By Mike Sayle, with Photography by Nick Didlick

Standing in an idyllic stretch of New Zealand’s Poutu stream on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I fell to musing over a story I had read. The gist of the story was about a fisherman who died for reasons unexplained. He found himself beside a perfect trout stream holding the flyrod of his dreams. The logical thing to do of cause, was to start fishing. First cast, a 10 pounder grabbed his fly. Our fisherman landed the fish and concluded he was indeed in heaven. To cut a long story short, he discovered that no matter how badly he cast, where he cast or how ineptly he played the fish, he hooked a 10 pound trout at every cast and always landed it. Always.

It didn't take a degree in rocket science for our dearly departed fisherman to figure out he wasn’t in heaven at all....

During the larval stage of my flyfishing career I would borrow every book the library had on the subject. It wasn't a big library, it only took a couple of months before I had worked my way through them and started to re-borrow my favorites. As is often the case when you try to research a given subject I had to wade (if you will excuse the pun) through endless verbiage and errata in search of useful information. A snippet from some nameless book surfaced now as I cast a lightly weighted #12 Hare and Copper dropper towing a #14 Pheasant Tail Nymph across the sun dappled water toward a promising sunken log, to the effect that fly fishing isn’t about the amount of fish you catch, it's about the style with which you catch them.

Sunday school taught me that heaven is perfection, all questions answered, anything possible. I still strive to cast accurately, cleanly and with style, that so hard to learn pause between the carefully measured back and forth sweeps of your rod that increases with line length. Sometimes I can, sometimes not. As the old adage goes, "Easy ain’t worth having". To my mind, it's the striving that counts.

This brings me to my question, Is There Flyfishing In Heaven? I'm inclined to think that flyfishing is all about constantly growing and evolving as a fisherman; new methods, constant practice and observation. Every time I return from a fishing trip I try to ask myself: "What did I learn today?"

Sometimes it's a little thing, a new type of river insect I had never noticed before, sometimes an important thing, like realizing a feeding trout will use a patch of sunlight on a stream to spot potential food drifting towards it. In this particular instance a quite sizable rainbow, 6 or 8lbs, had it's nose right on the line between light and shade as it zig zagged back and forth across the 4 foot wide square patch of light in less than a foot of water.

Yes, I did drop a pair of tiny flies, a pheasant tail nymph and a hare and copper, both #14, ahead of the light patch and watched them drift down and past the fish. I thought I was in with the first cast, the fish dashed over from the far side to inspect them up close as they drifted past, but then turned away. The second cast was ambushed as soon as it hit the water by a hitherto unnoticed 4lb rainbow that had been sitting just ahead of the light patch, the resulting struggle scaring off the bigger fish. Not a perfect result but the lesson was learned. Now whenever I'm working my way up a stream, I inspect the down stream side of any patches of direct sunlight carefully.

Would I have to do this in heaven? A wise man said fishermen are not patient, they are just good at prolonged expectation. If there are hopeful expectations in heaven, I need to track down my Sunday school teacher and have stern words with her on the topic of cosmic misrepresentation.

Some would argue there is the joy of standing in a stream, feeling the water flow past you as you listen to the birds, the simple pleasure of a good cast that lays your line out in front of you and lands exactly where you were aiming and yes, even a whiff of the hunter gatherer. We pursue our chosen fish with the single mindedness of a cat chasing a mouse, although our claim to fame comes from the mass of self imposed limitations legal and physical.

Most streams and rivers have a set of rules we have to abide by in exchange for being able to fish there. These rules stack the odds monstrously in favor of the fish. So how is it we can return home without fish, or even a good catch-and-release tale to tell, and still count the trip a success?

Actually catching a nice fish is a bonus, and if we do it with style and panache so very much the better. It could be argued that what we are feeling is a connection, a oneness, with our surroundings and a part neither subservient nor dominant to the seething, teeming life that surrounds us.

A perfect day must perforce be off set by other days less salubrious, the hole in the wader that admits the chilly autumn water, the knot that pulls loose and lets your only fish of the day escape, the forgotten fly book. All these things and many, many more must be endured to teach us that perfect days are jewels beyond price that can only be worn once, then given to history. How many perfect days can there be before they become ordinary?

So, no. I don't think there is fly fishing in heaven. Heaven is about perfection, flyfishing is about striving for perfection and accepting with equanimity and humility the lessons we have to learn as we do so. If this is indeed true, then we owe it to ourselves to make the most of our time spent fishing while we can. Because this maybe the only chance we'll get.

(End Note: Mike Sayle lives and fishes in New Zealand, which, some would argue, is about as close to fly fishing heaven as you can get. He wrote the Year In Taupo series for www.ariverneversleeps.com)