The High-Art Life of a Fly Fisher, Author, Lensman and Educator
Some call me the “human highlighter.” Fouling prose published in all forms and formats is a regular practice. I color, underline words and scribble notes in text and margins so I can revisit pages to marvel at and learn from storytelling mastery.
I don’t always comply with this scholarly approach, but I do when I read Dave Karczynski. The author’s handle—his key grip on words and images—matches his proficiency with a fly rod and camera, not necessarily in that order. My tally: the man lives a life of high art.
An accomplished, lifelong angler, Karczynski resides with his wife and daughter on a farm in southern Michigan. He’s an award-winning author, lensman, educator and friend who has cast to fish on four continents and written for about every fly-fishing publication under the sun. His narratives warrant reverence, praise and rinse-repeat reading. Publishers and readers in the fly-fishing community have noticed, and so have the literati; he is the recipient of the Robert Traver Award in fly-fishing writing and a Zell Fellowship in creative writing.
His first book, “From Lure to Fly,” introduced conventional anglers to the joy of chasing fish on a fly rod, while his second book, “Smallmouth,” explored modern tactics and techniques for hunting the bronze bass. In “Calling After Water: Dispatches from a Fishing Life” (Lyons Press, October 2024, 224 pages), his third book and first essay collection, Karczynski brings together his narratives from his time as a contributor to such iconic magazines as Outdoor Life, The Drake, American Angler, The Flyfish Journal and others.
Tom Bie, founder, editor and publisher of The Drake, penned the book’s forward. At times, Bie accurately characterizes Karczynski’s “fast, bold, efficient” manner of getting to the point with spartan language. He also appreciates when the writer goes off the reservation by transforming nouns into verbs and further instances of rogue experimentation.
“Other times,” Bie writes, “his sentences are like a slow follow on an early spring day, when the anticipatory buildup is as rewarding as the conclusion itself.”
Let that observation register.
Karczynski grew up with his brothers in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. The boys creatively fished their locale’s urbanity in anticipation of long weekends on Wisconsin’s Wolf River.
“We fished the burbs,” Karczynski said. “We targeted smallmouth bass in a strip mine behind Walgreens, fished for bullhead and catfish in the municipal pond near the police station, got skunked in apartment building retention ponds, battled carp in the mud bogs of construction sites—you name it. But for us, the most hallowed time on Earth was Wisconsin holiday time—Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Columbus Day. My brothers and I lived for spells on the water there, where we stalked large and smallmouth bass, walleye, panfish and northern pike.”
“Into the Mystic,” an essay in Karczynski’s collection, demonstrates how far the angler has progressed from his days casting to carp in suburban trenches. In the story, he journeys to Asia targeting golden mahseer, a prized game fish in the carp family that inhabits the Himalayas. Karczynski writes:
It reminds you of a bass. But it is not a bass. It isn’t anything you know, its strangeness only growing in your hands, the same plated scales that deflect monsoon boulders now deflecting your understanding. No matter. It’s coming back to life now, and as you turn it toward the current, you can feel through its armor both the strength that is and the strength that will be, on that future day when the waters come and you are gone from this place, vanished save through this memory, which will flash and fade, flash and fade like the silver tail scything away from you, pushing back toward the mystic place in the cold, dark water that not even the mountains know.
Like fishing, words chose Karczynski, and he discovered his fondness for fiddling with them in his early teen years. He went on to complete his undergraduate studies in creative writing at Knox College in Illinois under the tutelage of New York Times bestselling author Tom Franklin, known for his compelling Southern Gothic outlaw-character creations. Karczynski also earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he lectures on the craft today.
“I wanted to be a hotshot novelist,” he added, “but gradually I realized I’m terrible at plot, though I could always make my peers in the fiction workshops laugh. I had just about given up on writing when I discovered fly fishing, which had this rich tradition of essay writing behind it. So, I not only swapped out the spinning rod for the fly rod, but I also swapped fiction for non-fiction. The one thing that has stayed constant is my ongoing attempt to amuse myself, and hopefully the reader, on the page.”
