by David Joy
By the time I reached the top of Beaver Kill Hole, I’d caught and released at least forty fish. I could have ended my trip right then, but I had just made it to the most productive section of river and was certain the Beaver Kill would bring a chance for a big one. Catching big trout is like hitting the lottery. On normal water the chances of catching monster fish have similar odds to winning a million dollars. In Beaver Kill Hole your odds of winning the jackpot increase to scratch-off chances.
The drizzle began again, disrupting the calm pool and sending the fish back to the bottom. It began to rain harder, and I continued to cast the chartreuse Woolly Bugger into the current, allowing the fly to sink as it curved through the deep hole, but the bite had diminished midday. I wanted to wait out the rain, see if I could hook a few more fish, but the trout refused to bite.
Looking downstream, I saw a lone mayfly weathering the storm, its translucent wings pelted by the downpour. In the last bend of river before the current quickened, the mayfly dove to the surface, briefly touching water as it laid eggs. The mayfly’s mustard-colored body was encircled by gray from its thrashing wings. As the fly descended toward the surface, a gargantuan brown shot through the sheen, tightening its jaws around the fly as it came through. The huge fish never bent its body and looked like a migrating salmon shooting up a waterfall as it tilted its head back into the current. The fish had to be well over thirty inches.
I had seen the fish as clear as day, dusty brown body and goldenrod stomach, launch through the surface and snack on the bug. I moved downstream to within casting range and started planning my approach. With the first cast following the feeding line perfectly, I was confident I could get a bite, knowing good and well that big trout will often feed during heavy rain. With the Woolly Bugger straightening out, slowly coming to the top downstream, I false cast once and put the fly back in line. Again, nothing. I cast to that fish for four hours, never getting a nip. I tried every fly I could find in my vest, but the trout had disappeared as if only a hallucination.
At three o’clock, with my legs aching from trudging through waist-deep water for seven hours, I headed to the truck, disgusted. Any pleasure the forty trout I’d managed to catch gave me vanished the instant that trout broke the surface. All that remained was the one I had seen. I knew a trout that big would not be likely to migrate from that stretch of water. That fish had probably found a place that offers more than adequate forage and stuck there. Now, I had to find a way to hook it.
I planned the attack. I would go to Beaver Kill Hole at night, bearing a 7-weight rod and some of the biggest flies I could put on my vise. I reread the words of Joe Humphreys, George Harvey, and James Bashline, sucking in every bit of advice they offered on big browns after dark. I tied the flies they mentioned and prepared for battle.
The night that I went a thick green drake hatch hovered over the river. The quarter moon gave enough light to see but—if I were lucky—not enough to spook the fish.
I started off fishing a Whitlock Mouse pattern, hoping that the fish would bust the deer hair off the hook shank. The enormous fly woofed past like a bat as I made casts upstream. Nothing. Suddenly I saw the big brown explode on a landing drake, the splash reflected with dim moonlight. Just as before, I watched the fish come up, feed, and disappear. The giant trout was even keeping the same feeding line. I spent hours that night casting everything I had to no avail. Anthropomorphizing or not, that fish was smart.
Dumbfounded, I hiked toward the truck, the blue beam from my flashlight illuminating the gravel farm road. I had seen the fish again, had been there at perhaps the perfect time, and again nothing. I dream about that monster nightly, often shaken awake by the realization there’s one fish left to mark off. I wake up, go there again, cast the line, pray for the bite, and occasionally see the mighty fish rise. I cannot stop because I know it’s there. I will not quit because I know it’s real. Someday that fish—damn near three feet long—will come to my hand. I will marvel for a moment and release it, but for now, there’s still one to go.
Native
A ClackaCraft drift boat bobs down an eddy, and, from the echoing dialects, I can tell that the passengers aren’t from North Carolina. The Tuckasegee’s mighty flow is foreign to them. I quickly strip in my olive Woolly Bugger and roll cast into slack water that won’t possibly be holding fish. Whatever I do, I can’t let these bastards know I’m on to a school of big stockers. As the aquatic Cadillac inches closer, I see my fly line straighten out across the surface and instinctively set the hook. After a short fight, I hold a twelve-inch brook trout (obviously of the stocked variety with its piss yellow spots, algae-colored back, and fishier smell) in my hand. I remove the hook, kiss the fish, and watch as the trout fins away into the freestone bottom.
