Robert Crews by Thomas Berger

use according to the type of fish sought and perhaps the sort of water at hand, the weather, and the season, but he had no means of acquiring knowledge of this complexity in the absence of experience. He therefore chose the fly that looked least bizarre by his standards, which meant that which was least brightly colored. But the line was too thick to go through the eye of the hook. By now he was too impatient to pursue a better resolution to the problem, and he simply battered the end between two rocks until it had been frayed to a usable diameter, threaded it through the eye, with difficulty made a disorderly-looking knot that would probably not hold for long, and tried to cast the tiny, weightless object into the lake. As he had feared, not being unaware of the physical laws that apply to all forms of motion, the fly was too light to travel far or indeed at all.
    He considered tying a heavier object to the end of the line, along with the fly, so that the latter would be hurled out when the rod was whipped—for he eventually developed a technique of wrist that would seem right—yet if the added weight did not float, it might drag the fly under water and ruin the illusion by which the fish was supposed to be attracted. But once again he noticed the weight of the line. Of course: the lure might weigh nothing, but the cast could be made using the inertia (or whatever it was) of the heavy line. Pull out a generous length and whip it. He put his theory into action and was thrilled to find that it worked. After many efforts he was finally able to cast the light fly some distance from shore.
    Pleasure in this initial achievement was to be the only reward he received from fishing all morning. The pity was that he had no gauge by which to determine what he was doing wrong. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong fly. He tried a series of others. Maybe he was doing a bad job at casting. He tried variations on it, whipping the line out farther, then not quite so far, then in between, retracting it at various rates of speed, sometimes allowing the counterfeit insect to float as if casually, sometimes causing it to jerk and jump along the surface of the water. Could it be that no lake fish was ever attracted by such a lure, that the use of artificial flies must be limited to running streams? Were fish that discriminating? But maybe the trouble was that the area of the lake at which he had started—a hundred yards or so along the beach, so that he was as far from the submerged airplane as he found it convenient to hobble, with his bad knee—was simply not one frequented by fish, who might well have favorite neighborhoods, even as did land animals including man. Therefore he laboriously dragged himself elsewhere, casting out the line at each of a series of places, finally finding himself almost at the point, which as he grew nearer he saw was of more topographical substance than he had supposed from his earlier perspectives. The beach there was terminated by a height the sides of which were sheer stone. On top grew the familiar forest of Christmas trees.
    Not only did he fail to get even a preliminary bite, he neither saw nor heard any evidence of piscine life; no fish slapped the water today. It occurred to him that for their own reasons the creatures might simply not be feeding in any place or on anything at the moment, or had their own subaqueous sources of nourishment. He had taxed his knee by all the stumbling up and down the beach. He sat down on the sand. At least the day was a warm one, with a hearty and generous sun overhead, though some clouds seemed to be forming in the farthest reaches of the western sky. He really could not understand why no airplanes had appeared. The other men all had families who were surely bringing frantic pressure on the appropriate agencies. Had Spurgeon been so far off course that he could not easily be traced? And again he wondered about the radio: would Dick not have been in touch with