Lines on the Water

by David Adams Richards

  Peter parked his car that long-ago day, took his Hardy rod and reel. He never bothered with his waders. He put on his vest and his Polaroid glasses, tied on a bug with brown hackle, and went down through Clearwater Pool, which had a bridge over it. The bridge is gone now, and so is the warden’s camp that used to be there. I guess they were burnt. Clearwater is a nice, quiet pool that should hold fish, and though I’ve seen a fish or two taken from it, and hooked and landed fish there myself, it never seems as productive as it should be.

  Peter didn’t see anything at Clearwater that day either. And he was thinking that he would drive back around to Mullin Stream Bridge and walk from there into the Narrows Pool on the south branch of the Sevogle to fish—a good thirty-five-minute walk. But then with a spontaneity he has always had, he decided to walk the river.

  “If I want to know where the pools are, then I must walk it.”

  And so he began an eight-mile journey on a river he had never been on before, with no one knowing where he was, to find pools he had never fished, sensing only that somewhere off to his right, over the great rugged hills of deep wood spruce, was an old logging road that would, if he could find it, lead him back to his car after dark. I suppose in a truly elemental way that day, years ago, was to become his baptism of fire.

  It was a long walk, hugging one side of the river or the other, hanging on to branches to keep his balance, watching for sudden dips and pockets which would make him lose his balance. And after he got down about a mile he began to discover that this might not have been such a wise idea. It was like wading a part of the Amazon. Fishing was slow, and the water was low. The river, which empties into the big Sevogle, which in turn meets the Norwest Miramichi, is a very slippery one, so it’s entirely possible to sprain or break an ankle from the rocks on the river or the hidden holes on the paths. And if you do this alone, miles from anywhere, you are in trouble. Especially when no one knows where you’ve gone to or where you are. And this was the situation he found himself in. Besides this, this baptism of fire—this elemental journey contains the blackfly and mosquito, bedded down and hatched by swamp ground on either side.

  July is the best time for fishing the south branch, but that day he had yet to see a fish.

  He walked down past the rough water of Simpson’s Pool, down by Allie’s Pool below it, and the river trailed away, spined and dotted by rocks, and interspersed with swift currents and small pockets, being swept by wind and bursts of rain. He got further down to a nice pool we were to call “Disappointment Pool” in the years to come, and continued on, past a large dead-water pool on his right, called “the Salmon Hole,” where he was to take a beautiful salmon one day a few years later.

  On the Sevogle the wind comes up suddenly and can interrupt or even ruin a good day, because you have a problem with casting and the fish don’t want to take. A windy day for trout, Hemingway said, is a good day. As true as that might be, I don’t know where the hell he was fishing. On the Miramichi the wind generally comes up some time about one in the afternoon, and might stay until evening, with the high banks on either side of these many fertile rivers acting as a wind tunnel.

  Of all the rivers I have walked, and I have walked a good many, the south branch of the Sevogle is the worst. The river is spined with rocks, slippery and sharp, the bottom is uneven, flies are everywhere, and at certain places it’s hard to keep your footing. Off on either side the footpaths are swallowed in thick branches and hidden holes. Off in the woods the ground is boggy and replete with mosquitoes.

  It is a beautiful river, a habitat for moose and deer and bear, a picturesque place of startling grandeur and privacy, far away from man. It is where I have fished whole afternoons without seeing another soul, and brought fish back to our solitary camp at night. Very few rivers afford this.

  About halfway on his journey down to Island Pool the day had cleared, and Peter was in a better mood. He had walked off his anxiety and was feeling in good shape. He relaxed a moment, studied the pool, and decided to give it a try.

  Island Pool, he discovered, was not going to be an easy pool to fish because there was an undertow, where the small peninsula of land juts towards the right shore, and he found that at first his line just dragged in a swirling undertow. He then decided it was best to fish from the left bank because it was hard to work a fly on the right. But from that angle he knew he would miss what he thought was the hot spot in the deep agitated water at the top of the pool.

