Lines on the Water

by David Adams Richards

  Then one year at that same time he did not come back. And we found out he had died of a heart attack sometime that winter at the age of thirty-eight. The shadows moved on the trees as we worked our way through the pool ourselves. I stared over my shoulder to the little rocky beach where we had boiled our grilse with such ceremonial laughter—I thought of his son.

  Five

  THE MIRAMICHI IS A multiple of rivers and streams intertwined. There is no one place to go, there are literally hundreds of places. Although one place might remind you of another, all places are essentially different, have their own spirit attached to them. The Little Souwest is much different than the Norwest, and different kinds of fishermen travel these branches. But some people travel all rivers.

  Peter McGrath often viewed this world of his, the Miramichi, as a continual kaleidoscope of possibilities.

  Hunting or fishing, Peter is like this. For instance, hunting: I’d be sitting near a rut mark, and Peter would walk up.

  “Let’s go,” he’d say. “I’m compressed.” (Compressed rather than depressed because he believes it is a better adjective. And I have come to agree with him.)

  “Why—why are you compressed? What is there to be compressed about? There is nothing in the world to be compressed about. There’s a buck right here. Where the hell are you thinking of now?”

  Peter would point with his finger to some unknown space far away, around bends and denizens of the late-autumn forest, the sky like grey slate, and all about us the hushed whispers of tiny flakes of snow.

  “Are you slightly hyperactive, Peter?” I asked him one day, up on the south branch of the Sevogle, after we’d just walked five miles upriver from where we had parked the truck.

  “No, the fish are,” he said, pointing finally to four or five grilse in the bottom part of the pool we were just coming to. As I said, he answers always directly and with purpose.

  So that first day, without throwing a line at Wilson’s Pool, we turned and walked three miles back to the Lada truck, because Peter didn’t feel we’d have luck where we were. And who was I to disagree, not knowing one pool from the other.

  I had worn my waders for two hours and had yet to stand in the water. Suddenly it seemed as if I were not so much on a fishing expedition, but in the French Foreign Legion: March or die.

  As a matter of fact, there was a large puddle on the Stickney Road I felt like sucking dry.

  We headed upriver to the open pool on the stony brook stretch that early summer day, years ago, generations of fish ago, past the millions of leaves, on those hundreds of thousands of trees.

  I was in no hurry to get out of the truck again. But at any rate I didn’t have to be in much of a hurry, for Peter was prepared to drive another thirty-five miles (or so it seemed to me) through the woods to get us to where he wanted us to go.

  “We’ll get fish today—I guarantee it,” he said to keep my interest alive. The road got narrower and narrower; the trees closer; the rocks bigger.

  When we finally came near the river Peter was again worried. And this was my first introduction to the guessing game he played with himself always.

  That is, were those fresh tire tracks ahead of us, which meant that someone else, out of the dozen or so people who fished this area, was in before us.

  But when we came to the end of the old road, there was no other car in sight. We parked at the end of the road, got out of the truck in the June silence and got ready. I put the line through my rod and put on a Red Butt Butterfly, and headed down the long path over the steep bank with him, and then up along the shore about a quarter mile to B&L Pool, or Brandy Landing Pool.

  The path we walked was wide enough to make us feel that we were at home somewhere. The sun came down on it through the trees, everything smelled of pine nettles, the ground itself was bathed in copper, and when we got about halfway down this path, I could see the rapids of the small falls on my lower left, and heard it as a constant rush. The water was still high, it being late spring, and over the bank. There was something (and this always struck me) completely self-absorbed about the woods, the trees and the water which allowed people to travel over or upon them, to walk through it or near it, but to rarely be a part of it.

  “What river is this?” I asked.

  “This is the same river—just a few miles up,” Peter said.

  We walked up to the pool in silence.

  Brandy Landing is a pool with a rocky bank on the far side, and set off at the top and bottom by rocks. The flow of water at the top is rough, it enters over a cascade of rock, and at the bottom it flows swiftly enough to entice fish on their long journey from the ocean, to rest in the cool shade, when they come into it. A fly works well except at the top middle, where it has a tendency to bow your line, unless you fish it from the middle of the top rapid. From the top quarter of the pool down to the large rock on the far side fish lie. There are three or four major hot spots, though on a good day fish can be anywhere. It is part of the stony brook stretch of the Norwest Miramichi, and as such has been closed for a few years, now part of the Crown reserve. But anyone who is lucky enough to get to fish it is in for wonderful moments.

  I let Peter go in ahead of me, and followed behind. He pointed to where I should start.

  I cast my first cast (the line—all ten feet or so—went over my head and back to the water) and hooked a grilse.

  “I think I got one on,” I said.

  “What do you mean, you think you got one on,” Peter said suspiciously.

  “I think I got something on,” I said, as the line bowed, and the fish tried to move out of the pool and upriver—which meant he was probably leaving the pool when it saw my fly skimming across the surface of the top rapid and took.

  “My God, you got a fish on,” Peter said in amazement. “How did you do that?”

  “I was born for this,” I said. “I was absolutely born for this. Now what do I do?”

