"Nervous Water": The lure of long, slow days spent on the water

"Nervous Water: Variations on a Theme of Fly Fishing"
by Steve Raymond
The Lyons Press,
214 pp., $23.95

Even the most religious of anglers is unlikely to see himself or herself in "Nervous Water," Steve Raymond's new collection of old stories, spanning several decades, about fly fishing.

Who among us has really hooked 10,000 fish in a lifetime?

But the Northwest writer and editor, who has authored eight previous books about fishing, reminds us with his elegant, inviting voice that a life spent almost entirely on water can be its own reward.

Covering almost 40 years, these stories — first published in Sports Illustrated, Flyfishing and other journals — chronicle a depth of obsession that seems, at times, to confound even the author.

Raymond tells of his failed attempt to become a sort-of junior entomologist: catching, studying and keeping flies in glass jars — until, that is, the alcohol-based solution that held his collection evaporated, along with pieces of his bugs.

He offers up years of spreadsheets, documenting season-by-season which fish he's caught on which fly, and stumbles on an irrefutable argument for catch-and-release fishing.

In one beautiful passage, he describes his own efforts, during a lonely day on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish, to free several dozen salmon fry trapped in a puddle by building a minidam and ushering them to safety with the aid of a margarine container.

Raymond's voice is that of a kindly uncle sitting on a back porch sipping lemonade, one who can't quite muster outrage at the foolishness he's witnessed.

Without judgment and with a reporter's detachment, he describes anglers nearly drowning in inner tubes that lose their air; rivers junked up with garbage, including a mostly complete collection of pool balls and a merry-go-round rocking horse; fishermen who hang their day's catch from a tree in bear country.

He's warm, funny and always amused, never more so than when describing the ridiculous array of "advancements" in fishing technology, which inspired him to pen a brief poem: "Enough, already! So I say, give me back the good old days. Of silk and gut and rods of cane; no Teflon and no urethane. It's all so different, now I fear, you have to be an engineer, to understand these high-tech terms; either that, or fish with worms."

In fact, from his first fishing outing, when he managed to cast a fly into his own nostril, to his thought-provoking call for a definition of fly fishing that acknowledges that how fish are caught is as important as how many, readers get to follow along as Raymond becomes — uncomfortably, unwittingly and with not a hint of righteousness — a voice of reason for his chosen avocation.

In a genre whose longing for the old days and calls for better management are too often scolding and furious, Raymond offers a simpler and more graceful message: Get out there and pay attention to the wonder of the water.

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com