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Perhaps the most damning flaw in my research is the fact that all of the people I interviewed were men. Fly fishing is certainly a male dominated sport. In fact, I would argue that it is one of the last great unofficial men clubs in the United States. Nevertheless, there are female fly fishers, and as one of the people I interviewed pointed out, women tend to be more apt pupils when it comes to fly fishing instruction. An important follow-up to this study would seek to discover if women fly fishers have the same feelings and attitudes toward the sport as men.

In short, a more definitive project would seek to include a broader range of ages, gender, and economic statuses. On the other hand, my small sampling is fairly reflective of those who actually fly fish Utah waters. Most are middle-aged men, and very few are poor. Nevertheless, the conclusions I have reached must be considered only tentative.

WHY FLYFISH?

One of the most basic questions any study of fly fishing must address is to understand why its practitioners spend the time learning and practicing this difficult sport. There are a few situations when fly fishing may be the only way to catch fish, but for the most part, fly fishers have made a decision to fish in a way that is not necessarily the most effective, but is instead pointedly artificial. Fly fishers disdain the use of bait, for instance, though in many cases it would be a more effective, more efficient, and more natural way of catching fish. In some rivers, like the Provo, the use of bait is outlawed, but even if it were allowed, most fly fishers would still avoid it because they feel the use of bait makes the experience less satisfying and less "pure."

Several of the men I interviewed suggested that fly fishing was relaxing. Lynn, a psychologist specializing in the treatment of children, said that for him fly fishing was like meditating. I interviewed him in the car on the way back from a short fishing trip and he said "It's relaxing. Like today; just being in the outdoors, breathing fresh clean air, not down in the valley, and the sound of the water is probably the most refreshing part of the whole experience." Aaron, a 43 year old professor of sociology noted that the concentration demanded by fly fishing was what made it relaxing.

Just the motion of it is pretty consuming. I think [for] people who have otherwise kind of stressful, chaotic, multi-faceted lives, it compelling to them because it just one thing. It's just like you have to focus on it all the time, and you can't really think about anything else. I like that about it. It's like you go fish all day, you know, it's just, it's all you think about all day. It's just the water, and the bugs, and the fish.

Perhaps the most eloquent expression of the pleasurable mystery of fly fishing came from John, a flyshop manager and professional fishing guide. I interviewed him in his shop in the newly chic Park City, Utah. John suggested that fly fishing is

an extremely, extremely difficult skill to learn, and to become good at. I mean, to become really good at fly fishing, really proficient at fly fishing takes a long time and a lot of study, and, you know, it's funny, when people kind of reduce that. . . . A lot of people come in [to the flyshop] and just say, "Can't you just give me a few flies and a few things," and then go down to the river, and. . . I'm thinking, sure I can do that. But, (and again, I don't want to come off as being a purist, you know, people can approach fly fishing as simply or as much, as extreme as they want to) but you should, you should take the time to learn how to cast, and learn how to get good drifts, and learn how to select some flies, and then learn how to release the fish properly. And that all takes skill, and you know, that's what is so special about fly fishing.

A moment later he added, "I think, one of my favorite quotes . . . was by Spinoza: 'all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.' And that always sticks out to me when I think about fly fishing. It so difficult, and most of the places that you go are so rare." Aaron added an odd spin to his own attraction to fly fishing when he suggested that in some ways fly fishing is more atural than other kinds of fishing. Earlier he had mentioned a close encounter with a bear during a Yellowstone fishing trip a few years earlier. This experience helped him to recognize that humans are not always at the top of the food chain, and located fishing as a natural activity for both humans and bears.

I mean, the idea is that you are using something the fish would naturally take anyway. And so you're, you're not like cheating the system, you're not using, you know, sparkle power bait to, garlic-scented, to pull the fish in, it's this little bug that looks like any bug they would eat, you know, normally during the day, or that they would like to eat normally during the day. So I think, you know, you feel like you're part of the, part of the system somehow. . . . It's especially true in Yellowstone where you're, you know, literally could be part of the food chain, if things went bad.

