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In its convenience, fly fishing transcends the popular to become art itself. Years ago I used to reside in the Berkshires, the heavily wooded and hilly land of Western Massachusetts, property to writers, theater folk, artists of all types. It's a lovely place, an area rich with natural beauty. Their rivers and lakes boast trout of all kinds - brown, brook, spectrum, even lion trout (a cross between women brown and male brook trout) and fishing with flies is deeply embedded in the fishing tradition of the area. The Berkshires are home to artists, also, and of these I count Norman Rockwell as my most useful example of a painter who holds the inner heart of fishing. Rockwell, who lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts from 1953 to his death in 1978, did homage to that ideal. All outdoor activities have their cache of needed equipment, and fishing is not any different. Every angler has his or her favorite fly fishing equipment to port along. But it is in the quiet ease of casting flies, over and over again, that one starts to experience what Rockwell once said: 'if it is not a perfect world, it must be so.' Fly fishing is just a game of cat and mouse, o-r fish and travel, true. Whether it's Montana fly fishing, with its pristine mountain lakes and streams, or perhaps a wilderness trek for Alaska fly fishing, it's all the same.  [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0mqS8_NuOE close window]  Discovering the banks, one is always on the hunt for the trout rise, wanting to read its complicated character - bubbles? rings? nipping rise, o-r gobbling attack? - and therefore one decides on a fly and a strategy. But in the middle of it lies the desire to have a lot more than fish. One is after solitude and peace, and connection with a hobby which extends back in the mists of time. Perhaps no-one said it much better than Herbert Hoover: 'Fishing is a lot more than fish. It is the great occasion when we might go back to the convenience of our forefathers.'