Maybe Darwin was right about the evolution of species, about how only the fittest survive.
For example, biologists say that African antelopes get faster so they can run away from cheetahs; then cheetahs get faster so they can catch the antelope; then the antelope get even faster because the slow ones are weeded out of the gene pool by the ever-faster cheetahs. Eventually, you might get two entirely new species that only remotely resemble the original beasts.
Maybe that's true about antelopes and cheetahs, maybe not. I don't know enough about biology to judge. But I know a little about fly fishing and the people who do it. And, due to the Westfly Bulletin Board, I know an awful lot about the stories those people tell about their fly fishing.
It's clear to me that Darwinian evolution applies to fishing stories: only the fittest survive, and there's a lot adaptation and evolution going on. If you tell a story often enough, the inconvenient facts drop by the wayside like slow antelopes and cheetahs. They are replaced with faster, sleeker, more elegant versions of the original story, until eventually you get a new fishing story that only remotely resembles the actual event.
The Original Story
Consider a recent fishing trip of mine to Oregon's East Lake. Here's what actually happened (honest):
It was mid-July. The lake's Callibaetis hatches were anemic; you couldn't buy a rise. I'd overslept after eating too much dinner the night before and didn't get on the water until 9:00 a.m.
I didn't expect much success as I kicked my inflatable boat around. I trolled an olive Woolly Bugger behind a sinking line. I should have used a more sophisticated fly, but I've been too busy to tie flies lately and I only had a few old and rusty Buggers.
The fly hung up. I figured I was on the bottom, but there was some yielding as I pulled on the 1X leader. At last I hauled up an old aluminum landing net, the sort of thing you'd get at Wal-Mart during a close-out sale. It was dented, slightly bent, and covered with weeds and slime. In the landing net, was a five-inch tui chub. It was still alive, but its head was stuck in the net's mesh. I cut the mesh to let it go.
The chub was weak and could only swim feebly on its side near the surface. I ignored it--it was only a chub--and kicked my boat away from it. When I'd gone about a hundred feet, an osprey dove down and nailed the hapless chub. When I got to shore, I tossed the net on the bank, figuring maybe some 10-year-old kid would make use of it. I didn't catch a fish the rest of the day.
Evolution of the Story
Here's how that simple--and typical--story might evolve in a manner to make Darwin proud:
It was mid-July at Oregon's East Lake, a stillwater famous for its trophy brown trout. I'd been fishing since an hour before dawn, the start of legal angling; if you want to get big browns, you have to be disciplined and get up early. I'd landed several between five and ten pounds that morning, but now there was a massive hatch of Callibaetis mayflies.
I carefully observed the rise forms of the trout. "Aha," I thought. "They're taking cripples, just as I suspected. But they only want the ones with damaged left wings. A broken right wing will get a refusal." Fortunately, I'd anticipated this kind of selectivity and had tied up several dozen flies in a secret pattern revealed to me by a patagonian gypsy. I tied one on.
A smallish trout of only three pounds rose to my fly and swallowed it. The fish swam toward the deep weeds, then came unhooked. The fly was still attached, however, and got snagged on something else. I pulled it in carefully, mindful of the gossamer 7X tippet. What I hauled up was a net! It was handcrafted from rosewood and ebony, with an exquisite leaping trout carved into the handle. But what was in the net really surprised me: the largest brown trout I've ever seen, clearly a new state record.
The brown was still alive. I carefully untangled it and revived it. I watched in awe as the magnificent fish swam into the depths. It must have been a mystical trout, the king of browns, because releasing it changed my fishing forever. That's how I've become the world's greatest brown trout angler. There really is something to that karma thing. The net hangs in an honored place over my tying bench.
Nothing But the Truth
Of course, that's how someone else would tell the story. I would never change the facts just to tell a better story. Ten years from now I'd tell that East Lake story exactly as it occurred, right down to the net with the 12-inch brown trout--oops, I mean 5-inch chub. Or was it really a brown? Anyway, everything I say or write is the gospel truth, and you can take it to the bank. Really! Honest!
As for the rest of you and the stories you post on Westfly . . . well, time and evolution will tell; you know who you are. I'm sure that with the passage of years, my stories will be weeded from fly fishing's gene pool. The slow antelopes of solid truth and integrity will be shredded and devoured by the sleeker, faster, more elegant cheaters . . . I mean cheetahs. So it goes. But a lot of Westfly posts will still be there. Darwin knew it would happen that way.
Tight lines,
Uncle Fuzzy
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