Ironically, then, the difficulty of fly fishing seems to be one of the things that these fly fishers find most relaxing, and the artificiality of fly fishing one of the things they find most natural. Moreover, each echoed Aaron and Lynn by suggesting that they feel a kind of oneness with nature when they fly fish.

ELITISM AND KEEPING SECRETS

Their feelings about the unique nature of fly fishing led several of the men I interviewed to bring up the notion of elitism on their own. John's suggestion that he didn't want to sound like a purist, for instance, is a clear recognition of fly fishing's reputation as an elite sport. Fly fishers tend to look down upon bait fishermen and "rapalla" users with a polite, and sometimes not so polite, disdain. Moreover, as John Bratzel and Jeff Charnley pointed out at a recent popular culture conference, books and television shows about fly fishing tend to reinforce this elitist ideal. Nor is fly fishing's reputation for secret keeping a new thing. Lynn mentioned that in his hometown of Brigham City in the early 1960s he was aware of "this secret society of men, these old fishermen, you know, and people would talk about sneaking and walking, watching this guy named Doug Orchard, who was the town barber, you know, watching his secret fishing methods, 'cause he always came back with fish, and he was a fly fisherman." Keeping secrets has likely always been a part of fishing, and fly fishing in particular.

In fact, the source of much fly fishing humor are "in jokes" about the gaffs of the inexperienced. When I asked Matt, a thirty-nine year old college teacher if he knew any jokes about fly fishing he replied, "No, I think our jokes are more experiential sorts of things, where we'll have, insider jokes. I'll call John [his brother] at the [fly] shop, and, you know, put on a fake voice, and ask him if ah, he's got any, if Royal Coachmen are working on the Provo now, or whatever." The humor in this situation stems in part from the fact that a Royal Coachman, a large attractor pattern fly, has not worked with any consistency on the Provo River for probably twenty years or more. Attractor flies, which are often garishly colored and designed to attract a fish's attention by their strange appearance, are quite different from other flies, some very realistic, that represent attempts to imitate something in nature. Thus Matt's joke pokes fun at someone who doesn't know much about fishing the Provo, but it also suggests a critique of an angler who would use an attractor pattern rather than a fly that actually matches what the fish are eating that day-what fly fishers call "matching the hatch." Matching the hatch is a more involved way of fishing and requires a fairly intimate knowledge of the fish and their habitat. It also suggests an unwillingness to take shortcuts like attractor flies.

Matt even took the opportunity during the interview to ridicule his own early ignorance about fly fishing. Mentioning a small stream notorious for its skittish fish, Matt noted that he and one of his brothers, "actually fished, both of us, in the stream, downstream, for like a mile or two. And we're just like [noise of disgust], 'This river sucks. There no fish in here!' We're fishing in our Patagonia shorts and our Chuck Taylor tennis shoes, you know, and t-shirts, 'cause it's August, and, 'Sheez, I don't know; we're gonna have to fish someplace else.' Fishing downstream the whole way." Once again, the humor in this story comes from the fact that fishing downsteam, while occasionally effective on larger rivers, would simply not work on this particular stream. Moreover, Matt and I agreed before the interview that this creek has since become a favored stream for both of us, and one that has a particularly large population of trout.

Much of the conversation I had with each of these men centered naturally on the keeping of secrets and the reasoning behind the secrecy. Matt suggested that

It's in a way like guarding a recipe if you're a cook or a chef or something. . . . I mean, it's an elitist sort of thing, but I guess you're like, you went through some things, and earned it, in a way. I mean, we have developed a couple of flies that work really well, on say, Huntington Creek, or some of these others, [and we] just want people to figure some of that out, you know, make 'em work for it; think about it, [laughing] and not just hand it over, as it were.

