Stage 3 - Profile: The Beast Master

The cool, gray fall morning has given way to sublime afternoon sun. It's four o'clock and female Caddis flies are banging their egg sacs into the water, and dotting the heads of every riffle. In the eddies and foam lines the bodies of dead bugs are piling up, and eager noses are piercing the surface with a slurp. Slipping the trusty drifter away from the bank, the two anglers begin the hunt. Soon, a fly resembling a beat up oil rag is slamming against the water. Each time the heavy cone headed streamer lands with a ka-sploosh! Over and over they pound the bank, slapping the monstrous fly within inches of downed trees, cut banks, and snaggy over-hanging Willows. With a quick downstream flip, the fly line bellies, and the huge streamer pulses and flashes it's way through the water.

A toothy guide across the river lands a smiling client's minnow and hollars, "What are you doing pitching lead, don't you know a hatch when you see it?!"

Just then, like underwater flash bulbs lighting up the depths, a growly and overweight Brown pounces at the dish rag. A low and steady sweep drives the trailer hook home and the familiar throb of a big fish sets in. Sulking and refusing to give an inch, the meaty trout holds fast to the bottom. Steady pressure and quiet hands eventually overwhelm the Brown, and it slips into the net. One of the Beast Masters remarks that it is indeed a big fish, but in the same breath reveals that even bigger exist!

The true Beast Master knows that big fish eat big flies. His boxes have morphed from neatly organized fly pattern jewelry cases, to disheveled wads of marabou, rabbit fur, and rubber legs. No longer does he sit dreaming of the 30 fish days as he did in the early stages of his addiction. At some point along his fly fishing journey his fishing paradigm shifted. As sure as the world realized that the earth was round, the Beast Master knows that is indeed about big fish.

See Stage One

See Stage Two

Blake McHenry with a Beastly Brown from Nunya Creek

• Destructive salmon farming
• Ocean acidification
• Colony Collapse Disorder filling Honey Bees
• Mercury poisoned fish
• Marine dead zones
• Acres of floating garbage
• Climate change (Fill in the subset of this category part 1 - 100)
• Wild Steelhead extinction
• Entire missing salmon runs
• Rampant poaching
• Rampant gil netting
• Bluefin Tuna population collapse
• The Pebble Mine
• Asian Carp Invasion
• Whirling disease
• New Zealand mud snails

These little gems stare back at you from your monitor, TV, or newspaper everyday. Not to mention killer earthquakes, Tsunami's, and the constant threat of various animals exacting their revenge on us by infecting us with their viruses. It's enough to make an angler nearly believe that purposefully forgetting your wading belt and taking one step too far out into the current may actually be a better way to go than watching the Ocean turn to acid.

How about kids? Friends and family are always asking me, "When are you going to have some kids man?" I'm guessing it's because they have kids themselves, and rightly so are absolutely head-over-heels for them. I usually answer, "not sure... maybe someday."

I struggle with reconciling the part of my brain that says, I'll have kids when I don't think they'll have to watch our favorite rivers turn to muddy ditches, or that I'll have to sign a field trip form so they can go to the local aquarium to see a real life Mountain Whitefish.

Perhaps jobs as miniature robot honey bee makers will be plentiful, and they won't have to think about the good 'ol days when salmon swam in our rivers, and you could catch a wild Cutthroat twenty minutes away from the house. I'm sure a summer sunset over Puget Sound will still be magnificent, even if void of life and stinking of sulfur. What's the world going to be like when the little tykes born today want to take their kids fishing? In 2050 where will they fish?

Certainly there are many of you out there that are amazing parents as well as concerned anglers and at some point struggled with the whole Kid thing as I do. Perhaps spawning and instilling the passion for the outdoors in the offspring is precisely what we need more of. If so, how do you make sure your little kreaton doesn't turn into a World of Warcraft tweaker who steals your Hardy reels to sell on Ebay, and then buys bottles of Robitussin to blaze himself and all of his LARP buddies? Maybe the answer to digging ourselves out of mother nature's shit-house is to forget trying to FIX everything, but to take it upon ourselves to raise a league of super enviro-conservation oriented hunters and fisherman. In that case, we should throw on some Marvin G. and get it on.

I've always thought it would be awesome to make children tie a dozen pertinent cripple patterns before dinner each night. Sammy, "The Pteronarcys Stones are nearly here, and you're two dozen shy of your goal! Your sister doesn't seem to have a problem meeting the new quota!"

I once guided a dad and his ten year old son on a local stream. I can say with certainty that you'll not often see two people more happy, than that of a little kid catching their first 8 inch trout on a fly rod, with a proud parent looking on. Perhaps in the end that's all that really matters, and to hell with rest.