Am I Wearing a Sign

...that says I know absolutely nothing?

While I was in Bob Linsenman's excellent fly shop in Mio last week, I had an interaction of a sort I periodically do in fly shops that makes me wonder.  Does this happen to anyone else?

On the stream Tuesday night, I'd seen a bunch of iso spinners gathering over a riffle at dusk.  So I asked the clerk (not Bob) this:

"There were a lot of iso spinners out last night.  Do they ever bring up a steady rise of fish later at night?  Or will anything hit them if you fish them blind?"

"What you want to do," said the clerk, pulling an iso nymph from the fly bin, "is take one of these and sweep it across the riffles in the afternoon.  They've been taking these really well."  He spoke in a firm, fatherly voice of the sort that might instill confidence in the struggling tyro

"Right," I responded.  "That usually works for me," I added, figuring I should toss in something to establish some trophy water acumen.  The reason I'd come to the shop was actually to buy some of those.  "But what I want to know is, do the fish hit those isonychia spinners in the evening?"

"The best thing," the clerk continued,  holding up an ephoron soft hackle,  "is to run one of these off a dropper behind it."  He extended the fly toward me.

I declined, telling him I already had four of those, and just reached around him to get a couple of the iso nymphs.  I wasn't going to push the point any further.   All  I needed was a simple "yes" or "no."  Maybe his response to me was actually a backhanded "no," but why not answer the question directly?  Was it one only the most ignorant newbie would ask and unworthy of an answer?

I don't think that was the case.  Like I said, something like this happens from time to time.  I will ask a fairly specific, sometimes technical, question about hatches, presentations, or something else, then receive a very general answer, such as you might get from some "Intro to Fly Fishing" kind of book, and that you would really want if it was your first or second season.   My attempts to distinguish my question from that sort that requires that kind of answer don't seem to penetrate the clerk's awareness.  I wouldn't go so far as to say it's insulting, but it sometimes makes me think twice about patronizing stores where that happens again (though rest assured I will continue to shop at Bob's). 

This is actually I pattern I've encountered dealing with clerks in all kinds of stores, actually (though most often in fly shops), and also with tour guides.  There are certain questions they are used to getting and answering.  And those are they questions they hear when dealing with their customers, even if they're not the ones customers always ask, and they give the answers they usually give, even if they're not the ones sought.   I think this comes from people working on autopilot instead of paying attention to their situation. 

Granted,  there are a lot of jobs that make this easy to do, and I'll admit that as a teacher, I've done it myself. But having caught myself, or been caught at it by students,  a few times I've tried to listen to every question as closely as possible and give the kind of response that a fresh and substantive question deserves--even if I've heard the question a thousand times and it could probably be answered by reading the assignment a little more carefully.    Doing that, regardless of where you work, is one important way of Being Here Now.