  “I was absolutely born for this” would come back to haunt the hell out of me over the next few years. It would haunt my aching feet and tired arms and the knots in my leader.

  Peter came back and watched me play it. The fish, though only a grilse (a young salmon) and not a large one, was still incredibly strong. It was as strong as any mackerel I played. In fact, it was strong enough that when it took I thought for a moment that I had snagged a rock (except instinctively one knows they have something alive at the end of the line).

  “Keep your rod up or you’ll lose it.” And when the fish took to the air he yelled.

  “Lower your rod or you’ll snap your leader.”

  This went on for about ten minutes, and the fish slowly tired. I managed to do enough to keep it on, but I’m not exactly sure what it was I did. Finally it turned and rolled on its belly.

  I managed to drag the fish up over the small lip of the bank. And I thought I was a fisherman. (Well, I didn’t know I had just begun my quest.)

  Later that week I went down to get some flies from David Savage. Though not a huge man he is very strong, with fingers that look too thick to tie the minute and wonderful flies he ties. Like most men, he poles the river, standing in the back of his Norwest canoe built for him by Ralph Mullin. It takes little for him to manoeuvre this canoe over rapids or between boulders. The great thing about poling is that you have more control than a paddle, and can stop the canoe dead, and change its direction in a hair. You can also see the river with the advantage of height, and notice a fish in the pool quicker.

  The Norwest canoe is a heavy canoe but takes little to manoeuvre on this kind of river, our Norwest River which is a relatively small and swift river, and reminds me of the Padapedia, the river that runs along the border between Quebec and New Brunswick—or, I should say, the Padapedia reminds me of the Norwest Miramichi. (Save for the fact that the Norwest Miramichi has three times the fly-fishing pressure and is four times as productive.)

  You have larger canoes to navigate the main Souwest Miramichi and the rivers like the Res
tigouche; both of these rivers have long large pools, and you also need to cast a longer line to cover your water. But the Norwest canoe handles extremely well and would do well on any river.

  At that time David lived in a mobile, home in Lower Newcastle, and had his fly-tying shop across the road. It was here he kept his fly-tying equipment and deer trophies, all kinds of purple and yellow and green feathers surrounded him, along with the fur from groundhogs, deer, and bear. He tied for a dozen different stores. He would tie two hundred dozen flies a year. He can tell a pattern by quickly looking at a new fly out of the corner of his eye, when he is up on the river, and remember it.

  That night, long ago now, he was tying up a mouse to fish some trout. He had cleaned a trout the year before and had found three tiny mice in its belly.

  Most summer evenings after supper, David would take his car and travel up the Bartibog just at twilight, when other people were going home. This is always the best time for trout fishing. He would go down a path to the pools hidden by bends and cedar trees, and orange in the twilight, begin to fish for trout in the swift currents under the alders and sweeping about small jams and windfalls where you need dexterity and precision to cast. His favourite area is far up the Bartibog River, at places where it isn’t much wider than a stream, and has the colour of a cloudy beer. Great trout migrate there and are hidden in the evening shadows.

  After supper the world takes on a different hue. It is suspended between light and darkness, and the evening becomes more and more still. Only the sound of the water over rocks, or trickling through the sweep of fallen branches, while the sunlight cools, the shadows moment by moment lengthen.

  Then, just at dark, with the water entertaining a dozen variety of small hatches, David, using small nymph flies, number 12 or 14, would feel the pull on his line. He has a variety of flies he uses for trout, and I have used many of them in the last few years, on the Bartibog, Church, and Bay du Vin. Fishing trout this way is wonderful—perhaps, in memory, the finest fishing there is.

  He would make his way out in the dark, back to his car, with four or five large trout, having fished the same spots others had fished two hours earlier with no luck.

  I went back fishing with a few more flies. I felt I should have my own box of flies—to look professional.

  Of course the only thing I couldn’t quite do at that moment was cast a fly-rod line. It seemed to be a difficult proposition for me. And it hampered my plans. I focused all my energy upon learning something that to others came so easily (or so I thought).

  I could cast three or four yards all right, but anything beyond that I was in trouble. I knew where the fish might lie. I was in a quandary over how to get my fly to reach them. I spent long hours—and hours and hours—still learning this. To make matters worse, everyone told me that a six-year-old could cast three hundred yards or more—that it wasn’t strength, it was simply dexterity. But that was the problem. I have always had strength—dexterity was my problem. And I was in dread that I would meet a six-year-old, and his five-year-old sister on the river who would show me up.

  So I practised every chance I got.

  The rod is another extension of imagination. The fish that takes hangs off it by the slender line and, much more slender leader, and bows it down like a springboard and, like a springboard it has a ton of force. The fly is cast, the movement of the arm is generally from ten o’clock to one o’clock, and the line rolls out and lays down. That is how fishermen describe it. To lay down a cast. A line that is cast at a forty-five-degree angle into the pool is the most proper, though people have variances. Some will determine it is better to cast straight out at an eighty- or ninety-degree angle, but the fly will not work half so well. The fly will move from that forty-five-degree angle along an arc until it stands slack in front of you. By this time the fisherman has stripped his line, has moved his position by a foot or two, and is ready to pick up again. The fly raises in the air, the cast is lain down again and, in this way, the water is covered. No matter where you think the fish might or might not be, it is better to work your fly towards it. Even the minutest water missed can miss a fish. I discovered this one day fishing with a friend. On a certain stretch I thought I had covered the water fairly well. But my friend watched, borrowed my rod, went out and placed the fly exactly in an area no more than a few square inches I had missed. As soon as his fly touched I knew he would take a fish.

