Getting away from the chatter in your mind
LISA CUTTER AND HER HUSBAND RALPH have made a career as fly-fishing instructors. It seems fitting that her entrée to the sport started with a lesson.
"When I met Ralph, neither of us had really fly fished," Lisa began. "We did a little fishing together with spinning rods and a fly with a bubble, but we were more interested in rock climbing and hiking. We were living in Squaw Valley, California, at the time, and we saw a flyer for a fly-fishing class. We took it on a pure whim. It turned out that the class was being taught by the late Mel Krieger, one of the great flyfishing teachers of his generation. We had no idea who Mel was at the time, but we decided that we enjoyed fly fishing, and it was quickly an important part of our lives."
At the same time that fly fishing touched Lisa's and Ralph's lives, they began their long love affair with the Sierra-the mountains that naturalist John Muir called "the range of light." "For our honeymoon, we hiked the California stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail," Lisa continued. "When you're living in the Sierra for five months-getting up with the sun, going to bed with the sun-you really get in touch with the Sierra cycle. That experience helped set the stage for the lives we have today. We've fished many places around the world, and they've all been beautiful and intriguing in their own way. But if I had to pick one place that's beautiful and has great fishing, it would be right here in the Sierra Nevada."
Lisa and Ralph had no grand vision of starting a fly-fishing school as they became more enamored of the sport. "I guided for a while but found it unfulfilling," Lisa said. "I wasn't that interested in putting people into numbers of fish. I wanted to teach people how to fish. You have an opportunity to do this when you're guiding, but people may have different expectations. There was one outing that really turned me off on guiding. I had a guy out on the Truckee River, and he landed five really nice fish. That's a pretty good day on the Truckee, but the angler was really bummed out. I just didn't get it. It was a spectacularly beautiful day and the guy was getting fish, but it wasn't enough.
"At the time we started the school (California School of Flyfishing), there weren't really any fly-fishing schools around. Without a blueprint to work from, it just sort of evolved. The school format was attractive not only for the teaching focus; it would allow us to create a more predictable schedule so we could get our own fishing in! We offer both introductory and advanced classes; I do all the intro classes. I really enjoy the chance to turn people on to fishing. Some of the seasoned anglers in the advanced classes can be a little jaded, but not the beginners. Some know next to nothing-I've had students who didn't realize there were aquatic insects in the river-but they have the desire to learn. Some of the students are billionaires; some have saved for two years to be able to attend. People from all walks of life can come together over fly fishing. I get as excited as the students do; it's a great privilege to be able to introduce someone to something that you cherish. There's nothing more rewarding than reaching the end of a class and seeing your students bursting with excitement. I'll sometimes get letters or emails from people I taught years back thanking me for opening up a new spiritual part of their life."
In many parts of the world, California's best-known fish is the rainbow trout; it was McCloud River rainbows and Russian River steelhead, after all, that were shipped south to Patagonia and west to New Zealand to populate those region's rivers. Yet it's the diminutive and strikingly colored California golden trout (Oncorhynchus aguabonita aguabonita) that's recognized as the state fish. Goldens-believed to have evolved from redband rainbows that colonized the Kern River drainage in the southern Sierras-are present in some three hundred lakes and more than two hundred miles of streams in the Golden State. (The fish have been introduced into many of these systems.) The pursuit of golden trout in the high country is a perfect fusion of Lisa's loves of backpacking and fishing. "Once or twice a year, Ralph and me will head into the High Sierras to pursue these little gems," she added. "They are so beautiful, and the places where you find them are that much more remote. You have to work a little bit more to get there, but that makes the reward that much richer. In the end, it's all about the adventure."
There are many ways you can derive enjoyment from a fishing trip: catching a big fish, catching a lot of fish, catching a fish you really had to work for, or as Lisa described, not fishing at all. "When we lived in Truckee full-time, we'd take our dinner and a bottle of wine down to the river four or five times a week in the summer. We had plenty of good dinner spots if someone happened to be in the water when we arrived at one. When you know the river as well as we do, having dinner there is as good as fishing. You can just take it all in and lose yourself as you gaze at the expanse of the river, or focus on the minutiae, the bugs, the close-up patterns on the rocks. Either way it sucks you in, offering up some of my life's purest moments. You realize at these times that fishing is, at least in part, merely an excuse to take us out to the river.
"I've meditated for thirty-seven years. It's a way I can lose myself for a time, a method for getting away from the chatter that's in my mind. I think for many people who take up fly fishing, the attractiveness of the sport is the same as what I find in meditation-for the time you're on the river, it gets you away from the chatter in your mind."
ABOUT THE ANGLER
LISA CUTTER operates California School of Flyfishing (www.flyline.com) with her husband, Ralph, from Nevada City and Truckee, California. She and Ralph have produced the DVD Bugs of the Underworld and have been profiled in National Geographic Adventure, the Los Angeles Times, Outside, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sunset, and Playboy. Though they've fly fished the world, they remain devoted to their home waters in the Sierra Nevada.