I’m going to use a word that I don’t write often: hate. I hate when fly fishing writers talk about “the silence.” There is no silence in nature. A breeze ruffles a limb of ponderosa pine or causes the coin-purse jingle of the quaking aspen. The creek bounds over rocks, fallen branches, around your legs or down slides. The shuffle of your legs through high grass.
The annoying hum of a passenger plane is somewhere up there past the canopies you sit under. The bird watching you as you miss your fourth strike of the day seems like it cackles. In fact, let me reevaluate my claim. There is one type of silence out there in the forest; the type of silence that envelops you, sends the hairs to rise on your arms and back of your neck, the silence that something is around that makes even the blowing grass stop dead in their tracks. If you have spent enough time in the backwoods, you will know what I mean.
If you don’t, well, you probably don’t want to know.
Now, bef
her than the constant blathering of the hectic modern life.
Also, there are many fly fishing writers who talk about silence in the ways of keeping people out of the loop of their private spots. Sure, I agree with that. I will write here that I fish Parker Creek and that I think some of the best creek fly fishing in the continental United States resides along that stream but I won’t tell you how far into the canyon you have to struggle up before you hit those prime spots. Let’s just say that I hope I can at least squeeze another decade of my life up in there but it might be a long shot. It’s rough but it is worth it. But you will never get coordinates out of me.
This is something that fishermen, especially fly fishermen, tend to keep to themselves. We have our secret spots that we could only take our closest friends to; the ones who will keep their mouths shut.
However, there has been an influx of fly fishing writers, bloggers, video creatives who talk about the silence like they don’t hear anything out there. At risk of making myself sound like a naysayer, there is no strip of river, no perfect cast, no landed fish that causes your hearing to walk out the door, all that is left is the vision of what you have succeeded to do. It’s one of the topics that would make an eristic out of me (there are actually a lot of topics like that …).
And trust me on this, there are quite a few of the younger generation who take the sport and their storytelling into the meditative extremes like this. It is almost like landing their large trout on an undersized rod on a heavily fished destination river changes them from a boy or girl to a man or woman. And sorry, I just don’t really see it that way. For one, as someone who has caught some large trout in my day, I am bound to say a few choice words, whether comforting or expletive, while I am playing that fish. The reel is screaming, every splash from the fish is extremely audible, the water as I slip and slide over spring creek stones causes the water and my body to make sounds I rarely believe are real. If anything, it is a cacophony of sound, a bombastic orchestra in nature, when I play a large fish.
And that is how it should be.
Enjoy the sounds. Every bit of nature is music to anyone who listens. Visually, the outdoors are beautiful, of course, but all the sounds of nature away from the bustling earsore that is modern day humanity is what you should strive for in life.
I lived in a city for a decade of my life, and believe me when I say that I don’t mind listening to the cars go by, the riotous exuberance of a bar crowd as the hours and drinks pass by, the honking horns and the rattling wheels of unhoused shopping carts and the screaming of children. But when you get back out into the woods, the river, the creek, those are the sounds that make me really feel alive. You have to soak it in. Trying to ignore it, or pretend that your zenlike state is shutting it all out, makes you, well, ignorant.
Why are you really out there? In regards to those fly fishing influencers, all I think is that it makes them feel holier-than-thou. And that is some bull. It isn’t a 400 level creative writing class in college (trust me). It isn’t some poetry slam (as a poet, slam poetry shouldn’t exist). The outdoors requires no pretension; in fact, it requires the opposite. It requires a humbling of the self, the soul, who you are as a person. You can go out in the woods to find yourself, yes, but understand that it is the woods that is finding you.
I feel like this has been a motif in my recent column pieces here lately, but the song of the mountain bluebird and the bubble of a creek rolling over a rock have been the leitmotifs of my life for a long, long time. I hope that more people realize this, that nature isn’t meant for the silence, it is just meant for another form of sound. Sit down and listen. Enjoy some coffee, take a little more time rigging your rod and tying your fly on. Maybe take a notebook with you and list what you hear along with what you see. Become a part of nature as it surrounds you. It will be more rewarding than pretending that you have hit some state of samadhi, and it will be more real.
In a world currently full of some of the worst, annoying, headache-inducing sounds, voices, and ideas in human history, the outdoors is calling harder than ever before. Go out and enjoy it before one of the bills passes and they sell it off.
Tight lines out there, friends.
Fishing Report for late March 2026: Most of the lakes are unfrozen and while the water is still cold, some of the fish are starting to be active. I have had some luck lately with some heavy jigs and streamers in Dawson and Perkins.
The mountain creeks are blown out, and will be for a while. Don’t even try.
The Kootenai is currently high, brown, and blown out. You could get lucky, but I would suggest just waiting until it lowers a bit and gains a color that is a little less chocolate milk.
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