  When the fish takes, you allow the rod to work. You hold your rod up until the fish jumps and then lower it, so as to take strain off the leader. You let the fish have its way until it is tired and slowly work it towards you, while backing into shore. Most people beach their fish on the Miramichi, and net them on the Restigouche. When a fish is beached the person will back up onto a shore, bringing the spent fish with him. But I’ve seen people—generally Nova Scotians—turn around and run to shore with the rod over their shoulder. The first time I saw someone do this, on the Renous, I thought they had gone mad with excitement.

  But in learning how to use the rod I became aware of another side to fishing. There are those who have a degree of snobbishness about them and their fishing ability and judge you accordingly. This snobbishness can cross all class and cultural lines, but it is instantly aggravating when you run into it as a novice. If you meet it as a young fisherman, it can ruin a good day or a good season. The best thing is to try not to let it bother you. When I ran into it the first few years it was most often from people who themselves were worried about belonging in the world in some more exclusive way than you. An immaculate fisherman, a jurisprudent fisherman, a judgemental fisherman is somehow in some way an elitist and close-minded fisherman.

  But my fishing life doesn’t belong to them, and my stories, for the most part, are not about them.

  Six

  WHEN HE WAS YOUNG, and had a young family to support, Peter McGrath, one July day, decided that the only way to know those branches of the great river was to walk them. To become, in a certain way, a part of them.

  His determination was intensified by the fact that he did not have a canoe or a truck to travel in at that time. He had a car, and worked shift work, so he could only get to the river every so often.

  When he was little he pleaded with his mother to take him hunting and fishing, because his father could not stand to hunt, to see anything hurt, and never fished. Peter once told me this story about himself as a little boy.

  “One autumn afternoon we were up on the Renous highway,” he told me. “My dad and mom and I were driving along. It was a Monday, and about four in the afternoon. We came around a turn, and a large buck was standing off on the side of the road. Dad had his rifle with him, and pulled the car over.

  “There it is, Dad,” he said. “Shoot it.”

  His father got out of the car, took the rifle from the back seat, put the shell in the chamber, and stood there. But he could really never bring himself to kill anything.

  “Shoot it,” Peter pleaded.

  He lifted the rifle, aimed, and then looked back at his son.

  “Shoot it,” Peter said.

  “I can’t,” his father said, almost apologetically.

  “What do you mean you can’t?” Peter whispered. “What do you mean, can’t. There is no such thing as can’t. Could shoot—could shoot,” Peter insisted.

  “I just can’t,” his father maintained. “I don’t want to kill it.”

  Peter was in the car. All his friends’ dads were getting deer, and coming home and bragging.

  “Can’t, can’t—what do you mean? There’s no such thing as can’t. Shoot, shoot, shoot.” Peter bounced up and down on the seat.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Shoot it, Mom,” Peter said.

  “Do you want to shoot it?” his father asked his mother.

  “Of course she does. Shoot it, Mom, shoot, for God’s sake.”

  But before his father could pass the rifle over to his mother, the deer turned and hightailed it across the road, and with
out a sound it was gone.

  “Well, there it goes,” his father said. “It’s gone now—good luck to it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘good luck to it.’ ”

  Peter told me that he knew his father was not going to be his inspiration as far as hunting and fishing went, so he began to hang out with his mother. She took him out fishing in the spring, and waded the brooks with him, and when Peter got a bit older she would drive him along the dirt roads as he hunted partridge. They would go along the road, in November, after a snowfall. It would be brilliantly cold at three in the afternoon and soon Peter would begin searching the trees.

  “Stop”—and his mother would pull the car over. He would walk into the birches with his shotgun and come out a while later with a bird or two, and they would proceed on their way.

  He became very good at doing this. He can spot a deer in a chop-down quicker than anyone I know, or a salmon in a pool. It is as if he has a sixth sense about him.

  One July, just after high school, he was on the south branch of the Sevogle for a fish, at Clearwater Pool. It was one of the few pools that he could drive to with his car. He had an old Hardy rod and reel, and a tapered leader to which he had attached a ten-pound test. I do not know if he still uses a tapered leader, but he did for years. Some friends of mine call tapered line a leftover from the years of gentleman trout fishing, but others swear by it, saying your fly will look more natural and move much better, and that your line lays out in a proper fashion. Besides this, it is easier to change a small leader if you get a knot or crimp when you have a tapered that stays on your main line.

  This was the age when Peter began to fish bug—and now he has the best assortment of bugs of any man I know. They come in every size but they are slim and fast, usually with a little longer shank, tied back, for low water. He sometimes will use another fly, like a gull attracted to something bright, but not often—just as my friend David, from the Bartibog, will use almost anything but a bug.