, but the beginning of another story. Given the characters involved, it’s a story that, if it comes about, may not end well after all. The thing about twists is that they don’t foreclose further twists, and the thing about lives is that the ups don’t preclude downs. The unexpected is inherently equivocal. Things do not always end well, even if we want them to, as in the story called “Imnaha,” where menace and macho monkeywrench a relationship.
But reading these stories is not a downer, by any means. What Sadil finds in the unexpected — and in angling as a kind of privileged activity where the unexpected is experienced, an activity privileged by that experience — is the arrival of grace. My favorite story in the collection is “John Day,” which occurs in part while fishing that Oregon river, but is complicated by sibling rivalry, physical mutilations, cancer, a relationship with an exotic dancer that interferes with fishing, way too much strong, homegrown weed, and a concluding scene that promises disaster and instead provides release.
Readers of California Fly Fisher know Scott Sadil as the “At the Vise” fly-tying columnist and, over the years, as the author of stories published here that also meditate on the nature of fly fishing and life. In addition, he’s the author of Angling Baja: One Man’s Fly Fishing Journey though the Surf, Cast from the Edge, Lost in Wyoming: Stories, and Fly Tales: Lessons in Fly Fishing Like the Real Guys. As an editor, I’ve had the privilege of watching his career and his reputation as a writer grow over a couple of decades and more, so I should confess a bias in praising Goodnews River, but the blurbs on the back that do the same are by John Gierach, Dave Hughes, and American Angler editor Greg Thomas, so you don’t have to take the word of Some Guy. Goodnews River: good book.
— Bud Bynack
Classics Revisited
With Michael Checchio
Trout
By Ray Bergman. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, second edition, revised and enlarged, 1938, 1952.
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” wrote the novelist L. P. Hartley in The Go-Between. Just look at the faded old photographs of anglers displaying their catches. Times change, things change. Much of California’s steelhead fishing has been relegated to history. As for salmon, I think I saw one in a sushi bar in San Francisco.
So it never ceases to amaze me how relevant some of the old angling books can be. Take Ray Bergman’s Trout, first published in 1938. It has been called the Bible of trout fishing. Its chapters dealing with tackle might be hopelessly outdated, but its fundamental truths are so sound you could swear an oath on it in any court of law.
Bergman was the fishing editor for Outdoor Life. He wrote in a breezy, avuncular style that anglers liked. He was knowledgeable, but didn’t come off as a hotshot or a know-it-all. There is modesty in his writing. His relaxed and conversational tone mirrors the patient approach that he advocated on the stream.
Trout remains a great pleasure to read and hardly ever sags under its encyclopedic weight. There is lots of close observation, thorough analysis, and helpful advice embedded in chapters that deal with tackle and equipment that now belongs in a museum. Overall, it is smoothly written and richly anecdotal. So enjoyable is the narrative format that the reader is barely aware of absorbing instruction almost by osmosis. Bergman wrote like an amiable companion showing you the best water. “I have written it,” he says in the introduction, “as if it were addressed to a dear friend who had stopped in to see me and to ask for information.”
Bergman’s book reigned as the basic text for American trout fishers from the 1940s through the 1960s. For many in the postwar years, it was the only fishing book they owned or thought they needed. Despite innovations in tackle and technique, it has an enduring quality. A book that feels timeless is the definition of a classic. I think Trout endures not only for its observational insights, but for the quality of the author’s character that lives on in its pages. Bergman didn’t pass himself off as a big-deal fisherman, but he didn’t hide his light under a bushel, either. The man knew his business.
Ray Bergman (1891–1967) was born in the village of Nyack, New York, close by the Hudson River Palisades, and he lived there all his life. “I saw the horse and carriage give way to the automobile,” he writes in Trout. His boyhood passion was fishing. He doubted there were half a dozen fly fishermen in his town, but a chance encounter with one on a stream set him on a lifelong journey. The boy saved every penny from his allowance and paper route to buy his first fly outfit. In the meantime, he spent entire days observing, rather than fishing. “I was building up my fund of fishing lore that would prove invaluable for years to come,” he writes in the chapter called “Early Experiences.”
From patient observation, young Bergman learned that trout prefer shade and stick close to the banks when not actively feeding. He noted that their feeding has certain rhythms and hours. And when the sun left the water, he saw that they left their deep holes to take up strategic locations in the shallower runs that connected the holes. He saw that most of their feeding on insects was subsurface.
Bergman grew up at a time in history when you could drop out of high school and still earn a decent living. As a teenager, he took jobs in sporting-goods stores and began tying flies commercially. In 1920, he opened the first of several tackle stores he would own. He began corresponding with fishermen all over the country and started taking fishing trips a little farther from his home base. Early trips to the Catskills were by train.
