But that wasn’t all. Even when the fishing was still good I found myself getting bored with its challenges; they came to resemble pieces of a dearly loved puzzle, assembled and assembled again, but always in the same pattern, so it’s solving became too static, simple and flat. The rainbows in the Aquarium pool were suckers for a Royal Wulff twitched across the current, but that was just the problem—they were suckers for it, time and time again. The longer we fish for trout, the more we want them to come to us from behind strong defenses—and the more we realize that those rivers where the defensive is strongest form, in trout fishing terms, the major leagues. This new river at my feet was most definitely the major leagues, perhaps the only river in New England that could be mentioned in the same breath as the rivers out West. To take the analogy a bit further, it’s what I was feeling as I sat there tying on a fly—like a rookie stepping up for his first at bat in the Fenway Park of his dreams.
And even that, when it came to motives, wasn’t all that was at work. For many years I had ridden the boyish bubble of sheer animal exuberance that can last well into a man’s thirties—and long past this as well, but only if we actively work at it, seek out new challenges, ones that are taken seriously, but not grimly so, our motives trending toward, at least in this one area, the care and nurturing of pure delight. Many fishermen change wives at this point in their lives; me, I was ready to fall head over heels for a gorgeous new river, a trophy river, one I could grow old with in perfect content.
Strictly speaking, this wasn’t a new river at all. If I waded across here, set out downstream along the eastern bank, in less than a hundred miles I would come to my home, set on a gentle slope above the river and facing past a farm. The water there was deeper and slow, thick with smallmouth, pike, and walleye, but no trout, other than the occasionally stray monster that stumbled down from one of the tributaries. A hundred miles is a sizeable gap in a river; that the bright rushing water here had some connection to the lazy river downstream would have been hard to accept, other than for the strong circumstantial evidence of their having the same name. And yet there were other threads, now that I looked. Here the banks were steep and sandy, the resort of swallows, just like at home; silver maples leaned out over the shallows, just like at home; like at home, honeysuckle blossomed wild right down to the water. The farmland, what I could see of it, seemed every bit as rich and fertile as it did further downstream, the river s gift to an otherwise flinty land.
And yet it was a trout stream here, not much more than a good cast wide, something I could wade across if I picked my spot, get to know with my feet, thighs, and chest—a river that came in flashes and swirls rather than a broad, seamless pushing; not a silent film, but a river with a sound track. The transparency was different, too. At home the river was opaque, mysterious; here it was clear and mysterious—mysterious in the way of a mirror, hiding as much as it reflects. I edged my way into the current behind the shelter of the first large boulder, felt for the first time the water on my legs; felt a cold chilling power that even the neoprene of my waders did little to stop; felt that prodding downstream nudge on the back of my knees; found I could withstand it; found, half to my amazement, that this river, like other rivers, would accept my intrusion after all.
Again, gentle was the key word. One of the things that occurred to me as I waded my way out was that slip in the wrong place, hit my head on a rock, and the river would give me a fast ride home. Working out my line with fussy little shakings, coming at last to a comfortable stance on firm gravel, pivoting, stretching, I tossed a Muddler toward the gray-white seam where the bubbles swept past the rocks . . .
And immediately caught a fat fourteen-inch brown trout.
Well no—but that’s the way the paragraph is supposed to end. It is impossible for anyone possessed of the genetic minimum of hope necessary to be a fisherman to step into a new river without expecting a fish on their first cast. Since this so rarely happens, it’s best to get the little bump of disappointment over with early; I stripped in fast, loaded up my fly rod, sent the Muddler back to resume searching, fantasy stage over, ready now to deal with the bright, flashing reality spreading out past my legs.
Fun reality—I’d forgotten how much fun. Right from those first exploratory casts I was caught up in what for an experienced flyfisher is probably the purest delight of fishing a new stream: applying those generalities experience has taught us elsewhere to an entirely new set of specific conditions. In general, current surging against a bank, channeling itself into a deep run, is a prime spot for trout, offering shelter, shade, and a reliable conveyor belt of drifting food. The experienced fisherman sees this at once, makes for it, hardly gives it any thought. So too with pools—our eye seeks them out, finds them even in what, to the casual observer, appears hardly more than a vague slackening in a current that seems uniform. Of course, each river has exceptions, spots that don’t conform to these patterns at all, or do so in quirky variations that aren’t at first apparent; one of the interesting things about fishing a new river is learning not only how the general rules hold, but how they don’t. But, in lieu of specific tips, the a priori rules and patterns come first, giving a comprehensible frame within which to find the intensely specific. It is why, if luck stays neutral, the experienced flyfisher can catch trout faster than someone who doesn’t have those miles of wading, probing, questing under his or her belt.
