"It’s not just the ecological thing to do, but more fish are landed with barbless hooks,”  he wailed.

The chorus echoed through me like scum caught in a swirling eddy.  And it was about to fill me with whirling disease, as I fretted about whether the flies I was tying were actually going to help me read the river to catch more fish more often and land the ones the size of my leg.  Amid the din of books, fishing fantasy TV shows, mythological angling truths of eternity (and all of it underscored with trying to learn from my own stupidity), for the last hour of tying flies that one line had been both haunting me and tempting me. Not that passively observing the experiences of others has no affect on me.  It’s just that sometimes that kind of participation in the fishing story doesn’t quite wade through the riffles of my senses like the bedrock wisdom personally spoken into my life at streamside, as if to validate Native American oral traditions.

I had just topped off the last of a batch of bead-head nymphs with my signature slapdash splotch of head cement. Yes, I admit it could have been the fumes, as I might just as well have thrown the whole lot into the goop, rather than vigilantly endowing each achievement with the detail of a royal coronation, only to wind up blistering every blessed fly with the resolve of a paint ball rookie.  But as the final flurry of bunny fuzz, peacock and tinsel bunched beneath the high hopes of my fly tying vise, that one spoken line continued to bottom-drift through the cesspool of my psyche. 

“More fish are landed with barbless hooks.  More fish are landed with barbless hooks....”

Then I remembered where I was when it happened.  It was spoken over me one evening at dusk on the lower-Yellowstone after I disappointed myself by not playing the lead roll in an alleged salmon fly hatch allegedly coming my way…within an alleged quarter mile or so.  While I was surprised to not see many fellow fishers on the water that day, I came upon a young couple that must have owned the only other vehicle parked at the bridge—a dark maroon ’95 Toyota 4-Runner.  I asked them how they fared.

“Here and there. But nothing ravenous,” he said. “They must already be above here by now.”

Ravenous.  It was a good word to describe what this time of year usually is here. Ravenous, both in and out of the water.  Ravenous trout gorging on thousands of juicy three-year old helicopter-looking critters called salmon flies, which slap the current in a ravenous effort to set their new wings to flight, while ravenous fools like me slap the river with sets of newly purchased long sticks and smart, bright string found at fine ravenous fly shops all over the damn ravenous planet.

He was stripping in a heavy bugger up along the bank. Just as he finished the “nothing ravenous” comment, his forward-cast snagged his this-years-model water-protected butt.  But this was no light-weight wussy snag.  As if to contrast with the pretty “whaaHIP-chaa” of the rod and fly line, the man snarled like a gut-shot grizzly. Near as I could tell, his bugger was super-weighted in a place he preferred no weight at all. Walking a little closer to see if I could be of any help, he eased the hook out, smiled up at his nervous on-looking wife, and said “Good thing I pinched the barb.”

 “Ahh, but will it land what you’re after?” I smirked. That was my first irreverent mistake. A half-hour mini-discourse ensued.  When I first came to the alleged hatch that evening I never would have guessed that what I would really find would be a hatch of skunked-out hornets from the mind of a man hell-bent on indoctrinating, baptizing, and confirming me into the faith of barbless hooks.

 Twenty-five minutes into his stream-side sermon my right arm was getting tired of holding my rod, or being restrained from thinking how one might accidentally round-house on this guy's direction.  “…And it’s not just the ecological thing to do, but more fish are landed with barbless hooks.”  The preacher pointed his rod at me and spoke with convicting staccato diction.

 “Bigger-fish-are-hooked-more-often-with-barbless-hooks-because-they-can-more-easily-pen-e-trate-a-monsters-tough-bony-jaw. Think about it,” he said, jerking his bent finger away from the side of his mouth, as if to hook me into his church pew.  He looked like he was still in pain on his backside, while a tough bony jaw of a different sort was just getting started.   “A barb forms a wedge, ya’ see.  Which is easier to drive – a nail or a wedge?”  His wife rolled her eyes and sneered at the dusk. 

His tiny zealous voice was getting higher and tighter, his blood-stained face bigger and redder.  This was becoming less and less a friendly streamside chat.  Neither was this some shallow discussion within the brotherhood of conservationists.  No, this was a full-tilt repent and believe defining moment, if for no other reason than because that bugger to my butt hurt, damn it!

The word ravenous came to mind again.  The man of the neoprene cloth was becoming ravenous about making a believer out of me.  As predicted, he finished with an emotional alter call.  “Do you want to tread lightly on the precious gifts we’ve been given? Do you want to catch more fish more often? You need to pinch those barbs, son.  Kaput?  Besides,” he winked, pointing his rod tip again, nearly touching my nose this time with his green wooly bugger.  “It’s just plain safer.”  He then turned and deliberately splashed back into the river as if to put a visual exclamation point in his sermon, quickly taking a few more casts.

