Fishingh on the Shoulders of Giants: Dave Pinczkowski and Tim Pearson

Tim Pearson

I spend a lot of fishing time watching other fishers cast.  The best casters amaze me every time.  The switch and spey casters are a phenomenal group of fly rodders.  The best of them seem to defy the laws of physics.  They also have the honor of pushing the boundaries of what is possible.  Some have been real pioneers.  Dave Pinczkowski and Tim Pearson in particular bring to two-handed casting something entirely different.  After you meet them both you realize that they are chasing something more than the fish.  From the vise to the anchor, the take and the release, Dave and Tim are thoughtful about the experience, sometimes bordering on theology and metaphysics.  Never dogmatic about their approach, but mindful that they are a small part of larger elements at play.  

Dave Pinczkowski

This one is for them.

nuthatches mutter soul poetry

(for the sultans of swing)

spend their days at odds with gravity

and with traced invisible wave crests,

cross the reach of the river’s great turn

pondering from their vertical rutted

white-pine bark perches

the mathematical structure of flow

nuthatches mutter soul poetry,

fluttering by an earlobe,

 wing tips brush-stroking the air canvas,

fly by hope messenger, courage friend,

of a fishless day,

of forward stroke, rod arched,

of endless furling of line rolled out,

of mending into the dim light

of up stream mysteries

of eddy and current,

whorl and oneness

of fluid turbulence

nuthatches mutter soul poetry,

in the very last moments

before the drift reaches the point

where lifting the rod doesn’t matter

a world lights up in the seeming of seams

chrome boil beneath broken

sinuous surface ripple

where line heavy with fish perfect

sings the song of swing

where through the river’s muscular press

and the failing light of sunset

where time ceases and truths

greater than what exactly happened

remade the events that could have happened

shaping what will have happened.

nuthatches mutter soul poetry

on their way to the truths behind

a muted eloquence

a flight back across the sweep

of uncertainty and doubt

above the surface tension

just as the river curls over the edge

tumbling, broken, folded, mixed,

a wing beat swirls the mist in the lucid flow of air

and the steady assurance of tight line

harmonic hum, audible above

rushing river voices

in the liquidity of fluid adaptation,

and a transparent and watery flash of certainty.

nuthatches mutter soul poetry

because they can, even though

their metaphors, stanzaic structure, their meter

fade when dusk has squeezed the last hint

orange glow out of the sky

from where all rivers run into

the great inland sea, north

boots have felt the bottom back

across the relentless press

long rods tap their line cadence

along worn trails back to

the world filled with things that

don’t matter.

the nuthatch still mutters soul poetry

harmonizing the river voices

that surge and stem, rush then

coursing their chorus

way into and beyond the growing dark.

Keep a tight line!