by Jerry Dennis
Fishing liars have never had it so bad. It used to be you could get by with a poor story well told, or even a good story poorly told, as long as you chose your audience with care and refused to tolerate criticism. People were as hungry for stories as the crowds that once gathered at train stations for news of the world. If you had enough material you could even write books, couch them in elegant prose, and they became classics in your lifetime. Nothing to it.
But times have changed. Fishermen and fish are getting more sophisticated. In this age of VCRs and video libraries even casual weekend anglers know how Dave Whitlock's sculpin imitation behaves in heavy current, what color lures match the spectrum for deep-water bass, and whether bluefish will feed in a falling tide, in April, off Martha's Vineyard.
These days serious, well-seasoned liars are frequently interrupted by people making sputtering noises with their lips. Listeners across the room pipe up to contradict facts.
The standard stories fail to make the impression they once did. A crowd that has viewed Ernest Schwiebert hauling in 12-pound brown trout in Argentina is seldom impressed by the smallmouth you caught in the local creek. No matter how big you say it was.
What's needed, then, is a new set of tactics. Here's a practical guide that will, if followed assiduously, make anyone a better fishing liar:
Know your facts
The only way to anticipate the video-tape experts is to beat them at their own game. Watch every fishing film, read every book and magazine article. Learn the proper pronunciation and spelling of technical terms, place-names, and stream insects. Practice saying Stenonema canadensis until it is more natural than "Light Cahill." Make it your business to know that the Yellowstone is a tributary of the Missouri, that Lake Superior still holds 20-pound lake trout, that Florida bonefish are smaller and shyer than their Bahamian cousins. I once described in lurid detail a battle with a 10-pound walleye from a lake in Wisconsin. One of my listeners was dubious. "I never caught no walleyes in that lake," he said. I never had either, of course, and if I had done a little homework I would have known the lake held nothing but brook trout.
Speak with authority
Critics are like hyenas: they don't have the courage to attack unless they sense weakness. Speak clearly, with certainty, and you can plow your way through a story even if a few of the facts are wrong. Once committed, see it through to the end. The best liar I know has an aura of authority that is beautiful to behold. If Charlie Bellows says he caught a walleye in a brook trout lake, he sticks to his story so calmly, so certainly, so long, that by the next morning entire flotillas of boats are on that lake backtrolling with leeches. Charlie's secret is to believe what he says. There is no liar so believable as one who swallows his own bait.
Remember details
It's been said before: A good liar must have a good memory. It does no good to memorize the Latin names of mayflies if one moment you're discussing a blanket hatch of Hexagenia limbata, and the next you say they were Ephemera guttulata. It's especially crucial to keep weights and measures consistent. Nothing destroys credibility faster than a fish that grows as the story progresses. Some fallibility is natural, of course, but keep in mind that an audience that traps you in a faux pas will be unsympathetic to the argument that you are merely human.
Be specific
Nothing gives a fishing liar away sooner than describing a battle with a trophy fish, then ending the story by saying, "Yep, got him in finally, and he was oh, yay big." Details make even the most outrageous story plausible. Charlie Bellows says: "I had that brook trout right up to the canoe. He was as long as the handle of the net--measured it later at 18.25 inches--and boys, I had him beat. It was 8:58 by my watch. I'd been fightin' him exactly 22 minutes and I knew he was whipped. That's when it happened. Twelve-and-a-half pounds of brown trout boiled out of the pool and inhaled that brookie. My reel screeched like train brakes. Ninety feet of fly line and a hundred yards of backing vanished like I was tied to the back-end of the Lightning Express. There was nothing to do but follow, fast as I could, running the 440 dash again like I did in those Olympics in 1936, only this time in chest waders..."
Stay hungry
One of the risks all fishing liars face is complacency. Material becomes polished, nuances of timing become so habitual you no longer think about them. Audiences ask the right questions, at the right time. They laugh on cue. Soon you no longer feel the need to work so hard. You begin to take shortcuts. You tell your stories while planning menus and arguing yourself out of mowing the lawn, until one day you look around and the audience has disappeared.
The only way to keep your edge is to practice. Narrate out loud in the privacy of your boat. Try new ideas on strangers in elevators. Tell stories to your bathroom mirror, visualizing yourself before a hostile crowd. How will you grab their attention? How will you keep it?
Rely on the truth, within limits
Many years ago I caught a 10-pound northern pike with a rock. You might think that has the makings of a good fishing story, but I've found, painfully, that it does not. It has no precedent in most anglers' experience. That doesn't mean you should reject outright every fishing lie that happens to be true. Charlie once told me in a moment of candor that some of his best stories are absolutely, word-for-word true.
I told him about catching the pike with a rock. "We were in Ontario," I said, "set on doing some deep-water trolling, only we discovered we didn't have a single lead sinker in our tackle boxes. I took a plastic sandwich bag, put a stone the size of a golf ball in it, and tied it to my line as a drop sinker a couple feet above the lure. Started trolling a big red-and-white spoon in about 50 feet of water and BAM! I got a hit. I fought it up to the boat and when it came in sight--you won't believe this Charlie--I realized the pike didn't have the lure in its mouth at all, he had the rock, gripping it like a dog with a ball..."
"You're right about one thing, son," Charlie said, interrupting me. "I don't believe it. Never say, 'You ain't gonna believe this,' because sure enough, they won't. And you darn well better come up with stories with a thread of believability in them or no self-respecting listener is going to stand still for it."
"But Charlie," I protested, "it's true. It's the honest truth."
"Don't matter," he said. "What difference does it make if it's true or not if nobody listens?"
I knew enough, at least, to keep my mouth shut. I was in the presence of a master, and if I ever hoped to rise to his level I would have to do more listening than talking.
"You take me for instance," Charlie said. "I remember a day on the South Branch when the Hex flies was hatching in the middle of the afternoon. Afternoon! They don't usually show even tail filament before full darkness. But this day it was 3:30 p.m.--I know because I made a note of it for posterity--and there were moderate-sized brown trout of three to five pounds rising everywhere, gathering those mayflies like kids chasing pennies at the county fair coin toss. That's when I spotted him. Big as a Chinook and riling the water like a lumberjack in a beer vat. I knew he demanded special tactics so I tied on 20 inches of 6X tippet, got down on my knees, and started stalking..."