Three Trout & Wisdom From the Ordinary

Editor’s note: Brian Sayers is a rheumatologist in Austin who enjoys weekends near La Grange.

Let’s be honest about something that people are notoriously dishonest about. Fishing. I am just a terrible fisherman. I’m no good at picking bait. I’m impatient. I try to set the hook too early or too late. I can’t read the water in a Colorado stream nor see redfish swirling in the bay at the coast. Some years back I decided to take up flyfishing after re-reading Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It,” thinking I might fare better. We vacationed in Lake City, Colorado, back then and I managed to catch two nice trout one memorable afternoon, but I’d have to say the day ended in a draw because I also hooked my fishing hat twice. I feel pretty sure that my father-in-law, a great outdoorsman, went to his grave wondering why in the world his daughter married such a terrible fisherman.

With our adult children and six grandchildren recently in Port Aransas, I was determined to catch some fish with my eightyear- old grandson. There was a lake behind the house and we fished it some that first day, but all we managed to catch was a very unfortunate turtle. I gave in and hired a guide for some bay fishing, but when we got to the dock that morning there was a message that he had called in sick. You don’t tell an eight-yearold that a fishing trip is called off, so on advice from a local in the bait shop we went to a spot where we could fish from a pier or wade. What followed was at once predictable and surprising. He caught a croaker, just a bit bigger than what we could buy at the bait store, but as I was about to throw it back, he wanted to look at it. He marveled at the different colors that glistened in the sunlight, the spines, the pumping gills. Over the next hour or so we caught three small trout, none of them keepers, but he was amazed at how slippery they were and laughed as they repeatedly squirmed from his grasp when he tried to throw them back. By mid-morning nothing was biting, but several dolphins joined us just a few feet away much to his amazement, and in the end a fishing trip that I would have called a dismal failure was a great time that he talked about for days. It was only one of many times that week when ordinary things − collecting shells, letting their feet sink into sand in the surf, feeding seagulls − things I hardly notice anymore, fascinated them, and through them, became visible again to me.

The evening before we left, I snuck out to the lake at dusk to try my luck again. It was a still evening, a full moon rising and the little lake was smooth as glass. John Buchan famously wrote, “The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope,” a quote that fits even unsuccessful fishing well, and life in general. The casts were well placed, or so I thought, the results predictable but soothing nonetheless and I stood there in the quiet of early evening, Norman Maclean style, in the half-light where, however briefly, “all existence fades to being with my soul…and the hope that a fish will rise.” Perhaps there is more fisherman in me than I thought, seeing the essence of fishing before me, even without fish. I stood there and considered the lessons of that week: that there is wisdom in the ordinary, and with each cast, hope.