Streamer Junkie

We hiked an eleven mile round trip. I’ve gone farther, but I’ve also gone only a fraction of that, many times, to catch dozens of brookies. We followed this lazy, colorless and featureless stream for an hour after finding it. It filled us full of doubt. There was no reason for a brook trout, or any fish really to be in such water. There was no place to hide, not only was it gin clear but the forest stood back from it, kept its distance. Small unkempt patches of wild lawn flanked it along most of its length. The trees did nothing to give it cover or shade. A fish would be completely exposed and vulnerable. The King Fisher that swooped and rocketed away never touched the water, as if just passing through.

. I could, and should be working in the house right now. But when I looked out the window and saw it snowing I figured how many times do you get the chance to fish in the snow on April 29^th?  It was a thought heavy in sarcasm, but an excuse to wet a line all the same.

Standing on the bridge, looking down at the tannin stained water coursing through the white terrain, I couldn’t help but think it was a sight something like this that brought the necessity for the word contrast in the human language.

Twenty something years ago I was on the shore of Lake Arrow Head in Texas. A foot away a small fire was burning in the middle of a likewise small ring of rocks, a pile of scrounged wood, most likely mesquite from what I could tell was gathered off to the side. It was cold, and I knew there was never going to be enough wood to keep the fire going through the night. I rolled up in a wool blanket that I’d pulled from my dorm room closet back on base and covered my face with a nit hat. I remember thinking how much warmer my own breath felt on my face trapped under the blanket than the fresh night air.

But the pile of fly tying materials… It seems to have a life of its own, I cannot control it no matter how hard I try. I clean it up, put things away and brush the scraps off the edge into a trash can with my hand, but no matter how good my intentions, it returns to the same state of confusion as if it were the concierge at the check in of a fancy restaurant. One moment sir, I’ll return momentarily.

As I stripped my streamer back along the far side, a trout, as clear and obvious as watching something happen through a freshly washed window, emerged from the darkness of the undercut bank across and upstream. It was facing upstream and came out of the dark bent like a horseshoe, or like a snake turning to face you when you’ve walked up behind it. It followed the streamer, inches behind it, its mouth half open as if it just wasn’t sure if it was hungry enough to eat or not. It turned away and retreated back under the bank almost even with me, and I finally breathed.

...as I fished a stretch of water shed I knew pretty well. So well in fact that I felt I was giving him the wrong impression that I actually knew what I was doing. I’d tell him something like “I’m going to go crouch in those ferns and get a brookie out of that pocket behind that cropping of rocks.” Then I’d do something like just about what I said, complete with the catching of the fish on the first or second cast, and move on to the next spot. It wasn’t that I was that good, not at all. I’d just fished the hell out of the place the year leading up to this and basically knew the names and addresses of most of the brook trout on the stream. Take me to the next stream down the road and I’d have been the normal bumbling idiot tripping and stumbling on slippery river bottom stones and scratching my head as to where the fish were that I usually am.

It was a piece of ice about the size of your average kitchen table top, and it caught me off guard. Bumped into me from behind as I was concentrating on managing my sink tip line downstream. It wasn’t anything close to dangerous or tragic, just a small piece of shelf ice from upriver somewhere. One that maybe a little bit of sun on a warm weekend had broken loose. Or possibly a drop in the water level caused by the dams far upstream had caused its freedom from the river side and subsequent slow speed collision with my hip. It was a quick moment of “what the…!” accompanied by a skipped heartbeat and then a realization that it was nothing but a small slab of ice. As it pivoted off my right hip and continued on I thought for a second about jumping on to float and cast until its next collision with the river bank somewhere downstream. And then the thought passed, and I made another cast.