Dave Barry might be the funniest man alive – at least if you measure someone’s “funny factor” by the number of Pulitzer Prizes they’ve won for humor (Dave Barry = 1 Pulitzer Prize).
So when a newspaper editor runs a “classic” Barry column about going fly fishing, you’ve gotta figure we won’t be yawning our way through a lot of overwrought prose about the primal life force and fly fishing and how – on the river – the two merge into a glimmering holistic universal wholeness.
And you’d be right.
But there was a problem. To catch trout, you have to engage in “fly-casting,” a kind of fishing that is very challenging, and here I am using “challenging” in the sense of “idiotic.”
After correctly identifying the essential stupidity of fly fishing, Barry suffers a Brush With the Law:
But Susanne was a good teacher, and very patient, and finally, just when I thought I would never ever catch a trout, it happened: I got a citation for not having my fishing license with me. Really. I left the license back in the car. The Idaho Fish and Game official who cited me was very polite, and so was I, because he was wearing a sidearm. I considered asking him if I could borrow it to shoot a trout, but there’s probably some rule against THAT, too.
Hell, I don’t even have a Pulitzer Prize and I know you’re not supposed to shoot trout when somebody’s looking.
Barry’s immersion in the quiet sport ends without him netting a single trout, which I frankly think is good thing being as Barry is a lot funnier than Robert Redford, and look what Redford did to the peace and quiet on our rivers.
Barry promises we won’t see another fly fishing-related column, and we’re fine with that (and frankly we think he’d make a better speaker for the American Museum of Fly Fishing than Dick Cheney, who is neither funny nor a Pulitzer Prize winner):
Later, Ron and I agreed that it had been a lot of fun and we would definitely never do it again. So to any trout reading this column, I say: You are safe from us. And to the Idaho Fish and Game Department, I say: You’ll never take me alive.
That was classic my fave line “Many people think Idaho is nothing but potato farms, but nothing could be further from the truth: There are also beet farms.”
That was gold Yukon gold thanks for that.
castingoutloud(Quote)
“you point your arm forward, and the “fly,” in a perfect imitation of nature, lands on your head”
I think I peed a little when I read this.
Fat Guy Alex(Quote)
Barry’s zany, but if you want to read some kickass serious work, dig up his columns about the death of his father and his mother’s suicide. Not light reading, but the real thing.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
You hit on the writer that I only dream of emulating.
That, and learning how to fish like that guy over at Singlebarbed. (I am not making this up.)
“Floatant Out Your Nose.” Sounds like a good name for a rock band.
A. Wannabe Travelwriter(Quote)
My favorite Dave Barry column from yesteryear, featuring his dopey black lab.
MHH(Quote)