  Still he went to the left and threw his fly towards the bottom of the pool, not thinking he would have any luck. This was an age ago now, and he was just beginning to know about where the fish might or might not lay. He was alone on the river, with miles more to go. On either side spruce and cedar ran up into high hills, which dwarfed him.

  His fly—a bug with brown hackle—moved quickly, skimming the top of the water. But it skimmed the surface where the best part of the pool ended and flattened out into what seemed a dead shallow. He didn’t think he was giving himself much of a chance at this pool and was looking downriver as he stripped his line, picked it up, and cast once more. You don’t need a long line here, and he was just dabbing the water.

  Then, as his bug lighted on the surface, he felt his line tighten and his rod began to bow.

  He knew at once he had a big fish on. He didn’t know then that fish would actually move out of a pool. He had not much idea about how strong an Atlantic salmon that has spent four years in the sea could be.

  The salmon might have sensed this about him. For a moment it didn’t do anything. It just sulked a bit, as he stood almost on top of it. And then he felt the reel begin to sing—ZZzzzzZZZ—and the fish began to move. More and more line went out, far into his backing. The day was clear, and the singing of the reel seemed to testify the beginning of a very private struggle. Then a fish jumped at the turn.

  Another fish, he thought. And he realized in amazement that it was his fish. So trying to study the water beneath his feet, he began to move downriver towards it, trying to jump from rock to rock along the shore, reeling line in as he went. At times almost running. He and the fish seemed to be united not only in this struggle but in the fact that they were the only two creatures alive on this river.

  Then he slipped and went down, and almost lost his rod. He got to his feet, and thought the fish was gone, only to suddenly feel the line tighten, the rod bow, and his line being taken out again.

  He decided it was best to wade right across the river, to the other bank, for the fish had gone about a small bend on that side. At one point he found himself in water up to his chest and barely able to stay up.

  The fish jumped again, but he managed to reach the other side; his rod, however, jutted out from a group of tangled thorns. And he knew there was positively no way he would be able to beach the fish from the side he was on. He was now about thirty feet from the fish, and holding it quite well, so he again started to cross the river—only to find, for some reason, that the fish started upriver when he did. When this happened his line was tangled around himself.

  Here in water up to his waist, he had to hold the rod over his head, and turn counter-clockwise to free himself. When he got everything straightened out, the fish was still on.

  He followed the fish back upriver, and came to a small beach, jutting a foot or so out from the bushes. The fish wasn’t in a pool and there were rocks everywhere. At any given second he might snap his leader on a rock.

  The fish was showing its back as it dug deep into its reserve and made its way out to the middle of the river, swirling the water away from it.

  And then it began to run a little and turn on its stomach. So he knew it was spent. Once its nose was turned into shore, he backed right up against the side of the bushes and brought it in on a small landing.

  He was exhausted. He was soaking and his arms ached. The fish was a male close to fifteen pounds. He had hooked in on a small bug at the lower end of the pool in about two and a half feet of water. There was still
sea lice on it, and it had probably just come into the pool before he did. Perhaps as he had started his two-hour long trek down from Clearwater to Island Pool, it was making its way up past those rocks where he had played the life from it.

  The day was starting to cloud, the water looked darker, and there was still a long way to go. The trees on either side of the river were silent, and thrust out to the sky in that self-absorbed way trees always have. He made his way, with his fish, downriver towards some place called White Birch he had not been to before. He carried the fish in one hand, the rod in the other, and tried to navigate the slippery stones, or along the paths that were overgrown with grass and alders.

  He came to White Birch in the evening. The no-see-ums were at his hands and face, and every time he stopped mosquitoes flitted above him. But the pool, with its rock in the middle and its fine flow of dark water on the far side, was too inviting. He had to give it a try. Besides, he could easily cast and beach a fish here he decided.

  He made a bed for his fish and walked up to the top of the pool and looked it over. It was an exceptionally fine pool.

