Trout fishing is romantic?

No wait. What? 

I never thought of that.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I suppose that it is.

I don't know why we visited the man who lived in the little red caboose that had been transformed into a tiny house and positioned on a spot near Aspen airport. I hardly recall who I was with. I think we were teens and I think there were were four of us. But I could be wrong about that, it was a very long time ago. Around the time of my first apartment. We were visiting one of our group's friends. 

The red caboose guy was busy at the moment of our visit doing something very odd indeed -- tying his own fishing flies. At the time I knew nothing of trout. I had no idea how delicious they are. I had no concept of how easy they are to prepare. I did not know that they have no scales. I did not know how wonderfully crispy their skin fries. Nor how their entire skeleton can be lifted off in one piece from filets as you see the cartoon cats hold up as a delicacy while plying the back ally as a French waiter with a towel draped over one arm and garbage bin lid as a tray of fine dining tidbits. 

The man was thin and rough in appearances. He had a kit, a tackle box of materials containing hooks of various sizes, wires of differing colors and materials from metal to nylon and polyester, feathers of different kinds, bits of fuzz. A small vice was clamped to the tiny kitchen table that held a hook and he cut off segments of feathers. I sat opposite him at the table and observed  him at work wrapping coils of wire around the feathers onto the hook, then pushed it all back and continued wiring other fuzzy things onto the hook, then tying it off, and finally  trimming  the feathers to produce an ersatz fly or larval bug of some sort. It looked nothing at all like a real insect, and I didn't imagine it would when it was wet. He appeared to know what he was doing and well practiced. He made about seven flies without any variation.  Apparently something to fake out the fish into taking it for something else that is edible to fish. His considerations were imagining what the fish would be eating that time of year. He imagined what the fish  would unhesitatingly be going for that day.

His intention was to score his own dinner.

We followed as he rode in his truck to nearby Roaring Fork River, so close it was almost his own back yard and hardly a need for a truck at all. He took up a position between trees among reeds on the bank and cast upstream. His line floated. The current carried his line down the river. He pulled it back without reeling it in and recast upriver. His line floated with the current again. He cast again and again and again. 

Nothing. 

That was my impression of fly-fishing. Boring as hell. The fish, trout specifically, were not biting those endless minutes I observed. He said, "It is just a matter of time."

Apparently he was certain the river actually does contain fish. But I would not know that by what I observed. We departed with him still standing there fishing having caught nothing at all. 

The whole episode left me flat. It killed my teenage interest in fly-fishing.

I did ask a few questions. Have you caught fish here before? How big were they? How many do you usually catch. What will be dinner if you don't catch any? Does your line ever get caught up in the trees? Does your hook get caught on hidden logs? How many of your flies do you go through in a day?  Do you lose any? Doesn't that piss you off? Do the fish ever swallow the whole thing? Do they ever get stuck in rocks? Do you ever catch fish you don't want? Must you have a license for this? Do you need a new license each year? Do the park people challenge you? Do you ever forget it at home? What happens if you don't have your license with you? Are the fines high?  How long can the fish keep in your creel before they go off? Do you ever get a fish with another fish inside it?  Do you clean your fish right here? Don't fish like to eat other things? Do they only eat the insect that is happening right now? Are fish really this single-minded seasonally? Don't they enjoy variation in their diet. Do you ever change flies? How do you know which fly to use? Why is your hook so small? Why don't you use a regular fishing line?  Where is your net? Why does the string  have to float? How do you know where to cast? How do you know where the fish like to hang out? Does that change by the time of day? What if it rains? 

He was satisfied to see us leave, to see me leave,  while he stood there and continued fishing in solitude. 

In the vehicle driving off, as passenger looking over my shoulder and seeing him standing there alone with his quiet activity all by himself without anyone to talk to, no music or anything, with his back to us, I suppose that is somewhat a romantic sight. But not romance in the usual sense. Yes, I suppose there is something romantic about fly fishing. Even if you do not catch any trout. But it would be a whole lot better, I think,  if you did. And that is why, after all that,  I do not understand why fishermen throw them back in.