You’ll laugh when you read Karczynski’s essays. “Debonair Dirtbag” is set in Argentina, where he bushwacks to fish the backcountry with our friends Justin Witt and Chris Young. Witt is a native Wisconsinite who lives and guides in Argentina via his destination travel company Hemispheres Unlimited. (Young and I joined Witt on his “trout bum” program at Lago Strobel, and my story, “Fighting Giant Rainbows in Argentine Patagonia,” appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of this publication.)
In the essay, Karczynski catches a remarkable specimen—an enormous brook trout that puts his 6-weight rod and 14-pound tippet to the test. Landing the great fish assuages the common pressures the angler feels on fishing trips. Mind and body relax after a notable catch, casting and hooksets improve and subsequent rewards are gravy. Karczynski is equally relieved from gathering details needed for his story that burden the fishing writer.
But all three men are exhausted after their longest day trip, and Witt suddenly wakes them when the rains come and rivers rise. Traipsing through darkness in steady rain in what Karczynski describes as a “Death March,” they barely make it back to Witt’s Toyota Hilux before the mountains flood.
The trio fished hard and well. They suffered and survived their wilderness exit. Karczynski then writes:
“I know where we can get warm,” Justin said as he eased the truck forward. “A fishing camp run by an old Russian with one kidney, one lung, and half a liver.”
Chris asked, “Do they make Russians any other way?”
Karczynski balances wit with thought-provoking insights, drawing from his angling experiences in nature. His precise attention to words and sentences patterns his fly selection, and he patiently works with both materials with the same dedication, tying them together on his keyboard and vise. The outputs are a refreshing cocktail of entertainment, intellectual depth and an impressive trophy fish and explorations resume.
“When I began writing about fishing, I discovered I can trade fishing words for fishing experiences,” he said. “That’s a great deal. I also learned that taking photos myself made it easier for magazines to justify sending me places—it’s just one airplane ticket, one bed at the lodge, one plate at the table for a combo writer/photographer. The economics make sense, and I enjoy photography.”
Though there is plenty of travel in Karczynski’s book, I think of it less a travelogue than a book-long effort to plumb fishing’s deepest experiences with deeply considered language. The Irish say there are thin spaces—locales wherein the distance between heaven and earth collapses, offering narrow glimpses of the divine. His writing reveals thin spaces, hidden in pockets of inspiring descriptions and cunning word usage that stretch beyond imagination—and so do his destinations.
For instance, in “Cloud, Castle, Creek,” we piggyback on Karczynski’s shoulders as he journeys to Poland to fish the Izera River:
I find a piece of slack water for the release, then retrieve my Moleskin to take some notes. My fishing friends will no doubt ask what it feels like to catch a native brown in the land of its forging, and I will need to have a good, precise answer. I’m overcome, I scribble, by a feeling of being held together more resolutely in space, a barrel receiving bands.
The story’s finale and exchange with a local guide does not disappoint:
“This is the most perfect creek I have ever fished,” I tell Arek. “I want to fish it again. I want to fish it forever.”
But he only puts his hands on my shoulders and points his rod upstream, beyond the green hills to the distant haze of the next valley, and smiles.”
“We are going farther.”
“Calling After Water” is a work of high art, a rare book that delights readers as much as it invites them to reflect on their love of fly fishing. As Bie suggests, Karczynski’s remarkable storytelling is the product of “ruthless, relentless rewriting—reviewing and revising each sentence until it has a rhythm and flow that can’t even be adequately described.”
I can’t describe his narratives either, but I revel in the moments when his accounts reach their zeniths. In his roundabout manner, whether he lands or misses fish, Karczynski walks on water, revealing thin spaces as he takes us with him on his adventures. I see more in his future.
My signed edition arrived, and the real thing thumps my e-reader. I revisit Karczynski’s words. They’re now decorated by hand with highlighter, pencil and ink.
Learn more at davekarczynski.com. To order the book ($29.99 for a limited signed edition), visit shop.midcurrent.com.
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Joe Shields is the editor in chief of The Virginia Sportsman. He is a writer and communications executive who lives in New Orleans and Virginia. He is also an award-winning, gallery-represented artist whose work is found in private collections and galleries. Whether fly fishing or surfing, drawing or painting, he celebrates sporting life and culture in his narratives and art.