This didn’t last for thirty seconds before he waded back to shore, twisting around like a fresh crawler on a number 6 hook.  Looking at his butt and he mumbled, “By God, I think I’ve sprung a leak!”

 “Ahh…well.  That happens. Have a good night, you two.”  Without another scripture spoken I managed to scurry off up to my car as fast as I could.

On the drive back home I thought about how the man was really preaching to the choir.  I mean I had plenty of empathy for his bugger-hooked butt, if he had only given me a moment to wedge a word in myself.  I could have told him about the fall of ’93 in the Gallatin Canyon just below Squaw Creek.  My back-cast had snagged a cottonwood sapling.  Having spent lots of late nights learning to tie flies, I never let go of my babies quickly.  Reeling up to the snag and then gently drawing my rod tip back with my left hand and guiding my right thumb and index finger along the leader, the shiny, handsome wedge snapped out of the sapling and penetrated directly into the tip of my forefinger, clean up the to the hook bend.  My biggest problem with this wedge was trying to ease it out with my lumbering left hand.  No such luck…or bravery.  A professional would only free this wedge.

Driving back to the ER in Bozeman with my left hand on the wheel, my humble right hand parading my “catch” and patiently awaiting the “release” (and my fancy fly tying tail firmly planted between my glutes), I wondered why I hadn’t learned my lesson yet. 

I could have also told Father Boney-jaw about the spring of ’72 as a ten-year-old fishing on the Palmer Ranch, on Dry Creek in southern Montana. Busily baiting my hook with a juicy crawler, I was about to be baptized into the barbless faith for the first time, like a porcupine-stung coyote pup. My older brother Mike, 14, ever eager to let no one hit the hole before himself (as he still is to this day), suddenly lunged over my personal Zebco 202 combo, catching his boot-tip on my reel, promptly shooting a No. 6 size Eagle Claw wedge straight into my right middle finger…again clean up to the bend.  In my own ten-year-old way I accused him of sabotage.  Covered in tears, a professional would only free this wedge, too.

What made matters worse wasn’t the fact that Dad drove me back to town and left my brothers to clean the hole for us.  Because, even though the small town doctor was gracious enough to come into the clinic during off hours that evening, and after a good dose of Novocain to ward off possible further injury, the good Dr. Kane (yes, that was his real name) produced a pair of side-cutters. No, what made matters worse was watching the good Dr. Kane work his magic.  As is still the typical procedure (believe me, I know), Dr Kane pushed the hook in beyond the bend all the way through to where the barb (read wedge for eco-lip-rippers) protruded through the skin again in another place on the finger, only to snip off the barb, and then pull what remained back out the way it came in.  But not even all of that could have prepared my 10-year-old temperament for the immortal words spoken over me next. Dad could only say, “Geeze, Doc!  You didn’t ruin that good hook did you?  We were gonna catch a few more keepers with it.”

I could have also told Preacher Bugger-Butt of another childhood trauma when my family and cousins all gathered for a 60’s style trip to Yellowstone Lake, complete with bears crawling on cars and all.  We were fishing from the shore of the West Thumb when my then fourteen-year-old cousin Kim, visiting from West Virginia, was admiring the pretty rocks while standing behind my fishing thirteen-year-old big sister.  Suddenly Kim was wedged in the nose from my sister’s vicious back-cast (juicy crawler hanging, but still in tact).  An authentically western experience, as Dad handed her the bait box and said “Here. Save that crawler."

These sorts of barb lessons are things any good angler would do well to remember, and to speak over the next generation of fishers.  But do so only in the privacy of quiet moments like watching the bunny fuzz and tinsel drift beneath the vise during late night tying sessions.  It’s in the arrogance of forcing the issue into the river-side pulpit and claiming a corner in the river’s own theology that we become eco-lip-ripping bugger-butts with gelatinous fingers philosophically waving at the innocent yet experienced noses of passers by, all the while becoming the brunt of our own cruel jokes.

Whether ‘tis easier to drive a nail or a wedge makes no difference to the river.  In the words of a dear fishing buddy of mine, Greg Keeler: “Rivers star in their own movies. If we try to hog the screen with our macho casting prowess, they put a hook in our ear and send us off for a vasectomy. If we think they love us or hate us, accept or reject us with their fish and birds (and I will add eco-hooks), they just follow gravity while the life in and around them eats, breeds and poops. If we think they're emblems of some religion or other, they send a day-glo kayaker into our favorite fishing hole. This isn't bad. It's good for us. It keeps us guessing and refuses to signify anything but the river's own designs--which are always flowing somewhere beyond the imagination.” (from Greg's article "Fishing in the Wind").

Along the Riffles.....  Captain Jon