The Poetry of Fly Fishing

The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast

James Hathaway

Bass, Fishing, Bonefish, Wilderness, Flyfishing, Trout, How To, Steelhead, Bluegill, Fly, Orvis, Sports, Salmon, Panfish, Education, Rosenbauer

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We're not talking about the poetry of a fly cast made by Pete Kutzer, but poetry about fly fishing, some of the well known poets who were fly fishers, and why the appeal of poetry and fly fishing have much in common. My guest, Andrew Grace [29:19], is a published poet and professor of English, and he'll read us some of his own work as well as from poets like Jim Harrison and Chris Dombrowski. It's a real departure from our usual subjects and I hope you enjoy it.

In the Fly Box this week, we get more into our typical nitty-gritty subjects like:

Is there a rule of thumb for how long it takes a sinking line to get to a particular depth?
Can I fish in lakes with a shorter, softer fiberglass rod?
How do I elegantly get the fly line out of my rod before I start casting?
I catch trout in Alaska when they are eating eggs behind salmon, but at other times of year I can't catch them on dries or nymphs. Are they not in the same places at other times of year?
How many different flies are there in the world? s there a registry of them? And can they be copyrighted or trademarked?
If I can't use gel flotant once my fly has gotten wet, why don't I just use the powder right off the bat and forget about the gel?
I heard that when you cast a dry fly, you should pull back a bit at the end of the cast to develop some slack. But can this be executed in a smoother fashion?
Why empty my wallet for a Helios rod when the Superfines are so good? What will a Helios do for me that a Superfine won't?
Where can I find Hungarian partridge to tie smaller flies like size 16s?
Is there a way you mark what line is on what reel so you don't have to use a magnifying glass to look at those tiny line markers?
Is there a national registry of fly-fishing clubs?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, and welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing podcast.
0:13.4	This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer.
0:15.4	And my guest this week is Andrew Grace.
0:19.4	And we're going to be tackling a topic that I have never
0:23.8	tackled before in the podcast. And that's the intersection of poetry and fly fishing. Now,
0:32.5	there's a reason I haven't done that in that, honestly, I think I'm a Philistine, and I don't have much of an appreciation for poetry.
0:41.9	At least I didn't until I did this interview with Andrew and thought more about how fly fishing and poetry are similar and how the complexity of poetry is similar to why fly fishing
0:59.7	appeals to us. So anyway, you're going to hear some wonderful poetry that Andrew is going to read.
1:09.1	He's going to talk about poetry and fly fishing and
1:12.6	their intersection. And I hope you enjoy it. I'm not, I'm still not a big fan of poetry,
1:20.6	but I shouldn't let my biases influence what I put on the podcast because this podcast is for you, not for me.
1:30.0	So maybe we'll all learn something in this podcast and learn to appreciate something new.
1:36.0	But first, we're going to do the flybox. And the flybox is where you ask me questions or
1:42.0	you pass along a tip. And sometimes I read them on the air.
1:46.3	I read them all, but I don't read them all in the air.
1:48.5	It depends on how valuable I think they are to the listeners out there.
1:53.8	And I have a pretty good idea after doing this for a number of years about what kind of questions
1:58.7	will be of interest and be educational to you.
2:03.0	So anyway, without further ado, oh, no, wait, before I do that, I want to tell you where you can
2:10.4	send in your question.
2:11.3	You can just send it to my email at podcast at orvis.com and either just put your question in your email or attach a voice file from
2:20.4	your phone and perhaps I'll read it on the air. So the first question is from Jonathan from North Carolina.
	...

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