  Here you cast out to the far side letting your fly move towards the boulder that sits in the middle. The fish will lie behind that boulder, or just in front, but they will also lie between the boulder and the far cliff, nearer the top of the pool where the water enters the pool in a darkish-brown run.

  It was prime time for fishing now and on the third cast he hooked a large grilse, just on the outside of the rock. The grilse swallowed the bug and jumped three times in succession, tired, and he landed it after a fifteen-minute fight. Then, with two fish, a rod, and no place to put them, he started up the hill, trying to find the path.

  He looked here and there and began to cut up the side of the hill, and realized that though it may still be off-white on the late-evening water, it was already dark in the deep Sevogle wood.

  It is a steep hill, the south branch of the Sevogle is a hard river to reach at any time, and as he kept going he felt he had missed the path, but he was also confident that he would find it again. Carrying two fish and a rod, and trying to get over windfalls as high as his waist or chest, with soaking wet jeans and slippery sneakers, was a hard enough venture. But he kept faith that off to his upper right was the old logging road that would walk him back to his car.

  At certain points along the rise of the hill, it plateaus out for a few feet just to rise again. Here all kinds of small animals, insects and plant life live out their lives in the warm summer air; squirrels and partridge, chipmunks and chickadees, constantly going about their business without ever caring or bothering about ours, and never understanding why we with chainsaws or oil and gas would bother them.

  Trying to get up and down these hills is hard enough, but it’s always worse when you don’t have a bag to store your fish—and have no hands to keep the branches from your face. Your face can get torn up fairly badly if you aren’t careful.

  At one of these plateaus he stopped and looked about. It was boggy off to his right, but he felt the road had to be in that direction. Only the sky held a shaft of fading light. The wood itself was dark. He knew he didn’t want to twist an ankle in here.

  He didn’t get too many feet until he came to a giant windfall just over waist high. He managed to sit upon it, looking back towards the direction he had come in, still hearing the river faintly, and heaved himself over it. It was a three-foot drop on the other side into a dark undergrowth. And he fell headlong into it, fish and rod in hand, onto the stomach of a giant black bear.

  “It gave me a fright,” he said.

  The bear had crawled up in there to die some time that spring, far away from the tracks of man, thinking never to be found.

  Later, and in almost ink dark, Peter made it out to the logging road, both fish in tow, and walked the eight miles back to his car.

  We ran the Norwest with canoe twice my first summer. We usually ran the river after a rain, and with the water dropping. With the water dropping the fish would take, the grassy banks seemed more fertile, and the runoffs propelled twigs and leaves into the water. But the more the water dropped, the more it cleared. By mid-morning the sky would be hot enough, tempered with small distant clouds. The flies were ferocious, and made me think of writing a song to them. There is a song called “The Little Blackfly.” There is also a poem about blackflies by Alden Nowlan. Nowlan describes hating them so much it almost turns to love.

  On my first canoe trip I hooked a grilse above Wilson’s Pool on a Red Butt Butterfly. I was with Fred Irving. He pointed to a small run and said, “Throw your fly there.”

  I did—and bang.

  But I lost it because I was overanxious. That is, I tried to pull the fish into shore and turned away from it when it jumped. It wasn’t that well hooked but hooked well enough to land if I’d had the patience and experience. When the line went slack I felt for the first time that inescapable loss mixed with old and ancient desire. Tolstoy’s character Dolohov in War and Peace once said about bear hunting: “Sure, everyone’s afraid of a bear—but once you set eyes on him your only fear is that he’ll get away!”

  Everyone might feel empathy for the salmon as well, but when you hook one you have this desire to never lose it.

  Later that month Peter and I took a tent with us. We camped halfway along the Norwest run, at Cedar Pool, and pitched a tent in the dark. We were both sunburnt and tired. We had been on the river many days at that time. I had even had a fish or two to show for it. We cooked up supper in silence and crawled into the tent, assuring ourselves that the first light would wake us, and we’d be in the pool before anyone else. Our rods were ready to go as we drifted off to sleep.

