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 Sidespin: Tackle Dummy
David Feherty goes from a man for all seasons to a jackass of all trades By David Feherty
Contributing Writer, GOLF MAGAZINE When you're new to a
sport it's easy to get
sold a bunch of crap.
Take, for example, th e
first time I went fly-fishing. I figured
I'd read a copy of Fly Fisherman, get
down with the latest trout-speak,
head to the store for all the requisite
gear, and within minutes of hitting
the stream I'd be ripping the lips off
five-pounders and laughing derisively
at my rich friends. Halfway through
the magazine, I almost gave up on the
idea. Christ, it was depressing, filled
with nothing but stories of manure
runoff, fish kills, forest fires, bear
attacks and pictures of places
that were only accessible by helicopter. I thought, What's the
point of paying out the wazoo to
be airlifted into a place where I
could get smothered in crap,
buggered by a grizzly and then
incinerated? But there was no
resisting the opportunity to
abuse my fishless buddies, so I
set off to get all tackled up.
Helmut, the sales assistant
down at Verman Tackleberry
Outfitters, looked the part in his
nose-hair and Shetland wool sweater,
studded with chunks of granola and
a picture of a guppy on the front.
They say you can tell a real fisherman
by his hat, and Helmut was topped
off with a beauty, a lightly toasted
English muffin that looked like it had
been run over by a cement truck and
then boiled, probably with his head
still in it.
Asking a nimrod like Helmut
for fishing-gear advice was clearly
out of the question, so I casually
wandered around the store, nodding
knowingly every now and then and
making the small grunting noises
closely associated with expertise
in any field. But my cunning plan
collapsed when I embedded a fly the
size of a giant gnat in my left thumb
and couldn't get the little bastard out.
"It could happen to anybody," said
Herr Nosejungle, trying not to blow a
snot bubble.
With the ice and my thumb now
broken, Helmut proceeded to sell me
a manual entitled, How to train
your trout-pointing schnauzer, several
weighted trout decoys (including a
2 lb. floater), a 5-denier landing net, a
pair of rubberized, barbless underpants
(with front-mounted neoprene
tackle-protection pouch) and an 18-foot two-weight rod.
Or at least that's
what the damn thing felt like.
After the first morning on the river,
when I'd stopped weeping, I called
the Old Woodsman himself, Tom
Weiskopf, for advice. He told me flyfishing
is a sport because both sides
know they are playing. If your fly hits
the water like a frozen chicken on the
end of a jump rope those cagey trout
apparently know the difference.
Worse yet, you have to be quiet,
which is difficult for me at the best of
times, but when I stepped onto a
snot-covered rock and fell arse-backwards into the river?
I may not
have caught many fish, but when
that 48-degree water made contact
with my 98.6-degree raisins, I
would have won the World
Yodeling Championship at a
canter. The shrieking was so high-pitched it neutered the entire
wolf population of Yellowstone,
and now I'm not allowed back
during ski season, either.
It was a harrowing first
experience, but maybe I should
give it another go. I could get
better, just like I did at quail
hunting. I bought all the stuff
for that, too—pretty double guns,
orange leotards and assless chaps. I
had no idea how hunting birds
with dogs worked. The first time
my pals Buck and T.D. took me out,
I remember thinking how in the
hell are they going to throw a 60 lb.
German pointer high enough to
hunt frigging birds? I mean,
shouldn't a bird-hunting dog be
something you could get a tight
spiral on, like maybe a wiener? Or a
Chihuahua? Idiots.
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