Hollywood has long presented fly fishing through a rugged lens: rugged men wading pristine streams, river cowboys deftly lassoing elegant brown and rainbow trout, sunlit rivers carving valleys through mountain landscapes. This is the cinematic interpretation of the sport. And there’s a reason this vision endures on screen. It’s captivating, and the settings rank among the world’s most awe-inspiring vistas. There are no tangles for Brad Pitt, no lines snagged in trees for Kurt Russell, no bottom-dragging for Kevin Costner. They make it look simple (and, more often than not, distinctly male and white). Yet for me, the actuality is far different—the truth is that fly fishing is truly, truly difficult.
I may be married to an expert and have been guided by some of the finest instructors, but I remain what one might generously call an amateur. The last occasion I went fly fishing, I was stung near the eye by a wasp just as we were about to step onto the water, a moment that made me feel as if the fishing gods were signaling that I didn’t belong there, that I should bow out while I still could. Yet I stepped onto the water and came away with nothing as my face swelled. I’ve learned that crafting a novel can bring about a similar kind of harm—pain you might associate with a wasp’s sting—until, eventually, you persevere and that pain morphs into something lovely.
Casting a fly rod, just like shaping a sentence, rests on a blend of technique and artistry.
Fly fishing, at its core, is about deception—doing everything possible to persuade the fish that your fly, that feathered, hackled lure on the hook, is real. To pull off a convincing illusion on the water, every detail counts: the fly’s construction, the cast, the line, and how the fly drifts. In similar fashion, novelists pursue verisimilitude—making the narrative feel authentic through dialogue, setting, time, character growth, movement, gestures, and more.
Casting a fly rod, as with writing a sentence, rests on a foundation of craft combined with style. Timing matters in casting—the line needs a moment to straighten behind you to build weight and speed. Over time you discover your own cadence, knowing when to pause behind you, when to commit to the follow-through, and when to bail and start anew. When the cast lands well, it can be stunning, the rod becoming an extension of the arm and the line a bright, swift arc. (My line, by contrast, behaves like a stray paper airplane.) Writers, too, cultivate a rhythm and a repertoire of go-to moves. The minimalist, the nonlinearist, the em-dasher, the Oxford comma aficionado, the long-wreather, the unnamed narrator zealot, the interiority maximalist, and so forth. Like the fly fisher, we tailor our choices to the project (or the water) in front of us. In my debut novel, one of my two point-of-view characters keeps a journal to document a controversial life. Her voice arrived to me first. Madeline McKnight, the book’s central figure, has spent her career in male-dominated environments that often treated women poorly, leaving her voice sharp, her diction brash, and a strong aversion to sentimentality. The novel’s form emerged only after several drafts and intense development of the characters. Since much of Madeline’s life has been transactional, it made sense to me that she would present her journal entries as an annual report, charting and graphing her rival counts, personal brand value, relationship statistics, and a deteriorating survival rate.
In fly fishing, “matching the hatch” means correctly identifying the aquatic insect emerging from the water and pairing it with one of your artificial flies. A realistic artificial fly should mimic its model in size, color, behavior, and life stage. So, for instance, you wouldn’t choose a streamer (a submerged fly that imitates small fish) when a mayfly has just hatched on the surface. Anglers know who they’re fishing for. At the early drafting stage, I wasn’t consciously writing for an audience; nonetheless I was acutely aware of a reader who might call out any part of the story that felt untrue. I’m a former English teacher—Wall Street and the financial world were foreign to me—so I read a great deal, consulted with people steeped in those systems, and did my utmost to get it right. Writers cast their work into the world and must steel themselves for the feedback they’ll receive.
Despite our very different tools, both the fly fisher and the writer must possess patience and endurance if there’s any chance of success.
The dead drift describes a fly fishing technique that requires balancing the line with the current. You want your fly to drift at the same pace as the water; otherwise a drag will pull against the current. To fix drag, you mend the line by flicking it upstream to reset the drift. Movement must be smooth—an artificial action will alert a fish, just as a reader will quickly sense inauthenticity. In the early stages, my novel unfolded as a dual-timeline narrative between a contemporary figure (Madeline McKnight) and a historical one (Hetty Green, the so-called Witch of Wall Street). No matter how hard I tried, Hetty’s voice wouldn’t settle. In fact, my initial portrait seemed to reinforce the characterization I was trying to dismantle—that she was harsh, unhappy, and spoke solely in folksy aphorisms. So I refined my approach: I removed her point of view, cut about a hundred pages, and allowed Madeline to introduce Hetty to the reader in a more nuanced way.
“Reading the water” is a crucial prowess in fly fishing. You must discern different sections of the stream, identify lanes and seams where the fish may travel, and separate genuine bites from false alarms like rocks or ripples. The same principle applies to plotting a novel. In an early draft, I began the story about a month later than it presently starts. One of my workshop mentors, a writer I admire and trust deeply, argued it was essential to reveal the “request moment,” a concept he learned from Charles Baxter. In other words, I needed to show how my two main characters ended up in trouble in the first place. As a result, the novel now opens with Madeline’s analysis of the email she sent to her estranged goddaughter, eagerly awaiting a reply to her peculiar request.
Fly anglers are enthusiastic about their gear. They stock waders and boots, vests and chest packs, fly boxes and clippers. Writers are particular about our own gear too—special pens and notebooks, corkboards and index cards, white noise, playlists, writing nooks, or favorite coffeehouse corners. Though our tools differ, the two pursuits demand the same patience and stamina if success is to be achieved. We also need certain conditions: precise lines aligned correctly at the right moments. I’ll continue with fly fishing largely because I relish being outdoors with my family, and there’s something profoundly spiritual about standing in a river. For now, I discovered another, perhaps more effective way to pursue it: I placed a rod in Madeline’s hands. Madeline wouldn’t allow a wasp to sting her eye—she would instead celebrate its predatory prowess, catch it, strip its wings, and fashion them into material for her next fly.
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Madeline McKnight Signs Off by Evan Brooke is available from Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
