The Liminal Loop School of Fly Casting at The Burning Hatch
By Wyatt & Will Rodgers
People think fly fishing is about fish. It isn’t. It’s about the cast. You could say the cast is life itself: you throw something delicate into the wind, and God, or Darwin, or blind chance decides what happens to it. Casting is hard. The wind moves against you. Trees take the line. Rocks, guides, the rod itself, your own body, your friend’s body, all of them wait to ruin the cast. The line tangles. The leader knots. The cast dies.
My middle son, Wyatt, is an engineer. He thinks straight—decided the best classroom wasn’t a river, wasn’t a meadow, but a prehistoric lake in Nevada. The kind of place where dinosaurs probably gave up and said, “Hell with it.” It was flat and wide. No trees. No rocks. No water. Eight hundred miles away. That was the place to learn.
We drove 16 hours from Scottsdale, Arizona. Finally we were at Burning Man. Black Rock City, Nevada. Seventy thousand people in the desert. They came for fire and music and dust. Think of it as Mad Max, Cirque du Soleil, and Mardi Gras… on Mars. We came to teach casting. The nights were black and full of sound. At Burning Man, they say you can be anything. No one judges you. That is good for casting. It is good not to think too much.
We stayed at Sunset Bar & Lounge. It was a camp with drinks. Other camps had their own things: Southern Discomfort, Wastelanders. Men & Women can get lost in them. There were cars made into animals and ships. There was art that made you feel far from Earth. There is no money there, except for acquiring ice and coffee. The rest is gifts. So we gave casting lessons. It was our gift.
We went at night when the desert was black. Wyatt fixed the gear: two rods painted fluorescent white, UV floor lamps to charge the phosphorescent Scientific Anglers Frequency line with each pass, hand-tied flies that glowed, a hula hoop lit from within for a target, and a battery station to run it all. We rode our e-bikes deep into the playa and set up at 1 AM on the prehistoric lakebed.
Learning to fly cast is a lot like perfecting your golf swing. You watch the ball’s flight path after hitting it. You learn about your swing. With casting it’s the line that tells the truth. The loops whisper: here’s what you’re doing right, here’s what you’re screwing up. And the loops don’t lie. We cast. The loops were bright against the dark. They held their shape. School was open at The Burning Hatch!
A couple came. They cast under the black lamps. They watched the loops and felt the weight of the line. They laughed. They cast again. The man said it was the most fun he had at Burning Man. There was fire and art and madness all around him, but he remembered the cast, the loop in the dark air, the feel of it… that was enough.
It was a good trip. A man should take to the road with his son. I’ve seen Burning Man now and checked it off my bucket list—it’s a young man’s game. But fly fishing? Fly fishing you can do forever!
