I shouldn’t have called fly-fishing dumb

No, the endless e-mails insisted that if I wanted to call myself a fly-fisherman (I did not, for the record) then I must abandon the ocean (only a fool would ever think of fishing there, apparently) and head inland, to a mountain stream, to chase a mythical fish called a “wild trout.”

“No one I know has actually seen a wild trout in person,” I informed Tom Rosenbauer as I followed him along the banks of a river that runs through his backyard in Vermont on a recent day, listening to him feign surprise that we’d yet to spot one in the shallow water. “That must be why they’re always painted in the same fantastical style as unicorns.”

Rosenbauer, the most famous fly-fisherman in America and the host of the popular Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast, did his best to ignore me, something he’s become fairly good at from having fished with me in the past.

“They’re painted like that because they have mystique,” he said. “Fly-fishing started with the aristocrats in Europe, catching trout with a fly, so it’s become something of a cultural artifact, a symbol of a delicate, refined, superior form of fishing.”

“There’s no art to worm fishing,” Rosenbauer snickered, taking an easy dig at those commoners who actually catch fish, the plebeians who would never know the pleasure of seeing their hand-tied fly getting stuck in a tree.

There’s also no art, many fly-fishermen say, in trying to catch what passes for “trout” in most of Massachusetts, the ones born in a concrete trough at one of the five state hatcheries, fed pellets that look like dog food, then released each spring and fall into lakes and rivers strictly so they can be caught and eaten by the fishermen whose licenses fund this weird program. Even weirder: the best way to catch “stocked” trout isn’t with a fly, but with a pellet on a hook.

It’s unnatural, and Rosenbauer and many “real” fly-fishermen refuse to fish for them, insisting on wild native species. And since I figured I should at least try “real” fly-fishing, I accepted Rosenbauer’s invitation to come to Vermont, where he drove me up a dirt forest road and parked along what looked to be a boulder field peppered with an occasional puddle. “This is barely a crick,” I complained as Rosenbauer put on his wading boots, and soon I was following him and his bamboo rod over the drought-dried boulders and into the puddles.

“Do you want to try first, or do you want to watch me to see how to do it?” he asked, as if I didn’t already know this whole thing was a sham. “No, you go right ahead,” I told him, and got myself in a good spot to watch a famous fly-fisherman not catch fish.

Rosenbauer was actually using two flies, a nymph, meant to look like insect larvae underwater, and a floating “dry” fly, meant to look like the insect itself. He cast them so they floated through through the scarce pockets of moving water, hoping there was a brook trout — the only wild trout native to New England — hiding off to the side, waiting to ambush any food that drifted by.

We tried a few riffles, moving upstream to creep up on the fish from behind and avoid spooking them, and soon enough there was a tiny commotion around Rosenbauer’s fly and the next thing I knew he was lifting the tiniest of fish out of a pool. I’m certain I can grow a larger mustache.

Rosenbauer released the “brookie,” handed me his bamboo rod, and told me it was my turn. He pointed out my target spot a bit upstream, and soon I was letting a beautiful cast soar into the tree behind me. We got that out, and soon enough I was successfully, if inelegantly, landing the fly in spots where it would become caught by the current.

A few times my fly caused a commotion, but I was unable to hook the fish, so we’d have to move on upstream to a new hole, until finally, miraculously, everything worked and I lifted the rod at just the right moment and held in my hands a beautiful brook trout that would make an amazing twelfth of a meal.

But they were real. And they were fantastic, a gorgeous creature that was strangely easy to catch. Anywhere there was even a little bit of moving water, there was a little brookie ready to pounce, and I managed to hook a half dozen all by myself (with America’s most famous fly-fisherman standing 2 feet away telling me exactly what to do and untangling my line constantly).

“The tug is the drug” I kept shouting at Rosenbauer, quoting far too many of the e-mails that shouted at me. “The tug is the drug!”

“Please stop saying that,” Rosenbauer insisted. “Real fly-fishermen don’t say that.”

So does that mean I’m a real fly-fisherman? Am I officially insufferable? Can’t wait to hear what my inbox has to say about that . . .

Billy Baker can be reached at billy.baker@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @billy_baker.