I think of Gus every time I fumble my AirPods and they scatter like cockroaches in the light.
Gus was my guide on the Little Truckee back there a bit. I’ve changed his name here so I can say: He wasn’t the most talkative guide I’ve spent the day with. But his manner made a huge impression on me.
Gus did one thing at a time, every time.
When he tied a knot, he tied the knot, with zero glimpses at the water between loops.
When he relocated us on the river, he relocated us on the river, single file, no chit-chat or calling out roots or low branches. He watched his step and expected I would too.
When he pointed out a seam, he did so once, with the tip of his rod and a word or two (“here,” “now here”). He rarely wanted more than a few feet of line outside my rod tip and looked at me quizzically when I false cast. First things first was his life force.
That day changed how I fish, plus provided some life lessons too. Who among us doesn’t scan the water while tying a knot? Or leave a fly dangling in the current while wading? Or start calculating the next cast while our indicator is still in the sweet spot of a seam …
… Or check our texts while driving? Or eat in front of the TV? Or forget the name of the person we’ve just been introduced to, because our attention is on ourselves?
Presence is more than a buzzword; it’s the whole ballgame. I don’t think Gus has ever spent a moment on his hands and knees feeling for his AirPods under the couch.
AI Ain’t It
The problem with AI is that it’s awesome.
This early version of AI, the one that finds stray possessive apostrophes and diagnoses what’s wrong with our houseplants.
Awesome.
I use it all the time.
One thing it cannot do, however, is teach me how to fly fish.
AI (and YouTube, and Google—all the knowledge available within a few keystrokes) makes no lasting impression on me as a fisherman. I can’t recall it while on the river, and I’m not going to look it up—rivers are some of the last places left where I don’t feel the pull of my phone in my pocket.
Falling down an AI rabbit hole is entertaining. It’s mesmerizing. But it’s not teaching. I’m not learning. There’s no progress in it, or accumulated experience sometimes referred to as mastery.
AI DoesN’t Know What It Doesn’t Know
Matt Heron operates Matt Heron Fly Fishing guide service in Truckee and is a frequent contributor to this magazine. He fishes the Truckee or Little Truckee (or both) 200-plus days a year. When you spend a day on Matt’s home waters with him, he greets fellow anglers and many of the fish by name.
On a recent outing on the LT, we fished dark riffles and aquarium-clear pools, dredged Pat’s Rubber Legs, and flipped tiny dries on 7X tippet to indifferent cruisers. Truckee fish are tricky, not spooky, Matt likes to say. Translation: They’ve seen it all, and you’re going to have to work hard to fool them with feathers. Matt was chatty throughout and generous with his expertise. No question was too dumb and no detail too minute. I learned a ton.
The biggest lesson of the day was a complete accident.
While Matt was tying something tiny on my line, my eyes followed his fingers. It was a familiar clinch knot … until the moment of truth. Where I would battle my own thumb and index finger for access to the loop, Matt let go of the fly altogether, grabbed it again by its butt, and threaded the tag between the eye and first twist with a confident poke. I remember cutting him off mid-sentence.
“Show me that again,” I said.
Matt looked at me, surprised by my surprise.
“I’ve never thought to tie a clinch knot like that,” I said.
“If you can thread the eye on a size 22, you can thread the first loop in a clinch knot,” Matt said. We were in the no-one-has-ever-asked-me-about-that zone, I could tell by his tone.
And that’s how I tie clinch knots now, and forevermore. My favorite thing about fishing with other people is being dumbstruck by something they find obvious. It takes two.
AI Can’t Identify Flies I’m Baffled By
Yes, it can actually. AI is awesome for that. Leader diagrams, not so much:
AI Can’t See the Bigger Picture
The universe recently brought me an opportunity to drive my daughter’s car from Colorado Springs to her boyfriend’s family’s home in Montana. Before I left, I asked Claude to help me plot the trip around fishing, with two parameters: I’m at home on smaller rivers and streams, and I had Zooms most mornings and couldn’t go off the grid entirely. The itinerary it returned seemed reasonable.
Then I ran it by the boyfriend. “AI uses water we need for trout,” he said, with a touch of heat. “Plan the trip around fly shops. They’ll tell you where to go that day.”
Good points. And exactly the advice I’ll give next time someone asks me the same thing. Out of the mouths of babes … babes with a strong moral streak, that is.
Learning how to fish requires human mentors, mistakes, occasional embarrassment, and time.
AI Can’t Roll Its Eyes at Me
Back to Gus, guiding me on the Little Truckee.
I’d told him at the outset of our day together that I’m self-taught and that he should point out any bad or weird habits for me to work on.
It wasn’t in Gus’s nature to be critical or speak much at all—but I found his breaking point. Late in the day, my indicator took a dive, and I set the hook on a heavy fish. Now my fish-fighting skills, or lack thereof, were on display.
The fish stayed on for a generous moment while I jerked my rod back and forth inches above the water with plenty of slack. Gus stammered a few words of direction but couldn’t keep up with my faulty technique. When the fish finally let go, Gus shot me a look that said: You dolt.
On my list of memories from that day, Gus’s flash of anger is vivid. I knew I had work to do.
AI Can’t Improve on Perfection
Scene: The Boulder River (a local tip), near Big Timber, Montana. Snow on the surrounding peaks, cold wind in the trees, tasty water everywhere I turn.
Characters: Just me. No one for miles.
Plot: Nothing happening on the water’s surface, but they’re in there somewhere, of course. I tie on a Peaches and Cream Nymph (using Matt Heron’s clinch knot technique); no luck.
I switch to a Caddis Emerger and fish the closest seam first as Gus taught me, then the middle, then reach across to the outer edge; no luck.
I relocate to the deepest pool in sight and tie on a Pat’s Rubber Legs with a split shot the size of a small potato. Bingo. The rest of the day is biceps curls with rainbow trout and whitefish supplying the resistance.
My happiest hours on the water go by in a state of absorption. I can feel it when it clicks, my focus telescoping down to one thing at a time, each time, in the order they belong. Before Gus, I thought this feeling was elusive, something that comes and goes of its own mysterious momentum. The Zone.
It’s not elusive. The Zone always is available; you can master it. Just remember not to forget, you dolt.
