The line arrowed downstream. The front loop unrolled. My deceiver turned over perfectly and dived in the water. Proud, I looked for the fifty-foot mark I had put on my line. The mark was just inside the rod tip. I had cast about 105 feet.

No, I wasn’t cursed. Maybe the murky, non-reflective water is just what it is, and not a symbol or metaphor of anything, and neither is my failing the eye exam.

I retrieved as fast as I could and rewound my mind back to when I was forty-six and was sure I landed a new job. But Fedex didn’t call. Disappointed, wanting to erase another failure, I finished my third fishing article. A few days later, an editor offered to publish it. Grateful, I told myself that in spite of my failure to write the great American novel, I might as well try to write and sell fishing articles. Maybe then people, as well as myself, wouldn’t see me as a failed writer.

And so I wrote and wrote, and after eight years of writing, of revising, I grew tired, especially because I didn’t see anything new to say. I wanted a career change, a steady income, and, I hoped, a son or a daughter I could teach the fly-casting techniques I had struggled to learned. But as I stood on the Hoboken Pier, I no longer saw fatherhood or much of a future ahead of me.

Again I cast about 100 feet. I retrieved, a little slower this time, and remembered how I never thought writing articles for local, outdoor magazines would lead to my writing memoirs and a fly fishing novel, both reflecting my emotional recovery. Yes, the memoirs and book unfolded in my mind, little by little, by themselves, it seems. Could it be that Fedex did not offer me a job right away for a reason? Did some unseen architect design the grand scheme of my life so I became a writer? But the idea is opposite of everything I believe: that the world is often random and violent, a tale, as Shakespeare says, told by an idiot.

Again I false cast. I began my forward, presentation cast. I accelerated then abruptly stopped the rod and let go of the line. The fly rod seemed to come apart. Did I lose the top half of my $600 rod? Another massive disappointment. The world always hits me when I’m down. Damn it!

The rod was there, all of it. I was grateful. The running line was in my stripping basket. I realized the small loop connecting the shooting head to the running line broke. Now I’ll have to spend another thirty bucks for a new shooting head.

I put on my floating line, tied on a popper, and cast across stream, toward Manhattan. I retrieved, repeatedly jerking the rod tip to the side, banging the popper though the surface so that it splashed and sprayed water like a miniature speed boat. I reminded myself not to look at the popper, so if I got a strike I wouldn’t pull the popper out of the striper’s mouth.

Down river, the Hudson flowed into the harbor. It seemed amazing that a shallow, tree-lined stream in upstate New York could turn into a deep, building-lined river. Was the Hudson, therefore, a reflection of the flow of humanity? After all, our knowledge supposedly deepened as generations flowed on. But the Hudson eventually flowed into the ocean and lost its shape and identity. Perhaps if it knew where it was flowing to it would turn around and go back. But whether I want to or not, I know where I’m flowing: toward the final unknown, toward losing my shape and identity, unless some of my writing keeps me alive, like the children I don’t have, in the annals of fly fishing. And before I reach the final unknown, what will my future be like? A dead end? If only I could turn around and become a doctor instead of a writer, a forgiving son instead of an angry one. But like the banks of the Hudson, my past is shaped in stone.

Something, I saw, was wrapped around the bottom of the railing—my shooting head! A miracle, it seemed. Grateful, I pulled up the line, wrapped it around my hand, and put it into my vest pocket. Thirty bucks—the cost of twenty knock-off cigars—saved.

Again I cast, this time about 108 feet! I retrieved. Yes, I’m a spoiled angler, lucky to have days off during the week so I can fish any river, lake or pier, without worrying about crowds.

A strike! I whipped my fly rod up and pulled down on the line. The striper pulled back hard. He was on. I let him run. He bolted upriver. I didn’t try to slow or turn him. He circled, as if he didn’t know where to go. Finally, he tired. Slowly, I reeled him close to the pier. I pointed the rod straight up, toward the sky, and grabbed the line. Hand over hand, I pulled the striper up. He was about thirty inches, a keeper, if I wanted to take life. I took the hook out of the striper’s mouth and dropped him back into the river.

I fished for about another hour, and though I didn’t get another strike, I felt that, on this day in this small world of the Hoboken Pier, I won and the fish lost.

I took apart the fly rod and screwed off the reel. Breaking a loop connector and having to change lines: could it too have been meant to be? Certainly when it came to deciding what level to fish, I didn’t have the answer, the way for so long I didn’t have the answers to fly casting or, like a circling striper, to the direction I should go. After all, without my difficult childhood and my failures, events I couldn’t understand, I wouldn’t have journeyed down the road I wrote about: spiritual recovery. Yes, my painful past was meant to be. And perhaps the high tide of my recent disappointment will slacken and carry me to a new turn in the road of life. Yes, in a way the state was right: When it comes to seeing, at least into the future, my vision is blurred, for better or worse.

I sat on a bench, lit a cigar, and watched the sun set. The smoke rose and blended into the marble-looking ceiling of gray clouds. The ceiling grew dark—it seemed eerie—but as the lights of New York grew brighter, as the city, like a night owl with a million eyes, came alive, it seemed to me as if it were sculpted from the marble sky.

Wow! What a great day to be alive.

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Copyright © 2007 - 2009 Randall Kadish, All Rights Reserved

Additional Articles
Fishing Beneath a Marble Sky
Going Back Again
The Fly Caster Who Tried to Make Peace with the World
Fight Wind: Learn The Double Haul
Reach That Faraway Target

About the author
Randy Kadish is an outdoor writer and avid angler who has spent countless hours experimenting with long-distance fly casting techniques. For this novel he extensively researched the history of flyfishing, particularly on the famed Beaverkill River during the golden era of the early 1900s. "Flycaster" is his first novel, but his short stories and articles have been appeared in many publications, including Flyfisher, Flyfishing & Tying Journal, Fishing And Hunting News, StriperSurf.com and Sweden's Rackelhanen fly fishing magazine. Much of Randy’s writing is about the techniques of spin and fly casting, and about the spirituality/recovery of fly fishing.
Randy’s novel, The Fly Caster Who Tried to Make Peace with the World, is available on Amazon.