  We were awakened by shouts of excitement.

  We sleepily got up and went outside. Already the morning was warm, and three people were in the pool, with two more canoes parked on either side of our tent. A woman of about forty-five had a fish on, and was playing it at the lower part of the pool. The other two people had already taken fish, which rested in the fish bed they had made. One was a salmon about ten pounds, the other a grilse. The woman had watched the fish come for the fly once, rested it, and threw back to it again.

  They picked up their fish and congratulated each other. Then nodding to us, packing their fish in the canoes, they headed downriver.

  “Nice morning,” Peter managed.

  The pool was dead after that, even though we had it all to ourselves. And we packed up and went back up in the afternoon. We came to a camp that overlooked the river. It flowed below us, as Peter sat on an old couch and spoke to me about his working the pool. It would be better to throw a line as close to the bank as possible. He pointed to a rip, three-quarters of the way down, and told me he had seen a fish there. I could see nothing, though I looked for ten minutes.

  As he spoke, unknown to him, a mouse scampered out of the couch and climbed up on his shoulder, listening to his story.

  Later he went down and crossed the river, and began to fish through. I had a good vantage point where I could see how his fly moved over every inch of water. He threw it exactly where he wanted. Suddenly in that dark rip, three-quarters of the way through the pool, he hooked a fish.

  “I figured it was there,” he said.

  For the next month or so I travelled miles of water, and seemed to get worse every time I went out. Nothing worked to my advantage, because I couldn’t use my left hand effectively enough to strip line, and when I cast the line itself would bunch up at the first eye of the rod. My left hand was my great deterrent. I decided it might be better if I cut it off. I seriously thought about it on more than one occasion those first few summers. I had a good knife, and though I never actually did cut my hand off, my left hand got in the way so much I had on more than one occasion given myself some serious injuries. For instance, I couldn’t open a door with my left hand, or button a shirt button, or pick up a cup of coffee. So it was certainly not earning its keep. About the only thing it was good for was g
etting my line tangled up in it.

  Once as a boy I had cut my left hand to the bone, trying to build a camp. I went to the first house I came to, looking for first aid. A nice lady opened the door, looked at me, shrieked, slammed the door and locked it.

  “It’s only a little blood—scaredy cat,” I managed. I went about the windows of the house, holding my hand out, touching the panes of glass, and smearing all her windows with blood in an effort to show her how harmless I was. Sometimes I would reach a certain window before she came into that room, always with a slight acrimonious smile on my face.

  Finally I had to make my way home alone.

  At any rate, I left the hand exactly where it was for the time being, dangling down somewhere, and got on without it. I tried to strip line leaving it in the water, but that was as ineffective as anything else. Once doing this I picked up the line, the fly came catapulting back and hit me in the eye. So I walked about with a black eye for three days.

  “How did you get the black eye?”

  “Fishing.”

  “Sure. Fishing. How in God’s name can you get a black eye fishing?”

  “You have to work at it, but it can be done,” I maintained.

  But then, that was my arm. I could write a book about my feet. Often at night, back home, far from the river, I would have to soak my left foot in a tub to get it moving again for the next day. I would bend over and slap at my toes to see if they still worked. I would pry them apart, try to wiggle them. I have the problem of instant arthritis, and sometimes coming out of a pool I would sit on the bank for an hour because my left foot was so sore. Once or twice I would go crawling about on the beach as if I had been shot at by a sniper and was trying to find cover.

  So that play-acting with Mr. Simms about my left foot aching came back to haunt me.

  Everyone has their problems and this was, and is, mine. I am making no more of it than a man of conscience or integrity should. But I will never lessen the effect upon me over the years. I will never say that it didn’t affect me to be polite to those who have no knowledge of its effect. I will only say I was born with it, and can do nothing about it. Nor would I change it now, even if I could. It is not bragging when I say that for me to have two good arms seems entirely like cheating.