It had been a shitty week, even to my own rather high standards. I emerge from the subway on the Place de la Bastille, Paris, in the hot and damp air of this late coming summer. I take the Henri IV boulevard, sweating under a too heavy backpack, and I feel as fine on my parisian walkway than a trout on the lawn, waiting to be shot by someone with something to prove. I sigh, light a cigarette, and soldier on. Ten minutes away lie the Maison de la Mouche at the upstream tip of the Saint Louis island, on the Seine river, and I’m not there for a stroll.

Jérôme joins me between the counters flies filled counters, as I was pensively wiggling a Scott F2, wondering what the Essonne’s chubs, under a certain bridge at la Ferté-Alais would think of it. J too is drenched with sweat, he comes running from his home with a large bag, five tubes sticking out…

We’re not there for a stroll.

montage loopTwenty minutes later, as the sun slides down the roofs of the Quartier Latin, J and I drop our bags at the foot of the Tournelle bridge. The light is magnificent, as are the legs of the girls here. We take out the rods, and the smiles. To my eyes, casting here, just in front of Notre-Dame, between the tourists boats and the cameras, is to claim the city in the name of the flying line and the beautiful loop… We’re also here to test a couple of rods: Loop Cross S1, in the virile category: two Flatsman, in #10 and #11. For me it’s a discovery thing, my arm being rather used to fly the long belly of a 4wt. I get acquainted with the subtle joys of zinging around a 11wt ultra fast sinking shooting head, which is an art not devoid of delicacy once you got rid of that feeling you left your ballet class for the rugby field.

And the best part of it is that J’s giving me a double handed spey 101. All of a sudden, the flow of the Seine takes an Oregon hue, and I dream myself a steelheader while passing my first snap Ts. That long carbon rod with its silky flex (Loop Cross S1 7122) is a cause for joy to my hands. From time to time I get a feel of the particular pleasure of DH spey, long flowing movements like a very ample respiration. Slow love.

Night chases us from the Seine’s banks, the line has turned invisible, and men are thirsty. At the Inévitable, inevitably, it’s Indian Pale Ale(s) and Ron Diplomático by the bucket. Very soon, it’s late, and it’s time to take up some carbon. The metaphysical edge of the exercise is reached under the orange sky of the city, sleeping, fucking, catching the last metro. Walking up the long straight Jeanne d’Arc street, you find yourself under the arks of the subway line 6. The stern doric order of the pilars gives this urban dump a paradoxal charm: antique temple with sodium steet lights, between incense and piss, asphalt, bird shit.

And there, drunk drifters in the night, suddenly inspired, we formulate late prayers to the gods of wind and dance, jealous tutelaries of the art to fly a line.

Take out the rods, occupy the streets!

unconventional casting grounds