“That was a pretty nice fish,” shouted the man stirring the oars in the middle of the boat, obviously the guide.
“Yeah, he was all right.”
“You had any luck?”
“Nope. That’s the first fish I’ve caught all day,” I state sharply, deliberately avoiding the success I’d had in that hole.
“Well, we’ve caught a lot of fish on dries,” the stocky out-of-towner offers from the rear. The man in the back of the boat looks like some ill-suited mama’s boy trying to fit into a world he would die in if left alone. He reminds me of Francis Macomber in the Hemingway story, only sloppier, probably richer, and a tad more northern. This jackass is completely out of his element: a dented Gilligan hat strapped tight around his double chin, a baggy L.L.Bean button-down trying to cover his beer belly, spotless waders obviously bought that morning from the outfitter, white sunscreen spread across his pitted nose like wet bird shit. I noted the beautiful Hardy reel attached to the cork seat of a Scott rod and thought, That rod is far too glorious to sit in his sausage fingers.
“Yeah, we’ve had some luck on dries upriver. We’ve caught twenty or so,” the guide states as he backpaddles to stay out of my hole.
The client in the front of the boat, who I perceived a mute until now, proudly says in some Bostonian jumble of syllables, “They were all brookies.”
“And every one of them were natives,” the tubby one claims as he throws a giant loop of line like a lasso for an elephant into a run across stream.
“They were all native?” I ask, confused by the statement.
“Yeah, they had white fins and everything,” the once-silent one speaks again. Having heard more than enough, I tell them they can go on through.
The guide begins paddling downstream, and as they disappear behind a line of dogwoods blooming on the bank, I cast and wonder what in the world that guide had told them. The odds of catching native brookies in a river contaminated by farm-bred trout is pretty rare, and it’s utterly impossible to catch twenty “all native.” As for the white fins, I’ve yet to catch a brook trout, native or otherwise, that didn’t have ivory tips running down their pectorals: it’s just a part of their beautiful construction.
My line floats along the current and then curves upstream as another trout is fooled by the Bugger. This fish is bigger and takes off downriver using the current for advantage, ripping drag as he goes. I edge the fish into the shallows and wrap my hand around his broad back. The Woolly Bugger holds firm right in the tip of his rounded snout. The brookie is a good sixteen inches, covered from gill to tail with pale dun spots, and white fins to boot. He must be a native.
*****
>For me, the word native carries a tremendous amount of weight. It is not a word that can be taken lightly, thrown around fly shops like stories of thirty-inch trout, uttered from the lips of people who have no clue what the word really means. For me, those two syllables comprise what has been nearly lost.
I drive through cities where the only trees that grow were planted for ornamentation, rooted into shoveled holes, and encircled with bales of pine straw. The world I live in has become a society that views blooming Bradford pears as street art, not as something that belongs. Few things anymore b
elong. In all honesty, even I don’t belong, but at least I have an eye for what does.
The word native defines something that not only is present, but also was; something that has been and should remain; something that bore witness, adapted, and survived. I can understand the desire for something native, the reason why outsiders look to the trout and are proud, but the misuse of such a word is a denial of what we humans have done.
Brook trout, true native brookies—not the ones raised in tanks, shipped in trucks, and dumped in rivers—once filled the cold mountain streams of the Southern Appalachians. Now, the specks that remain are found in places where people are not. They’ve swum upstream into mountain hollows where the presence of man has not yet encroached, places where hillsides are scattered with moss-backed boulders rather than fading McDonald’s cups. The trout that populate most rivers and streams are not part of the place; rather, they’re something that has been shipped in, outsiders, just as I am when I wade waist-deep into the river’s chilling embrace. There’s a reason why fish have to be stocked into rivers that were once the homes of finicky wild trout. There’s a reason why the brookies caught in the Tuckasegee River look more like lake trout than like their native brethren. To use the term native to describe something that does not belong is to deny that something else been forced out.
Nothing is native about the brown trout and rainbows that fin through Appalachian streams. Some browns and ’bows have become wild in Appalachian waters, but those fish swam into the same creeks and tributaries that the native specks found refuge in, and although I love catching browns and ’bows, I realize those trout are as invasive as starlings, kudzu, and woolly adelgid.
The same is true of most brook trout that are plucked from the current by overweight retirees fumbling through the water like tranquilized bears. Those opaque brookies with faded spots and colors as dull as winter are not the same trout that originally settled in the untainted waters of Southern Appalachian creeks. My love for true native brookies diverts my need to correct outsiders’ stories. There still are places untouched where native fish rise to a perfectly played fly, and I think that I’ll keep those creeks to myself.