“Such trips were real events in those days,” he wrote.
They took a lot of time and were quite expensive. We did not have cars to carry our duffel. It had to be carried by hand, and our means of transportation were the railroads and the old horse and wagon at the end of our journey. There was something sweetly pleasant about those days which seems to have vanished with the coming of the automobile. Our simple pleasures were most enjoyable, and the air did not carry the taint of gasoline or the atmosphere of irreverence that seems to be generated by the number of people who now frequent the mountains and who are not in accord with the true spirit of nature.
Starting in the 1920s, Bergman began publishing fishing stories and editing angling magazines, and his correspondence and contact lists grew. He got many invitations to fish from anglers all over the country. Eventually he would log a quarter-million miles by car, fishing and camping all around the United States while pecking out columns and stories on a 1912 Travel Corona Model 3 typewriter. Outdoor Life, one of the “big three” sporting magazines, hired him in 1933 as its fishing editor, a title he would hold for twenty-seven years, until his retirement in 1960. His research and first-person experiences on America’s trout rivers formed the basis for his landmark book Trout.
First brought out in 1938 by Penn Publishing Company, the book went on to do so well that an expanded second edition was published by the nation’s most prestigious publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. The author added an additional hundred pages for it, including two full chapters on spin fishing, a relatively new technique that had become all the rage in the postwar years. This further increased sales and contributed to the book’s growing popularity among anglers. Knopf came out with a third edition in 1976, a decade after the author’s death. It has achieved the distinction of being the only American fishing book to remain in print continuously for more than fifty years. (Only Izaak Walton’s 7he Compleat Angler has gone through more printings.) Bergman’s classic was brought back into print by Derrydale Press in 2000 and again by Warren Press in 2010. It is the only vintage American fishing book still widely read today.
Trout depicts a pastoral America that seems to be receding every day. Yet most of the angling advice still applies, and the book has never lost its relevance. Bergman focuses primarily on fly fishing, but also deals knowledgeably with spin, bait, and plug-casting methods. He ranges far and wide for trout, with a few forays for Atlantic and landlocked salmon, steelhead in Oregon, and grayling in Montana. He presents fundamentals and various theories of fishing in a relaxed way that make the lessons fun. And all the subtleties and nuances of the art become easy to understand under his guidance. His personal experiences enrich chapters on wet-fly, dry-fly, and nymph and streamer techniques and are based on the author’s first-hand observations and experiments and thorough analysis of stream conditions and trout behavior. He finds ways to overcome various challenges, puzzle out mysteries, and solve knotty fishing problems. The tackle and equipment might be outdated, but the advice dispensed remains sound.
When the book came out in 1938, it included the largest collection of illustrated fishing flies then ever published. These beautiful color plates of artificial flies were painted in a trompe l’oiel style by Bergman’s friend, Dr. Edgar Burke, a surgeon and wildlife artist. Additional color plates of Dr. Burke’s work were added for the revised second edition. Most of these patterns are no longer tied today, but they all caught trout and are a reminder not only of our rich traditions, but perhaps also our folly in ignoring them. The tactics used to fish them still work, and the recipes are in the book, if we wish to tie them. Additionally, many line drawings by Bergman illustrate his lessons on casting, stream analysis, and fly tying.
There didn’t seem to be a f ishing problem that Ray Bergman wasn’t eager to tackle, but he realized he didn’t have all the answers. He understood that fly fishing is an art. “Perhaps someday we shall know all the answers,” he wrote, “but I hope we never do. If ever we eliminate theory, conjecture, and imagination from fishing and make it an exact science, we will rob it of the charm that has made it the refuge of minds seeking relief from life’s burdens.”
The expanded edition is the one most anglers are familiar with, and Bergman made his revisions from the perspective of his sixth-decade in a life devoted to fishing. “One of the penalties of becoming experienced” he wrote, “is the fact that you become somewhat blasé and lose some of the acute sensations that attend first experiences.”
Not that you like fishing less. Far from it. You find that your love for the sport grows with the years. But you will no longer tremble and throb as you put your net under a large old trout. It will be just another fish. I know I wish I could once again experience the thrill that came with the catching of my first big fish. There was something about it that cannot be compared with any other sensation. But on the other hand, there are other interests to absorb the old-timer, the greatest of which is to get the best of some knotty angling problem. If this book serves to stimulate your own powers of observation and common sense, then I shall feel that it has served its purpose.
Trout turned eighty last year. We are alienated from the past, even though it never quite releases its hold on us. In a sense, the past remains a part of us, even though we are not fully conscious of it. Ray Bergman’s classic is a reminder that the faraway land is still nearby.