The Art of Catch and Release

On rare occasions, I like to pretend that I’m a fly fisherman. I generally do this by dusting off my fly rod, wading into a local river, and then spending the rest of the day losing flies and untangling my line from tree branches. Eventually, I get frustrated enough to quit for another few months before I start this process over again.

I like to pretend that I look like this when I fly fish.

This is what I actually look like.

Between snags and tangles I do on rare occasions, by some stroke of pure luck, actually catch a fish. Around here, the biggest fish I catch are the brown trout. A real fisherman might tell you different, but, to me, these are the linebackers of the trout world. When you hook one, they hit the fly hard, dive to the bottom, and do their best to wrap your line around ever rock and root in the river. As I struggle (most often unsuccessfully) to land one, I never see much more than a big shadow moving well beneath the surface of the water. The rainbows are the most fun to catch because they put on a real show. They are the gymnasts of the trout world. They leap into the air, flipping and twisting and displaying their brightly colored scales in the sunlight.

My favorite fish to catch, however, is the brook trout. They’re much smaller than the brutish browns, they put up less of a fight than the rainbows and tend not to leap into the air, but they’re the most beautiful. They also happen to be, in my opinion, the tastiest, but I never keep them.

I used to. I used to keep virtually every fish I caught if it was big enough. I did this until one day I was fishing for brook trout with my youngest son. He was probably six or seven at the time. I reeled one in and I showed it to him. I was excited to see that he thought it was just as beautiful as I did. He liked it so much that he became deeply worried that I would want to keep it and eat it. “We should let it go,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. “It will make a delicious dinner.”

“But it’s so pretty,” he said and he was right.

I really didn’t want to let it go. I felt like I had earned that fish with a whole lot of lost flies, tangled lines, mosquito bites, and slipping around on mossy rocks in freezing cold water. I wanted to return to my family as the conquering hero to prove to them that I really could catch a fish every now and then. I felt like I needed some way to prove these hours out stumbling around in a river weren’t a total waste of time. I mean, how would my wife know I was a manly hunter and gatherer if I didn’t return with some dinner every once in a while?

I looked at my six-year-old’s pleading brown eyes reflecting the orange spots and white striped fins of the brook trout, and very reluctantly said, “Okay. We’ll let it go.” And if felt good. It felt really good. In a flash of orange, the little trout disappeared into the river, as much a part of it as the currents of water and polished rocks.

Ever since then, I let them go.

"Four Panel Brookie" by fly fisherman and very talented artist Derek DeYoung. 

Not long ago, my good friend Kurt Moulton, an accomplished artist and illustrator, taught me about letting art and writing go. He came to me excited to tell me about an idea he had. He told me how he had bought a brand new hardbound sketchbook and wrote in the front cover something like: This sketch book is now yours. Use it to draw or write whatever you want in it, and then leave if for the next person to find (only he expressed it a lot more articulately and in his immaculate handwriting). He drew a few pictures in it and then planned to leave it on a shelf in the county library. “How cool would that be?” he said. “Wouldn’t you love to be looking through some art books at the library and then stumble onto this sketchbook?” Absolutely. That would be very cool.

The first pages of Kurt Moulton's sketchbook. Unfortunately, I didn't realize I cut off half of it when I scanned it.

It was fun to imagine this sketch book traveling around the state, country, or even world. Where would it end up? Who might add to it? What drawings, poems, or other creative ideas would they contribute? What a story it would make by the time it was filled! Kurt let me scan the first few pages where he had added his own contribution, and then took it to the library later that day. I wonder where it is now?

Another drawing Kurt did in the sketchbook (once again, half of it was cut off. Sorry!) before he left it for someone else to find.

I'm inspired by Kurt's willingness and excitement to let something beautiful go that he had worked hard on. Like a fly fisherman, he used his time, money, and talents to capture this beautiful thing, and then released it out into the world for someone else to experience with no way to know what was to become of it. And I’ll bet it felt good, really good.