My Outdoor Life: Justin Watkins on fly fishing

April is a special month in southeast Minnesota. You get some sun on your face, the snow gives way to easy walking on streams and bugs and trout become active.

I fish April as hard as I can manage, although sometimes I skip the catch-and-keep opener weekend. It's an exciting day and people are ready to fish, so it can get a little crowded for a guy who is generally reclusive. I like to find trout later in the week when there are not as many people out.

Fishing is at the center of what I love to do — it's an important means of experiencing planet Earth. I grew up in Hill City in an outdoors family. It seemed like we did two things on weekends: skiing in the winter and fishing in the other seasons. My dad would stack us three boys into a rowboat and we'd just fish. I think of that small boat and all those hooks flying around; I give him credit for keeping his sanity.

My college roommate taught me to fly fish. He kept urging me to keep at it and finally after graduation he mailed me a fly rod. He told me, "I know you, and if I send this to you, you will feel guilty if you don't use it." He was right.

I remember his explicit and good direction: Forget dry flies and use nymphs because trout eat nearly all their food underwater, not on top — and use two nymphs at a time, not one.

After those basics he closed with, "There's no more instruction. Just go whip it out there." So I did. It didn't take long before I sold all my spinning gear.

The allure of fly fishing is multifaceted: It's an interesting, deep, graceful mode of fishing. It's a course of study. To learn it and do it well is challenging. I like it because it can be more difficult. There is important tradition, both sporting and literary. Plus you can tie your own flies, which I really appreciate. It's very cool to understand the fish you pursue, calibrate your gear accordingly and go down to the basement and make the flies you'll use the next day.

I also like fly fishing for bass, northern pike and carp. I could talk about carp for a long time. They are remarkably challenging, pinnacle athletes and really available to the angler. The most addicting thing about it is that it's all sight fishing. I'm spotting the fish, stalking it and presenting a fly. Carp typically don't strike; they eat. I have to figure out when it eats the fly and then set the hook. That's all before fighting and landing it. They can tear through your backing in a hurry.

I studied mathematics and environmental studies, and after working for a northern county assessing lake water quality and then for a watershed nonprofit and another county down south, I got a job working for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. My unit works to understand and improve water quality in southeastern Minnesota. For work, I'm charged with looking in-depth at our streams. I gain some credibility in those discussions if I've walked the waters and seen some of the watershed. Often I feel I'm working while fishing because I'm always making notes and taking pictures. And when at work, I'm studying some of the waters I fish. The lines blur in a good way.

Around 10 years ago I started posting fishing reports, stories, pictures and rants on a blog. Some of what I wrote was prose poetry. I continue to read and study poetry, trying to capture some of this special landscape and fishery in various forms.

I've been inspired by a handful of poets, one of whom is Larry Gavin, a veteran trout angler down in Faribault who has published a nice library of poems, many of which describe fish or fishing.

I've had poems published in some regional and Minnesota anthologies, a carp magazine and a few other journals. Two of my poems were chosen for the Poet Artist Collaboration sponsored by The Crossings Art Center in Zumbrota. Last year artist Mike Schad created a painting based on a poem I wrote that captured a June fishing night as it might have been experienced by a Chinese poet born in year 701. I was blown away by the artwork. It's beautiful. I hope to buy it some day. [Editor's note: This year's event is May 10. Preview the poem and the painting at www.crossings atcarnegie.com.]

Mostly, I think I have an urge to describe things that I think are remarkable or special to this place. I want to capture the uniqueness of this area. The landscape is stunning. It's old. It's beautiful. It's rugged. And there are endless opportunities to explore.

Lynn Keillor is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer.

Li Bai and Du Fu Work Upstream on the North Branch

By Justin Watkins

They lingered in a quiet

Figuring about what to do

Just risen from drunken sleep

Sprawled on limestone bedworks

Two sot-gods with matted hair

Cracked and calloused feet

Scratching bramble wounds

The other pushing at coals

Tapping the flat rocks

With a charred spear

There were strewn about rib cages

His first words were framed

By a tribute of bowing nettles

Keep going up or call it

There are more corner holes
The other did not raise his eyes

This fire is like no other

No branches of the same tree

They crossed one hundred riffles

And delayed in swirling eddies

This is the river bend

They've been coming to forever
The embers collapsed further

Pulsing bloodbeating portents

He rose and scanned the valley

Walls in which they were contained

Go on feeling small here

In this place of certain immensity

They shouldered their packs

Kicked at the silent fire

And started upstream
Li Bai at the South Fork

By Justin Watkins

A bright glass late summer moon

The dragon-jawed spotted trout lays silent

In the sliding sheet below the riffle
I hold a length of cane over the water

Trailing a silk line and a feathered fly

It spreads a small v-wake in the current

Offering a connection between our worlds
In a sudden fury, the fish explodes at me

As fireflies begin to rise at streamside