On Learning

As a result, I've always tried to ask lots of questions, seek plenty of answers and learn how to clearly communicate information while continuing to learn. (It seems to me, after over 35 years of teaching that teaching is often how we learn.) Learning begins with curiosity and desire and continues with both, combined with patience and perseverance. I don't think anyone learns much of anything apart from patience, other than, perhaps, that without patience we don't learn much at all. So, in the end, we still learn something.

Alexander Graham Bell, the man of the telephone, said he learned by following a basic tenet: Observe, Compare, Remember. I don't recall precisely when I first read this - I do remember it was a very long time ago - but it stuck. And I think the tenet is just right for learning about fly tying and fly fishing. Often, we spend way too much time fishing instead of, well, fishing. Too busy casting, changing flies, watching feeding fish and so on, a manner of greed sets in, combining with the frustration of not "succeeding" - something that has to be thrown out at some point in time as fly fishing is relief from competition rather than another form of it, even though the observation of many so-called fly anglers would contradict such a thing. All of this activity impedes learning because there is too little time invested in observing what is going on. To observe, one must listen - too often another lost art - and to listen, one must be still. The lack of doing so makes humor of fly fishing being called the "quiet sport", fly fishing not being a sport anyway, even though playing the piano might be considered a sport by some, especially parents trying to track down their budding pianist who is outside playing baseball instead of practicing the piano. (That was my mother and I when I was 11 or 12 years old and she thought she could contain me.)

To compare, we first must observe in order to gather information that we can compare. An excellent comparison, when learning to tie flies, goes like this. Start the thread. Hold the thread in the bobbin hand and the hook in the other, then pull on the thread until it breaks. Repeat this at least six times. Start thread; while holding hook, pull until breakage, times 6. At the end take note: DON'T PULL THAT HARD EVER AGAIN! And guess what? The comparison of how hard the thread was pulled six times running to make it break, to how hard to pull in order to keep the thread from breaking works, and thread is not broken very often again! (The first time I tried this in a tying class - in response to the time spent in earlier classes waiting for someone to rethread their bobbin after the tread broke - worked. For the remainder of that class not a single of the six students broke their thread one time! Amazing, eh?)

While fishing the comparison might look like this, when observe and remember what we just saw or experienced. I tie on a size 14 caddis while caddis adults are fluttering around, and cast the fly near a pocket where a seam defines the connection of run to pool. Along the seam, the water is flowing a little faster than the water in the pool - which, from previous fishing I recall trout like to hold - and a little slower than the water in the adjacent run. The fly hits the spot and the current carries the fly merrily along. As long as I keep the line under control the fly continues to drift with the current. And then, of a sudden, a trout slashes the fake! I hook the fish, play it fairly and as fast as possible, revive and then release it. I'm ecstatic! I love hooking a trout! As I consider what's just happen - placing this event, along with others, into my memory bank, where it is certain to gain interest, may be withdrawn at any time for pleasurable recollection but will never fade - I look at the stream and see a similar spot. Aha! Caddis are still fluttering in the air; a pocket has a seam along its edge. I wonder if...and then make the cast. More often than not, I hook another trout! It also slashes out of the pocket to attack the fly and we repeat the dance, similar but not the same. I'm happy, the fish is sad - at least that's how I anthropomorphize the event - and I have learned to make good casts with a fly similar to what I see in the air along a seam that is downstream from a rock that creates a pocket where a hungry trout might be holding between bites.

And so on.