Matt's suggestion that beginners should pay their dues was repeated by each of the men I interviewed, and it is probably the most basic reason for secret keeping. While he professed a desire to help beginners enjoy the sport, Matt suggested that "somebody who's really into learning about it, and catches that passion and wants to learn about the whole, you know, the way it's systematic or systemic rather, and understand about the entomology and the river science or whatever else. And I mean, that's exciting." His notion that fly fishing should be "systematic or systemic" is particularly revealing. He seems to feel that fly fishing is not particularly about catching fish, but more about learning to function properly within the natural system. As "Hemingwayesque" as this idea may sound, I think it accurately reflects what Matt and the other fishers were trying to express. A moment later, recognizing the way his comments might be understood as typical fly fishing elitism, he added, "I don't like the way that sounds, but I think that's how it is. [laughing] I should have tried to be more diplomatic about it." Later in the interview he reiterated this idea when he called fly fishing inter-relational. When I asked if he meant that he liked to fish with his family relations he said, 'Yeah, well, and, and with nature as well. I mean, it's a very spiritual thing for me. I mean, going to Slough Creek is like my, you know, return to Mecca. Each of the men mentioned this important idea of the systemic nature of fly fishing. Aaron's earlier comment about becoming part of the food chain in Yellowstone certainly reflects this idea, but some of the other men talked about it in a less reflective way. Lynn went out of his way to bring up a similar idea when he interjected a story about a fish he once returned to the stream.

Lynn: The other thing I wanted to talk about for a minute is killing fish.

Dennis: Yeah.

Lynn: Yeah, a lot of people don't do that.

Dennis: What do you do with them? Do you keep them? Or, what do you do?

Lynn: I, I usually eat them. I usually take them-not always. Depends on the circumstance. Like one time, I was up there fishing where we were today, at Hobble Creek, in the middle of winter, and I caught a sixteen inch Brown, and this was right at the end of graduate school, and I took him home. It was the only fish I caught. I got him home, and warmed up a little bit, and he was in the sink, you know. I walked toward the sink to clean him out, [and] he was breathing. So I hurried and filled the sink up with water, I got a bucket and took him back.

When I asked him why he took the time and effort to return the fish to the creek after he had brought him all the way home he said, "his will to live." This experience was touching to Lynn, and as he told the story he got tears in his eyes. In the course of a few seconds he had ceased to see this fish as an object of sport or a source of food, and rather had come to identify with it, to sense some sort of kinship or natural relationship with it. Aaron tells a similar story about a ten pound salmon he once caught while bait fishing in Alaska. He hooked the fish and then had to run downstream with the fish for a good distance to keep the line from breaking. The fish eventually hung itself up on a log and Aaron had to crawl out onto the log to retrieve it. Instead of keeping the hard won salmon, as one would typically do when bait fishing, he released it and noted with some satisfaction that "it was okay."

Fly fishers keep secrets about several things, including particular flies and special techniques, but the most well guarded secrets are often those dealing with locations. That might mean a particular river or stream, or a particular stretch on a river, or even a particular hole, a space no more than 7 or 8 feet across. Some of the rivers fished in Utah, like the Green and the Colorado, are large, but most are substantially smaller. My favorite creek, which I am reluctant to name, is no more than ten to twelve feet across and averages a foot or eighteen inches in depth. The very size of streams like this suggests their delicate nature. A slight change in stream flow or one unscrupulous angler can quickly ruin a small stream. Two years ago, for instance, a small family of beavers made the stream particularly difficult to fish in a matter of days. Although fly fishers typically cannot do much about beavers, they can keep locations secret from other fishers. Aaron notes this very practical reason for keeping secrets when he suggests that he sometimes does not share locations, "just because they're small places, and they're, you know, if four more people knew, it would, it wouldn't be the same place anymore." When he was recently asked about a small creek he recalled being "kind of vague, I think, with him." When the questioner pressed him for a location Aaron replied, "Oh, I just, hit and miss, up and down, you know."

Aaron: I just sort of didn't really tell him where I'd been exactly.

Dennis: You didn't exactly lie?

Aaron: Well, you'd probably call it lying, [laughing] if you took it to court! Were you being truthful? No. Well then.

