Folk may want to take a pass on this one…I get the impression this may cut a little deep.  I reckon that will happen time to time.

“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” 

 Sir Issac Newton

Sir Issac Newton would be mentioned in any serious discussion of who was the smartest person ever to walk the planet.  {Incidentally with the possible exception of a few physicist ALL of the people who should be considered for the Smartest Person Ever lived before the invention of television.}  In addition to being a genius, it is popularly believed that he was a total jerk with the charisma of a hermit crab.  Still even he recognized that the biggest part of the reason he was able to figure so much out was that someone before him had shared their knowledge.  A less well-known quote by him is just as important.

“To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‘Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.”

Sir Issac Newton

Newton considered it an almost sacred duty to assist the minds that he realized would come after him.  Now we aren’t trying to explain the universe, we are just trying to catch a few fish.  Yet still, I feel it is our sacred duty to both pass on both our knowledge and, if possible, our passion.

I was lucky enough to have been born the son of Thomas F. Murphy an avid fly fisherman and tier.  Unfortunately the last time I was able to fish with my father was when I was 9 since he was hospitalized with an illness.  I remember that each week I would desperately try to catch fish so that I could take Polaroids of them and then tape the pictures to the glass of the ICU.  Each Sunday I felt it was my duty to have something to show him.  The stupid stresses a stupid kid will conjure for himself.   Probably why nowadays I rarely take pictures of fish and consider it a chore. 

When he was gone, many well meaning people told my mother that she could sell his gear - like many of us my father had an extensive collection of rods, reels, and enough fly tying materials to fill a small house.  Money was always tight for a young widow with five kids, but my mother never sold any of his gear.  When other kids were being carted about to Little League or Soccer, my mother would drop me off at a pond or river.  She didn’t then nor does she now know the first thing about fishing, except she knew it was important to him and to me.  

Everything I know about this sport is because someone took the time to share their knowledge with me.  I have learned from authors, fly fishing celebrities, kindly gentlemen nice enough to ask if I’d like to see another way of trying something, my peers, and even the people I have been able to teach myself.  I have seen patterns demonstrated at shows, detailed on the Internet, or handed to me from tired fly boxes.  All these things were my professors. 

I have also learned from fish.  They will teach you if you are willing to learn, but they are subtle instructors who don’t grade on curves.

Which brings me here.  A guy in a “Life is Good” fly fishing shirt typing away to teach you something that hopefully you already know.  That the more knowledge we share the more knowledge there is.  During the winter I attend a few fly tying demonstrations and I present at others.  One of my favorite things to watch is the evolution of a local pattern over the years.  For example, there was a tier who tied a squid pattern on a hook and part of a wire leader.  I took the fly and converted it to a tube fly with a dressed hook.  The next year another tier (who had never seen the original) modified the pattern to a much smaller tube with better eye placement.  The original tier saw this fly and did not recognize it as his own, but now uses it.  This happens day in and day out.

I hope I don’t seem too pretentious closing with a bit aimed towards the teaching of children.  The Flyosopher is not a father (the pic is my cousin’s kid) so he always feels a bit squeamish when addressing parents, but there is one image that has been burned into my memory…in fact it haunts me. 

I pulled up to a friend’s house to take him fishing, and his kid comes running after him begging to come too.  He told her she couldn’t come, and I swear that kid shot me a look of pure hate.  It was chilling.  Don’t let this happen.  Take the kid. 

I think we get too caught up with teaching kids what they shouldn’t do: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t talk to strangers, and then there are the attempts to mold them by instilling our values whether religious, political, or what have you.  Wholesome fun is a value too.  The knowledge that the world is filled with things to learn and laugh at.  There will be questions, there will be tears, there will be times when a kid wraps his brother up in line and blames it on Spider-man.  That’s all part of the fun.  The turtles, the snakes, the rocks skipped over what were rising trout are all a part of what we are.  These times are brief, and all too few, enjoy them. A day on the water will bond a family, hopefully tighter than the forces the evils of the world have to pull it apart.

See some sacred duties are fun.