MARTIAN FLIES.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard onlookers respectfully tell me: “Ah! Fly fishing is such an Art!” And that, in spite of my congenital clumsiness. Even when I hook a branch behind me or the tail of an innocent dog, it’s always the same:”I saw A river runs through it… Flyfishing really is an Art!”

That’s no doubt the reason that each time I see a beautiful fly in a catalog, or on the computer or in the lovely boxes of my cohorts, I immediately see the correlation to a movement in Art. It’s become a habit, almost a vice.

For example, when I discover a “French tricolor” dear to Mr. Bresson, what comes immediately to mind is “Abstraction”. A very colorful streamer becomes “Fauvist”, a chiro nymph is clearly “minimalist”. And a perfect imitation of a grasshopper with eyes that look at you and legs that look like they’ll move… right away I think of “Hyperrealism” etc… Today my friend Ollie OWENS, famous fishing guide in Hawaii, sent me one of his strange creations that doesn’t resemble anything common, nevertheless brings in loads of fish (see the earlier post). There I hesitate between “Outsider Art” or some improbable thing from the planet Mars that, let us not forget, has canals: therefore fish!

I have to say that the production of my friend on the other side of the world is unique, almost ugly and at the same time intelligent and lethal ! Just ask the bonefish lined up at the dentist who succumbed to Ollie’s flies…

My friend, you are not only big in size but big in imagination, outside and beyond everyone.