Swap Screens for Streams
There is a change I’ve watched countless times over thirty years of teaching fly fishing. A child arrives full of movement and questions, hurrying along the bank, throwing sticks into the water and wanting to know how many fish we’re going to catch before the rod is even assembled. There is plenty of enthusiasm, although not all of it is immediately useful to the fishing. Everything needs to happen now.
Then something catches their attention. It might be a trout holding beneath an undercut bank or the small disturbance left by a fish taking an insect. Sometimes it happens while we’re sorting out another tangle and they notice something in the water beside us. The child who has been moving constantly begins standing still. They watch a little longer before making the next cast. The questions continue, but now they are about what is happening in front of them.
It rarely happens all at once, and there is no reliable timetable. Some children settle into it quickly. Others need most of the day. But I’ve seen that change often enough to recognise it when it begins. Their attention has found something to fix on.
We’ve taught hundreds of children over the years, through family outings, beginner workshops and afternoons on the Goulburn. Some arrive already obsessed with fishing. Others have clearly been brought along by a parent who is considerably more enthusiastic about the idea than they are. They may be impatient, shy or unsure what they are supposed to enjoy about standing beside water while somebody explains a fly rod. That is a perfectly reasonable starting point. Most of us have been taken somewhere we weren’t convinced we wanted to go.
What interests me is how often that reluctance gives way to curiosity. A teenager who would rather have been elsewhere starts asking about insects. A child who has spent half an hour complaining about casting becomes difficult to persuade away from the river once fish begin rising. Nothing particularly dramatic has happened. They have simply found something worth paying attention to, and the next question follows from the last thing they noticed.
It is easy to turn a discussion like this into a complaint about phones. I don’t think that gets us very far. Children haven’t chosen the world they are growing up in, and blaming them for being interested in what is constantly offered to them seems unfair. Phones, games and social media are part of their lives. What I think matters is giving them other experiences as well, particularly ones that require them to be involved rather than simply watch.
Fishing certainly requires involvement. The wind changes while you are casting. A trout refuses the fly you thought was right. Rain arrives before you are ready for it, and a knot that looked straightforward when somebody demonstrated it becomes surprisingly difficult in your own fingers. You have to deal with what is happening, often with cold hands and a piece of grass caught somewhere in the leader. The satisfaction comes when you finally make something work.
There is useful feedback in all of that. A rushed cast can leave the line tangled. A careless approach sends a visible fish away. Slow down, look properly and make a better attempt, and sometimes the result changes. Children begin making those adjustments because they want another chance at a fish. You can tell somebody to be patient as often as you like, but it means considerably more when they discover a reason to wait.
I wouldn’t suggest children have a monopoly on impatience. I’ve spent enough time with adults holding fly rods to know better. Experience doesn’t prevent us from rushing a cast, striking too early or deciding that the trout ought to have eaten by now. One of the pleasures of teaching children is being reminded how much concentration the things we now do automatically once required.
One of the unexpected privileges of staying in this job for so long is seeing former junior clients return with children of their own. I remember some of them learning to cast on the lawns outside the lodge, or trying to work out where a fish might sit in a piece of moving water. Years later, they are standing beside the same river as parents, helping another beginner get started. The children I once taught are now doing the encouraging and untangling.
Those visits mean a great deal to me. Whatever else they remember from their early fishing, enough of it stayed with them that they wanted to bring their own children back. The fish were part of it, of course. They still are. But the return suggests that something about the whole experience was worth passing on.
Confidence is another thing I notice developing through the small tasks of a fishing day. A child ties a knot without needing help, spots a trout before anyone points it out or gets a cast into the right place after several failed attempts. None of those achievements needs to look impressive to an experienced angler. The person doing it knows what was difficult and knows they have just managed it.
I’ve watched quiet children become more assured over the course of an afternoon. They begin making decisions rather than waiting for every instruction. They look at the water, choose somewhere to cast and have a go. The change is often modest, but it is theirs. There is a difference between being told you are doing well and realising that you can do something you couldn’t manage earlier.
The difficult parts belong to the day too. There are tangles, missed fish and periods when very little happens. Nobody enjoys all of it. But a child can be frustrated by a cast, work out what went wrong and try again without the whole afternoon becoming a failure. Sometimes the next attempt works. Sometimes we put the rod down for a while and look at something else. There is more to a river, and fly fishing, than the next trout.
That wider interest often develops as the day goes on. At first, every question concerns catching a fish. Later, a dragonfly hovering over the slow water becomes worth watching. So does a caddis drifting past, the mist lifting or a change in the sound of the current against the boat. They begin noticing things they walked past earlier. The river hasn’t suddenly acquired more life; they are seeing more of what was already there.
I like that part of teaching. You don’t have to explain everything or supply a name for every insect before it can be interesting. Sometimes it is enough to stop and watch together. A mayfly drifting down a seam gives a child something to follow, and a trout rising beneath it connects two things they might previously have considered separately. The questions then come quite naturally.
Looking through old photographs, I find plenty of evidence of those absorbed afternoons. There are boys of twelve standing in the Goulburn with rods in their hands, concentrating on the water in front of them. One happens to be my son. Others belong to families I’ve known for years. Their attention is fixed somewhere beyond the photograph, on a fly, a current or a fish that the camera has not recorded.
What strikes me now is the look on their faces. They are busy with something that matters to them at that moment. There is no need to explain the value of being outdoors or ask them to appreciate the setting. They are already involved.
The photographs also remind me how much of a fishing day happens around the actual fishing. There is lunch beside the river, someone helping with a tangle, wet boots at the end of the afternoon and the quiet stretches when the boat carries everybody downstream. A cup of soup on a cold day can remain in the memory long after the fly pattern has disappeared. So can the person who sat beside you while you worked something out.
Those are ordinary moments while they are happening. Nobody announces that a family memory is being made. You are trying to get the line free, keep everyone comfortable or decide whether there is time to fish another bend. Only later do some of those details become important. The person helping, the sound of the oars, the size the river seemed when you were small: all can stay with you.
I don’t expect every child I teach to become a committed fly fisher. They don’t need to. Some will return regularly; others will find different interests. A few hours outdoors do not have to become a lifelong pursuit to have been worthwhile. There is value in learning something awkward, becoming interested in an unfamiliar place and spending a day with people who have time to help.
As I get older, I find myself thinking more about that last part. Taking children fishing makes room for time together that can be difficult to find in an ordinary week. There is a shared task, but also room for conversation, questions and stretches when nobody needs to say much. You can concentrate on the same patch of water without having to make the afternoon into a lesson about anything larger.
The fish still matter. A child who has come hoping to catch a trout is entitled to care very much about catching one, and I am usually just as keen to see it happen. But I’ve watched enough good days unfold to know that the value doesn’t all disappear when the fish refuse to cooperate. There can still be a first decent cast, a trout spotted in clear water or an hour spent completely absorbed in something new.
Years later, they may remember the catch. They may remember walking through wet grass, sharing lunch or drifting beneath the river gums with someone they trusted on the oars. Some will eventually return with children of their own, giving another generation the chance to make those discoveries. I’ve been fortunate enough to see that happen, and it is one of the best parts of having stayed on the same river for so long.
For me, that is a good reason to take children fishing. They don’t need to leave as experts, and the day doesn’t need to produce a remarkable trout. It can simply give them somewhere they enjoyed being, something they learned to do and people they remember being there with. That is plenty to bring home from a river.
Ant
