While on my way home from a business trip, I decided to take a few hours and explore some new trout water with my fly rod. Near Hayesville, North Carolina the Hiwassee River spills out from Lake Chatuge and starts its run to the Tennessee about 60 miles west.
I’d spied out this section of river on previous trips, and I was looking forward to something new. I often fish a lower section of the Hiwassee below the Appalachia Powerhouse near Reliance, Tennessee. There the river is wide, and when TVA is making money releasing water for power, the wading is perilously swift and deep.
This upper section looked inviting and approachable as I pulled my car onto a wide dirt shoulder riverside. It was hot as I pulled off my tie, shirt and pleated pants and put on shorts, wading shoes and fishing vest. I worked quickly, in part because I did not want to surprise some passing motorist in my underwear, and because I could not wait to get into the cool water.
I saw no hatches—no insects rising off the water—so I pulled a nymph from my fly box. A nymph is a construction of fuzz and thread designed to look like a bug in the birthing stage. I decided on a favorite strategy of mine—to tie the nymph below a larger dry fly. The floating dry fly, which imitates a mature caddis drying its wings in the sun just before first flight, serves as an indicator of what’s happening to the unseen nymph below. An added benefit is that if the caddis really begin to hatch as they usually do on summer afternoons, then I would be rigged and ready.
I stood in the knee-deep water, tied all my little knots, then began to explore the deeper pockets of water, letting my line float along with the current.
The first half-hour brought no action, but after awhile I worked down river about a quarter mile below a little waterfall. I cast my flies into one of the closest runs of darker water and—bang—my floating caddis disappeared below the surface. I set the hook and pulled in a pretty little rainbow, about 8 inches long. I admired his radiant neon skin for a few moments, then removed the barbless hook and set him free.
A few minutes later, there was another take and another fish. It too was small, and although it was every bit as pretty as the first, I did not admire it very long.
Over the next 30-minutes there were four more little fish, all the same. I began to flip them off my hook without so much as a glance. Clones, I thought. Identical fish raised in some hatchery and released into this water when they all reached the same identical size.
It is one of the dirty little secrets of American trout fishing that a great many of the trout we catch are products of hatcheries, scattered government fish factories that exist to make sure there are plenty of fish for people to catch. The hatcheries help us overlook the natural fish habitat we’ve lost through dams, development and declining water quality. Thanks to hatcheries we can still go our trout streams, and buy our permits, graphite rods and Gore-Tex waders with the expectation of catching something. But the romance of it all is tainted by the idea that the fish on the end of your line got there via truck.
The next day at home I was reading in one of my trout guides about the stretch of river I fished the day before, and what I read surprised me. According to the book, the state of North Carolina operates no hatcheries in that area and all the trout in the Hiwassee there are naturals. Where they first came from generations ago no one knows, but they have survived through the decades, doing what God intended fish to do.
If I had taken the time to truly look at my six little fish, I probably could have figured out for myself they did not start life in a hatchery. Hatchery fish have a tell-tale clipped fin, the result of endless days of rubbing the bottom of the concrete troughs were they spend their early weeks of life. Hatchery fish are also less colorful than natural fish.
If I had taken the time to truly appreciate these little creations of God, I would have seen their genuine value. Instead I made some cursory assumptions, got bored with them all, and failed to appreciate their beauty and their rightful place in the world.
It hit me later that I treat some people exactly the same way.
That very evening, I met a small fish named Tim. He was standing on a street corner. He said he and his wife were homeless, and he needed some money to get a room in a cheap motel nearby. While I dug in my pocket for the right denomination, he was telling me his life story—I didn’t want to hear it. When I gave him the money he put out his hand—I didn’t want to shake it.
As I walked away he called out “God bless you,” but I realized then that any blessing I might have received had already been spoiled and squandered by my hard heart.
As I think about it all now, I realize Tim was not a small man, but just a man like me. He stands on street corners, tells his story, and asks for money. I stand in conference rooms, tell my story and ask for money. It is only by the grace of God that either one of us has a place to rest our heads.
One of the most interesting passages in all the Gospels can be found in Matthew 15, when a woman called out to Jesus to heal her daughter. The woman was not a Jew, and Jesus’ disciples urged him to send her away. Jesus said to the woman the most alarming of words: “It’s not right to take bread out of the children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs.”
She answered, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs feed on the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Of course Jesus healed her daughter, and he commended the woman for having great faith, but I’ve wondered for years why he chose to speak to her initially in such seemingly hurtful words.
I’ve come to believe it was to expose the hardness in the hearts of his followers. The disciples were telling the unwanted Canaanite woman to go away. The text doesn’t confirm this, but perhaps some of the disciples uttered or thought the very words Jesus spoke out loud—dog, not worthy, little fish. Then when Jesus gave voice to their words and thoughts, they were shocked and embarrassed. That Jesus honored the woman’s request and praised her faith tells me he had no desire to hurt her, but he used the situation to make a powerful point.
The woman was right. We are all dogs under the table, just waiting to feed. Some of us get more than others, and we think we are better because of it.
In Philippians 2:3 Paul writes, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” That is the heart that I want. Lord, forgive me that I am far from it.
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