Then he asked, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? “Only then will you u… - Norman Maclean

all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.

It was a beautiful stretch of water, either to a fisherman or a photographer, although each would have focused his equipment on a different point. It was a barely submerged waterfall. The reef of rock was about two feet under the water, so the whole river rose into one wave, shook itself into spray, then fell back on itself and turned blue. After it recovered from the shock, it came back to see how it had fallen.

Even though Paul must have had three or four fish by now, I took my time walking down the trail, trying with each step to leave the world behind. Something within fishermen tries to make fishing into a world perfect and apart — I don't know what it is or where, because sometimes nowhere in particular except somewhere deep. Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.

The hardest thing usually to leave behind, as was the case now, can loosely be called the conscience.