Ron Judd / Times staff columnist
Trail Mix: Reel life is nothing like what you read in books

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A promise: I'll never write a book about fishing.

And a qualifier: At least not the kind most people have come to expect.

It has become something of an American tradition in the field of, ahem, fish literature to hold the activity up as some sort of hallowed pastime — a rarely achieved direct connection, if you will, between hip waders and God.

A very few select people — the late Norman Maclean comes to mind — have managed to pull this off, actually lending some weight to the possibility that the rhythms and swirls of something like fly fishing really do reflect the undulations of human existence.

Reading "A River Runs Through It" on some streambank, nowhere near the nearest tackle box, might convince you that fishing really does serve as some grand allegory for human existence.

Only later, when you're hip deep in your own chest waders, will the fullness of this truth sink in: Fishing may, indeed, mirror life. And life, for most of us, is a giant wadded up ball of monofilament on a hopelessly tangled casting reel.

(This, I have long suspected, is what Maclean really had in mind when he confessed to being "haunted by waters.")

All of this came flooding back last week when, during some barely deserved but nonetheless welcomed time off, I dusted off the fishing gear for the first time in four or five years.

I had no good reason — other than general sloth — for letting the rods and reels and leaders and tackle languish in the storage room next to the home latte machine, "Fowler's Modern English Usage" and other never-utilized bits of household flotsam.
 
But rumor of some healthy schools of coho — my favorite sporting fish, long ago and now — dashing through the Sound and into local rivers finally got me back into my silly fishing vest.

Just going through the gear in the garage was a daunting exercise: Two large Rubbermaid bins were filled with tackle appropriate for every trophy species from neon tetra on up through halibut — all of it held together by impenetrable clumps of 23-year-old Pautzke's "Balls o' Fire" salmon eggs. After allowing several days for this tackle trauma to pass, I made my way down to one of my favored shore-casting beaches on Whidbey Island — a top-secret spot next to an obscure, massive steel bridge — tightened the hold-up straps on my hip waders, and gulped hard.

That brief instant of fear — what if I don't remember how to cast? — came and went as quickly as it does on the first day of ski season (what if I don't remember how to turn?). I was in business.

Now, it's important to understand that for people like me, fishing "business" usually consists of hours of wading, stumbling, detangling, shivering, cursing and fruitless casting. I will not go so far as to say I'm King of the Skunkboys: I've brought home my share of trout, salmon and many — OK, one or two — steelhead over the years.

But it's also true to say that if it's possible to be skunked at a given time and location, I shall be so, without fail.

Such was the case this day, when, in spite of four hours of bank time on a stunning fall day, nary a strike was felt.

Fortunately, I was not alone in this regard. None of the other half-dozen boys on the beach got hooked up, either. Misery loves company, especially when said company is wearing silly neoprene waders that makes it look like Gumby after several weeks of plate cleaning at Claim Jumper.

And this is precisely why I won't be penning that next big-selling piscatory confession: Nobody in the starry-eyed fly-tying world, I suspect, would want to read the kind of spiteful things I have to say about fish, fishermen and all fishkind.

A sampling of my running mental fishing dialogue:

• "Hel-LO? How close do these boneheads trolling in boats really need to get to the beach? Maybe a nicely placed four-ounce Buzz Bomb splash right off their bow will give them the message."

• "Fish hate me. They hate me. If they didn't hate me, a silver would be swimming after my lure, and be about to hit it right now, or right now, or failing, right now, or... "

• "Odd. I seem to recall landing four of five silvers on this very beach, right around this time of day, the last time I was here. Never mind; that was Alaska."

• "Let's see: For my $41 combo fishing license, how many boxloads of farmed fish could I have picked up at Costco in Burlington on the way home?"

• "Exactly how much of an idiot would I have to be to come back here tomorrow, to the exact same spot, and spend another half day doing the exact same thing?"

• (Same time, same spot, following day.) "Don't answer that."

You get the picture.

The truth, of course, is that it felt pretty darn good to go fishing again.

But from here on out, I'll try to keep all the unbridled joy to myself.

Ron Judd's Trail Mix column appears here Thursdays. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.