He added, however, "if we're going to a bigger place, if we're going to the Green, or if we're going to, you know, to the Middle Provo," that he is much more willing to share locations.

When I asked Aaron a few moments later about his favorite spot he mentioned a creek in Yellowstone National Park. He suggested that it is his favorite

mostly because of the place. It's just a, it's just a really beautiful place, we've got the bears that are there that make it a different kind of wilderness, you know. It's a whole different feeling, that you're part of a system in some ways, and you know, people have been killed by bears in that drainage, you know. And so you do stuff differently, you make, you don't sneak up, you make lots of noise any time you come around the corner, and you've always kind of got an eye, you know, eye out, and stay a little closer together. The feeling is quite different because of the bears. And then, just always animals around, you know? Coyotes all over the place, the elk and all those animals. And it's fun. It's a great place. In the fall it's really pretty. The light is, you know, redder. The sun at more of an angle, and the aspens are all yellow, and a lot of times they've even fallen by then.

The importance of the place is certainly not to be missed in this description. Aaron's sense of oneness with the place, his feeling of being intimately associated with this particular location adds a great deal to his enjoyment of the experience.

When I asked Kerry if he often told people about his favorite fishing spots he answered that he didn't, then added, "there might be some selfishness in terms of wanting to limit the number of people that go there. He then went on, however, to outline the conditions under which he would share a location:

I think, in a friendship as it's developing, the sharing of that information becomes a sort of gift. Like a way for a male to reach out to another male and say I like you enough that I trust you and I'm going to open myself up to the point where I'm sharing a secret fishing spot. So, it's, it's part of like, a friendship developing to a certain point. And if you were just to meet someone, it would feel somehow ugly, like you were violating that stream by sharing that information so casually. You worry that they wouldn't respect it in the same way, or they wouldn't develop the bond with it because it came too easily somehow. Sort of a strange thing, isn't it?

The value of the secret, in this case, seemed to be in its very secrecy. Kerry's willingness to share the secret becomes a way of creating bonds of friendship. Once again, fly fishing for Kerry is not about catching fish, or even about the act of fishing, but rather seems to revolve around keeping and sharing the intimate knowledge that fishing makes possible. Kerry went on to suggest that

If a person hasn't developed their fly fishing abilities to the point that they can effectively stalk it and succeed at it, you feel like you'd be casting your pearls before swine, and they would come back and complain to you. "I went there, and I fished and I didn't catch anything." And you know, if you were to watch them, they'd probably be like yelling and standing right on top of the fish and scaring them, and it, it feels like a desecration, you know. I know that it's kind of a snobby thing to say, but when you develop a real love for the craft and the hunt, you can't imagine, um, sharing a special spot like that.

Even Lynn, who said that he often shares his favorite locations, expressed a similar, deeply-seated concern. In fact, Lynn's honesty about sharing locations made me smile.

I generally tell them, but I get a queasy feeling in my stomach. Because I was conditioned, when I was growing up, you never tell anybody where your favorite fishing hole is. My dad would get so angry, so there's a little bit of a conflict inside of me; my nature is sort of to share, like I just took you to my favorite place. And ah, that, my dad used to get mad. "Shut up," you know, "don't say anything."

Doug, the oldest fisher I interviewed, was also seemingly conflicted about sharing locations. When I asked if he would tell others the location of his favorite spots he was quite open and said he would usually tell. He also noted that he would usually bring extra flies to give away to people who asked. He suggested that there are plenty of places to fish and no real reason to keep secrets. He said that helping other fishermen is especially important when kids are involved-that it was particularly important not to disappoint kids.

Near the end of the interview, however, I asked him what his favorite aspect of fly fishing was. He said what he enjoys most is finding a creek where no one else fishes. He then mentioned that he knows about a creek now in a nearby canyon that no one else fishes and he was keeping it a secret (he certainly did not offer to tell me). His reasoning for keeping the location secret is that the creek is so small that an unscrupulous fisherman could fish it out in a few days. Even Doug, the interviewee seemingly most willing to share information, still keeps certain locations secret.

