The website you are browsing is a tributary of an angling memoir of the same title I wrote in creative partnership with wood engraver Wesley W. Bates. We are both enthusiastic fly anglers who share a passion for many of the ‘good’ things we associate with the contemplative recreation: nature and ecology, literature, art and music, malt whisky—to name but a few. Although the memoir is, by necessity, about fly fishing, it is not necessarily about catching fish. Catching, of course, is an integral part of fishing, but it is not everything—at least when it pertains to fly fishing. Or, more precisely, the kind of fly fishing Wes and I practice.
The same can be said of this website, which encompasses a world that, like a rise form, keeps on expanding to include family and friends, home waters and angling destinations, fishing buddies and literary friends, solitary enterprise and shared conversations.
Fly fishing is a journey that ends with a final cast. In the meantime, join me and together we will seek solace, companionship and joy while Casting into Mystery.
Those interested in reading essays that eventually found their way in Casting into Mystery can visit the Armchair Angler at ReidBetweenTheLines
Also check out Robert Reid on Twitter @RobReid30
A fly angler in a river is a still point in the turning year, a vertical sentinel on a meandering horizontal line, casting forward into the future and backward into the past while standing upright in the present. Immersed in the elements of water, earth and air, with fire in his or her belly, the attentive angler is in harmony with the music of geography and history, flora and fauna, weather and heavenly constellation—equally at home in the material world and the spiritual currents that flow through and sustain that world. Is it any wonder the contemplative recreation creates poets and painters, caretakers and conservationists, healers and philosophers, visionaries and mystics, all of whom love unconditionally our good green holy earth?
Rob Reid
As with the blog, which went online in 2015, the Casting Into Mystery website was built by fly angler/web designer Jon Schlaich.