“It’s called fishing, not catching.”
—Ancient proverb

There is a Norman Rockwell painting of a boy asleep on the banks of an unseen river. He rests his left arm on a dog, perhaps a corgi, and at his right hand is a bamboo fishing pole with soup-can reel, string and bobber. He wears a tattered straw boater turned up at the brim, a cardinal-red woolen shirt, white suspenders and blue jeans folded over six inches at the ankles. Among the boy’s angelic features are shapely lips, fallen open slightly with sleep. He is an archetypal vision of peaceful repose and dewy innocence.

That used to be fishing. Somewhere, we went terribly wrong. I’m not talking about indisputable vulgarities like hoisting a steelhead by the gills or photographing yourself with a fly rod on your back. I refer instead to an unspoken assumption that infiltrates flyfishing thought like a parasitic catfish ascending the urethra. Specifically, it is assumed people go steelheading with the goal of catching fish. This, of course, is ridiculous. It is equally possible to venture astream for the express purpose of not catching fish, but it’s almost like people don’t take that option seriously. As a result, we have rivers full of people catching fish, or failing in their attempts to catch fish, and precious few trying their hand at not catching fish.

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