Like Doug, Matt also began answering this question by suggesting that he no longer keeps secrets about locations, noting, "there's really not a place that I wouldn tell anyone about now. Nevertheless, a few moments later he slipped and mentioned that he had a favorite creek, but refused to tell me the name of it or the location until I turned off the tape recorder. Like Doug and Kerry, he said that these were things he did not casually share with other fishers.

Locations may be the most important secrets fly fishers keep, but they are certainly not the only ones. Matt suggested that even with common locations, places most fly fishers are aware of, there are techniques and flies that work especially well and that he still keeps secret. He noted that, "Guys will go fish Huntington Creek and not catch a fish, because there are particular things you gotta do and not do. And at Thistle Creek even, just like you said, being ultra-sneaky stealthy. . . . There are a couple of spots on the Provo that a lot of people know about but don't know how to fish them."

Flies are perhaps the core of fly fishing, and they can be as varied and interesting as any piece of material lore. Most fishers use commercial flies, often tied in Asia, in traditional or standard patterns. But many fishers tie their own flies and often will closely guard patterns and materials. Particular flies may be developed for a single stream at a specific time of year. I have in my flybox, for instance, a small green fly tied by a friend of mine for use on the Upper Provo River in the deep summer. Gifts of custom tied flies, once again, suggest a certain degree of intimacy. Many fishers who tie their own flies don't share them often, and when they do share they usually do so only with close friends and will likely wait until they are on the river to offer the gift.

Kerry notes that even with storebought flies he will often guard the identity of a fly from other fishers. When I asked him if he would share the identity of a successful fly he is using he said,

It depends on the mood I in. If it's just a stranger, I may say something, I don't want to like, be rude, and say, "none of your business," but I might say something general like, "Oh, just an attractor pattern." You know, like that's all you need to know. 'Cause I, you know, you don't feel like you've got any kind of bond. If it's a friend, and you're fishing together, there's no way you're gonna hold back that information. You're both helping each other out and comparing notes, and, even if they're sort of riding on your insight, you share that-that's not to be hoarded.

Kerry's observation about the special ethics of fishing with friends is worth noting. Again, it suggests a certain level of intimacy when one fisher even invites another on a trip to the river.

CONCLUSIONS

More research is needed in this field with both younger and older fishers. Women, too, are not represented in this study and clearly need to be. Moreover, I am not sure if these attitudes and the code mentioned below are specific to Utah or to the United States, or if similar feelings could be drawn from fishers in other parts of the nation and the world. I am, however, confident that the conclusions I have drawn here are accurate in so far as they go, and that the interviews are fairly representative. Fly fishing may deserve its reputation for elitism and snobbery, but those who study the sport should also recognize the highly ethical, code-driven nature of the elitism. Matt perhaps expressed the feelings of most of the interviewees when he said,

It's definitely, in a way, a pedagogy, I suppose. It's a learning sort of thing. I think there is a sense of ethicality or a responsibility, maybe even a stewardship where rivers are even more threatened now, and some of those places that I went before-no, there are certain people I wouldn't tell, then, about rivers, or what to use, or anything like that. Just, if, in my judgment, they wouldn't be responsible with it. But, I don't know. It doesn't sound very nice when I say it, but I think that's probably true.

So perhaps the most important of my findings after conducting these interviews is to note the existence of this unwritten code of fly fishing ethics, what Matt might call the rules of his "stewardship." Each of the men I talked to expressed, in their own words, a very similar ethical code that dictated when and under what circumstances they would share information about fishing. None of the men I interviewed were completely comfortable considering themselves "elitists," and each professed a willingness to share what they knew, particularly with younger fishers. Nevertheless, each also keeps secrets, particularly about locations, flies, and techniques. Moreover, while they may have felt some dissonance in their attitudes, none expressed a desire to change. They all suggested that sharing information improperly was more problematic than keeping secrets or even lying.

