Tailfeathers

The essence of fly fishing, I think I've decided, is time.

- Tom Carney)

Not the passing of time. Not the marking of time. But its suspension. Actually our suspension in time while we fish.

Like dry flies on a perfect drift, we're cradled by time as it moves along in its unflagging run to the sea. We become absorbed freely in this suspension, our casts eventually rhythmical, like the slurping of a heavy brown trout moored in his feeding lane or the slapping of the water against a rock which rises above the river and, like a glacially deposited Moses, parts it. And let's not forget sometimes the stretch of river we fish is called a beat.

My rhythm, however, seems more like syncopation.

The fly fishing instructional books of Dave Whitlock or Swisher and Richards suggest we imagine the rod tip as a hand on a clock. Held perpendicular to the water's surface, therefore, the rod will be at "twelve o'clock." For the basic cast, we are told, we should lift the rod tip through an arc that is described by the concept of "one o'clock" on the backcast and "eleven o'clock" on the fore (or, for us left-handers, "eleven o'clock, one o'clock").