Reading the water is one of the few talents in my very small arsenal. Partly because I’ve been doing this for nearly forty years, partly from intuition, I seem to be able to sense where fish are holding, though, of course, catching these is an entirely different matter. In theory, the spot I’d picked out to start was a good one; in reality, the current was far too fast, sweeping my streamer along before it had a chance to sink to the trout’s level of interest. And I was fishing downstream with a steep bank on my right—for a right-handed caster, a tough, uncomfortable position. Across the river was an inside curve where the river was slower, but to get there I’d have to tiptoe from sunken boulder to sunken boulder, in water well over my head; in other words, though with a lower water level it would definitely be worth trying, I was fishing something of a dead end. So okay, I was learning. Chalk it up to experience, file for future reference, and, cutting my losses, climb back out onto the bank, pull my waders down, finish off the blueberry muffin left over from breakfast, drive further upstream.
This random in-and-out probing is one of the ways you get to know a new river; you have to pay your dues with lots of wrong hunches, air balls, sheer and maddening dead ends. As I drove along I kept one eye on the river, trying to determine where to try next. From the highway the water had that intimidating silver color that had so impressed me earlier, so I still felt wary of trying just anywhere. But in trout-holding terms, it looked more seducing the further away the road curved, and this made it even harder to pick out a spot than if it had all looked barren.
But this is no way to scout out a river, no way to drive. After about a mile I spotted what I’d been looking for all morning, put on my directional signal, turned onto another sandy pull-off, this one leading right down to the river through a cut in the bank, as if there had once been a crossing here for wagons or carts.
It was a fly fisherman who had caught my attention—the first one I’d seen. He was barging through the alders toward his pickup, his waders dripping in wetness like the fur of a sleek young moose. Not so many years ago the profile of your typical flyfisher was bulky and endearingly plump, what with those crammed-in fly vests, those baggy waders that never quite fit. This has changed in the last decade, thanks to neoprene, designer vests, Gore-Tex, and pile; this fisherman was taut in the contemporary, fascist style in sportswear, everything a uniform, everything a statement. You can picture this type of flyfisher not only getting dressed before a mirror, but saluting when he’s done.
So I should have known. Right from the start I should have known. But being the fool I am, I rolled down my window, came
out with that time-honored opening line. “Any luck?”
The flyfisher—he looked to be in his thirties—grimaced and mumbled something I couldn’t hear.
“I saw some caddis down below,” I said. “Anything showing?”
A real scowl this time. He continued past my window to the pickup, threw his rod in, backed up with a squeal of brakes, drove off.
Screw you, buddy—I didn’t have to be clairvoyant to read his thoughts. It’s the prevailing attitude of too many flyfishers you meet on the stream these days, their competitive fires fully stoked, every fisherman looked upon as an intruder, so you find yourself facing not a companion in a gentle, carefree sport, not a fellow pilgrim, but a competitor, naked and brutal and in-your-face.
I’m not that old, and yet I can remember a time when this was different. Any luck? Well yeah, not too bad, a nice fifteen-incher and lost something bigger besides. Midges, small gray fellows. Here, you might put this on if you get a chance. Tied it myself last night. How about you? Nice river; huh? You know it well? Let me suggest a place you might want to try a little further upstream.
Fantasy? No, since it’s happened to me often, and once upon a time led to some of my best moments on the water. Sure, fishermen have always been secretive, but they once were secretive with panache, and an encounter like this would have been ornamented by some imaginative fibbing, all of which would have been part of the game, perfectly understood on my part, returned in good measure, a decoration of the essential good advice we both swapped.
Not anymore. Rule that out as a means of getting to know a new river: asking another flyfisher for advice. Luckily, I had another card up my sleeve, and I decided to play it now, my one real bona fide tip, given me by a friend from the old school when he heard I was heading north.
“There’s that old grass landing strip up past Lemington. Army used it for emergencies during the war, and the town still keeps it cleared, God knows why. Anywhere along there is good. Nymph water mostly. Fish down from the windsock and watch out for that bull.”
You can’t miss it, he added, and naturally I should have understood that to mean the place was hidden in vines, invisible from the road, impossible to locate short of chartering a plane. After many wrong turns into pull-offs that petered out in mud or rocks, a bumpy driveway leading to a landlocked farm, I finally stumbled onto the obscure landing strip and its ancient windsock. This last was fastened to a corroded hoop mounted on a rusty iron pole; the windsock itself, condom shaped, was full of holes, so in the light breeze it could only manage to flop forlornly, not stream out erect. Between this the temps perdu atmosphere the landing strip cast off (I thought of Spitfires, vintage planes), I had a good feeling about the place even before I climbed down the bank.
As it turned out, my friend had steered me to as prime looking a fishing spot as any I’d seen in a very long time. Here a river that was forty yards wide narrowed to a uniform twenty-five, deepening with that concentration, going from just barely wadable ten yards out to well over my head in midstream. This deepening ate up the current—the surface moved in the kind of even, controlled pace that is perfect for a drifting fly.
The approach was made easy by a long sheltering island on the Vermont side; it was no trick at all to cross the narrow channel that led out to this, then, using the island as my combination base camp, observation spot, and lunchroom, fish upstream or down. Over on the New Hampshire side, perched there like a watchtower deliberately erected to spy into the pools center, was a small summer cabin, a man outside cutting wood. Upstream was Vermont’s tall Mount Monadnock, tilting the horizon into a greenish slant. Downstream, backed by the twin Percy Peaks, was more of that wonderful riverine farmland, shaggy with unbaled hay that, judging by the smell that wafted upstream, had just been cut. Though I looked carefully in all directions, there was no sign of any bull.