The most practical reason most of the interviewees gave for keeping these secrets was that telling too many people about a particular technique or location actually endangered the fishery. Although this is not much of an issue on hard-fished rivers like the Provo or the Green, smaller, more delicate streams could literally be ruined by one unscrupulous person. Beyond this pragmatic concern, however, were some much more interesting reasons for secret keeping. Most of the men agreed that sharing knowledge out of turn also somehow "cheapened" their own fishing experience. John's comments were probably the most interesting on this topic. Since he is a professional guide he literally gets paid to share secrets. He is thus placed in the position of having to chart a difficult ethical course between what he is paid to do and what he perceives the unwritten rules of fly fishing demand. He talked about having to satisfy his customers but noted "on the other hand . . . you have some personal spots that are very sacred to you, and sometimes you kind of mix those two, thinking that they're going to make for a good time regardless, and they're going to appreciate the scenery, they're going to appreciate how much effort you put into finding this spot." He added, "It's a hard thing to be in the fly fishing business, especially when you have your favorite spots, 'cause you have to give out good information, but you also want to hold those spots kind of sacred to you." In our interview, for instance, he lamented a particular time when he shared what had been a secret place, one for which he felt a rather personal attachment, with a client who, "only wanted to catch fish." The customer ignored the beauty of the pristine setting high in the Uinta Mountains and, instead, complained constantly for the several days long trip about the lack of fish and particularly the lack of big fish. He clearly did not appreciate what had been shared, and John still feels bad about this. "He didn't appreciate it. He didn't appreciate any of it. All he wanted was the fish. If he just wanted fish, I could have taken him to the lower Provo and put on some nymphs with the semis [trucks] buzzin' by, and caught tons of fish. You know what I mean?" John did not seem as upset with the client, however, as with his own lack of judgment, and the fact that he had shared something he should have kept secret. Although he did not say it, it was as if he felt guilty for betraying the stream. For each of the men the sharing of secrets usually suggests a degree of intimacy, and sharing those secrets out of turn seems almost obscene.

Another important reason for keeping secrets, and perhaps the most difficult of the reasons to express, had to do with pedagogy. Several of the men believe that sharing too many secrets, or sharing secrets too early could potentially prevent novice fishers from appreciating the true value of the sport. There is a strong sense that the learning process is more important than the actual knowledge learned. John suggested that in any kind of fly fishing "there's still skill there, and there's a technique there, and if you, if you're not into learning the technique, and you're just in to catch a fish, I think, that's almost abuse to the river a lot of times." Two of the men I interviewed very pointedly stated that if a fisher had not learned a particular bit of knowledge by themselves then they were not ready to know it. Both expressed a feeling that the process of learning to fly fish, as painstaking and involved as it is, helped ensure that only those who would use the knowledge properly would ever receive it. When I asked him about sharing some of his favorite locations, Kerry put this idea in these words: "you'd worry that they wouldn't respect it [the stream] in the same way, or they wouldn't develop the bond with it because it came too easily somehow."

Perhaps, like many of those who write about fly fishing, I have ended by making it sound too mystical, too spiritual. If that is true, then I must note that the interviews have led to these conclusions. In this light, I will note that a final important lesson to draw from these interviews, particularly for those who do not fish, is the fact that catching fish is more or less an afterthought for these men. When I asked John about his favorite fly fishing moment he said that "hooking the fish, playing the fish, it's all fun," but his "ideal moment is seeing a fish rise, and then that moment right there-the anticipation. That's what it is to me. The anticipation." For each of the men I interviewed, catching fish was simply proof that they had done something right. The knowledge that they had fished properly, so to speak, was more important than the actual fish caught. When I asked Aaron to relate a fishing experience that was particularly memorable, he told a rather mundane story about catching fish with his sons. When I asked him why he felt that this particular trip seemed special or important in his memory he said, "just because I felt like I knew what I was doing." That feeling of expertise or mastery in a natural setting was especially rewarding for Aaron and the other fishers. Some of these men practice catch-and-release fishing, and others don't, but all expressed a sense of kinship with the fish they hunted. More importantly, they each seemed to feel that they attained some closeness with the natural world in general through the act of fishing.