Trout Bums: "Patty, get your gun" would be a fitting sequel

I like musicals. I don't know much about them as an American genre, I just like them. They're a little stupid, a little whimsical — it's just fun. Don't think about a bunch of sailors singing, "There's nothing like a dame," just go with it.

That pretty much sums my feelings about fly-fishing: Lighten up and make a cast. It's just for fun.

My pal Mark knows all the words to "Oklahoma." He was in the musical at his high school and will sing at the drop of a wine glass.

Last fall, Mark, Chris and I went on our annual fishing trip to Idaho and were camping around bear and deer hunters. They're not really singers, but darn good listeners. Around a roaring campfire, Mark tried to teach me all the words and melody to "Oklahoma." It got me thinking about a fly-fishing musical. OK, gang, let's put on a show!

I guess you have to start with a plot. The story line should be simple, so let's go with boy meets girl, then boy would rather go fishing than deal with girl. The universal conflict. Let's name the boy Ray and the girl Patty. Ray and Patty.

I like it.

We could start Act One with the wives of the fishermen, dressed in multi-colored bath robes, slippers and cold-cream masks singing and dancing to "We are the fishermen's wives" in a munchkin accent. Think about it.

This act ends with Patty's solo of "What about my issues?" — heart-rendering and bittersweet.

This is followed by singers dressed in silver trout costumes belting out "Don't put a hook in my mouth." Can't you just picture the stage lights reflecting off the silver lamé fish suits as the trout swim-dance around? Dazzling.

As for the big male number, we would have the guys dressed in sequined chest waders casting fly lines across the stage past each other, green and red lines, maybe three casters on each side of the stage. Keeping all the lines in the air at the same time and singing "Lookin' for a lunker." This act will take some practice for actors not intimately familiar with fly-casting.

As the lines fall at the end of this number, Ray enters, pushed onstage by the trout dancers in a golden drift boat, to sing his solo, "Got no worries when you're fishin'."

In the final act we would have the big wedding event, with Ray and Patty singing the duet "Baby, just wear your hip waders" under crossed fly rods.

Of course, there are some details, like the music itself, that I would need help with, but nothing is easy in life — fly-fishing or showbiz. The trick is to make it look like it is.

Trout Bums, a column authored alternately by Randal Sumner and Mark Littleton, appears on the first Tuesday of each month. Sumner owns Blue Skies Guide Service on the Yakima River. Littleton, who also lives in Yakima, has been an avid fly-fisherman for more than 25 years. They can be reached at guides@blueskiesfishing.com.