What struck me right from the first moment was the combination of power and intimacy contained in this stretch; here was a river that had thirty miles behind it and four hundred left to run, compressed into a channel I could almost cast across, and yet it was quiet, easy, in no hurry whatsoever, easily wadable over a perfect gravel bottom—a place possessing that trouty atmosphere even more intensely than the first spot I tried, so I knew that I would have to catch a fish here, and probably a good one.
I waded out to where the current was strongest, pumped my rod up and down like a drum major leading off a parade, then dropped a weighted stonefly at the bottom of the scrappy cliff on which sat the little cabin. The current bellied the line downstream, slowly straightened it, and then, just when I decided nothing, pulled much harder and faster than the current could have managed on its own. A trout, a fine trout, but what occurred to me right from that first instant was how sharp and compelling that first strike was, out of all proportion to the trout’s eventual weight—that what was really taking hold in that instant was the new river itself, its promise, its beauty, the joys it would soon bring; that if it’s not correct to speak of W. D. Wetherell falling in love with the Upper Connecticut River at first sight, its eminently fitting to speak of his falling in love at first tug.
Indulge me for a moment while I write into that tug everything I can. For while half of me, the part that resides in hands, arms, muscles, and eyes, was busy keeping just the right amount of pressure on what was turning out to be a thick-bodied, headstrong rainbow, the other half was listening to the kind of voice we never hear except in retrospect, and then hear so clearly we can’t believe we didn’t actually hear it at the time. Enjoy this, fella was what the voice was saying, in a baritone so musical and strong it could have been the river’s. You’re going to catch lots more fish here over the years, this is only the first, so concentrate, enjoy it, savor it right from the start. You’re going to make friends with the man who owns that cabin, though you’ll never exchange words—a pantomime kind of friendship, where he’ll spread his arms apart and shrug a question mark when you first wade into the pool, point down emphatically when he spots a good fish, clasp his hands over his head like a prizefighter if you catch it, shrug his shoulders and frown if you scare it back under the bank. You’ll fish here often with your fishing partners, rotate through the pool with them, have fish on simultaneously, call out to each other those little telegraph messages of advice, disappointment, victory, interrogation. Here in a few weeks you’ll be up to your neck in hatching caddis, the pool alive with trout, so their rises spread into one another and you can arrange your drift to cover three fish at once. You’ll camp here this fall, know what it’s like to tumble out of the tent into the cold damp fog of morning, see it with a whistling sound be pierced by a squadron of mergansers racing upstream, the fog in tatters on their backs. You’re going to find this pool, this river, an excellent antidote to the staleness that creeps into a forty-something life even in the best of life’s circumstances—an aphrodisiac of fishing that makes you discover new delights in a sport you were almost beginning to lose interest in. You’re going to sit on that sandy dip in the middle of the island, find it a perfect backrest, pour yourself countless mugs from your thermos of tea as you sit there watching your friends fish, or the trout rise, or the play of sunlight off the water when it’s too hot to do anything else. You’re going to forget to be careful going down the muddy bank and slide in like an otter, not once but a dozen times, get your waders soaked, shiver in autumn snowstorms, catch fish almost every time you come here, and take it in stride when you don t. Enjoy fella, throw your strength against that fish, push your belly into the current, overwrite all you want. Enjoy fella, because life can be ironic and bitter and cruel, and it’s only moments and places like these that redeem it, so watching carefully; putting your heart into it, for God’s sake get it right.
Which, of course, is a lot of portent for one trout to carry. He was up to it and then some; after that first long run, he came slanting back toward me, still stubborn, still likely any second to run—and there, that’s exactly what he did, leaping clea
r of the water just when I decided he wouldn’t jump at all. Holding my rod high, stepping carefully over a bottom with contours my boots weren’t used to, I found a comfortable stance at the head of the island and brought him in. A good fish, the kind with shoulders, the color oddly pale on its flanks (the pink washed out into a watery silver), but more than made up for it by a dark shield of reddish-maroon over his gills—a color that made me think, when I first saw him flashing, that it was a brook trout, not a rainbow at all.
A wild fish, too—there was no mistaking that kind of robust good health. I put my thumb on his jaw, widened my fingers along his flanks, then, pivoting on my pinky, extended my thumb again. A span and a half, or nearly fifteen inches.
Soon I would learn that this was the kind of fish you were looking for on the Connecticut. There were bigger trout (state-record size, ten and eleven pounds), but for the most part this was the quarry that made the trip worthwhile—strong, wild fish with just enough heft that you couldn’t take them for granted, boss them around. I’ve noticed this before, how critical the inch is that separates the almost good fish from the really good. A thirteen-inch trout is a decent fish in this day and age, but give him just one more inch, add on the corresponding depth and maturity that starts to kick in at that length, and you’re talking about a serious fish, one that seems, though composed of familiar elements, an entirely different compound, with four times the explosive punch.
A River Trilogy Page 37