In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.

—Norman Maclean (Dec. 23, 1902–Aug. 2, 1990)
from his novella, A River Runs Through It

•••

We know so little of John—
that he fished with his father,
Zebedee, and his brothers, one
of them James—so the story says,

that they became some of the first
fishers of men, and that John
was perhaps the “beloved disciple”
who sat near the foot of the cross,
who ran to the empty tomb to see
his dead friend and teacher
resurrected.

But I imagine fisherman John
not on that great sea with a net
but with rod and reel and creel,
one of seven men who miraculously
caught 153 fish after Jesus
urged them to keep trying.

And even more miraculous,
when I happen upon a river
where fishers ply the water,
I see the apostle—not unlike
the fly fisherman who loved me—
tall and bearded, strong armed,

standing in the shallows
waving the long, supple rod
high overhead on a 10-2 count
before loosing the filament
with its dry caddis fly to glide
lightly upon the water—

later walked upon by his
beloved master, who
multiplied the fish
and fed the 5,000—

he, the light of the world,
the prince of peace,
whose birth we herald
this blesséd season.