*****
A few weeks into my sophomore year of college, I stood on the bank of Piney Mountain Creek, along the Jackson County border, where I had first caught a native trout. Hickories, oaks, and pines towered overhead. Thick branches of rhododendron and laurel guarded the banks as I stood at the edge of the cool mountain creek. The only sound was the babbling of water as it rippled around and across the smoothed stones and misted the petals of jack-in-the-pulpits. I was ensconced in the wildness of Appalachia.
Stepping into the creek, I felt its cold current wrap around the flesh of my legs. The feeling was awakening, a refreshment for my senses in the warm summer air. I saw an endless line of waterfalls, plunge pool after plunge pool, streaming down the mountainside. I looked into the bubbly foam of the closest pool. It couldn’t have been more than two feet in diameter, but I knew there was a fish there. Whipping two flies onto the water, I watched as the dry fly was drawn in a slow circle toward the waterfall. As the size 14 Yellow Sally got to the edge of the foam, the fly shot underwater like a high diver entering the pool from twenty feet above. I lifted my rod and felt the pulsating tension of the trout. The fish had bitten the dropper, a small Hare’s Ear Nymph, mimicking a stonefly, dangling from the dry. The trout sensed the pull of my rod and darted downstream, past where I was standing and into the next pool. I stepped into the water below, leaned down to wet my hand, and pulled the brookie toward me. Brought into my palm, the trout’s fleshy body squirmed as I lifted him from the water. He was gorgeous.
The brook trout is the only salmonid native to the Southern Appalachians, and over time the southern strand of trout has evolved. Genetics prove that the native Southern Appalachian brook trout differs from other populations of brookies on a subspecies level, and I like to think they are superior to those other strands. Yet, in the small creeks they inhabit, the southern strand of brook trout doesn’t grow to be nearly as large as their northern cousins. Down here a twelve-inch speck is considered a trophy.
I held the eight-inch brookie in my hand and marveled at his beauty. His back was emerald green, covered with jade spots placed like puzzle pieces. Along his sides were yellow and blood red dots. His belly was sunflower yellow; his throat, a pure, clean white. The pectoral, pelvic, and anal fins were that blend of red and orange that is only seen during fiery sunsets. The tips of those fins were lined with the same pure white as his throat, a white as pure as cumulus clouds. I was awestruck. Only a native Southern Appalachian brookie would be this well-dressed. I kissed him on his snout and released him downstream, still feeling euphoric as I stepped away.
Continuing up the creek for at least three miles, I climbed up waterfall after waterfall, catching fish after fish. It seemed like all of the plunge pools and even the small, shallow runs held trout. By the time I reached the place where the abandoned logging road crossed the creek, I had caught over thirty brookies. None of them was more than ten inches. Most of them were between six and eight, but all of them wore the same brilliant hues. They were dressed in war paint like native tribes ready to attack. Their sharp greens, yellows, and oranges shot through the water like arrows as they came up, engulfing my flies with an instinctive intensity. Primal.
They were native, as native to these parts as the Cherokee—or maybe more so. As I walked back, I realized just how out of place I was and how perfectly suited to their environment they were. This was their creek, their home—they belonged.
*****
I will rarely share secrets about places that still hold populations of native trout. The reason for this is simple: few places are left. In the past few years, I’ve watched countless streams (which once provided sanctuary for breeding brookies) be filled with sediment, tainted with runoff, warmed by deforestation. Multi-million dollar estates spring up along mountain brooks like Walmarts. Developers brutally clear-cut mountainsides, grade hills, pave entrance roads, and build mansions. Then when they’re all done, they slap a sign at the entrance with a picture of a trout or a fly and a name like “Trout Reserve.” The only thing reserved is done so for the highest bidder with no room left for native fish; after all, there are plenty of farms with truckloads of trout at a decent price, and for the millionaires, these are as “native” as they need them to be.
One reason rich retirees escape to the mountains is to enjoy the same qualities they destroy when they come. Driving down a meandering road toward a native stream, I see bulldozers scraping the earth bare, cutting into clay banks, and rolling boulders like marbles. The sputtering smoke from earthmovers conceals the clouds and the mechanical clatter of engines sounds like the fast talk of an auctioneer: “OnedollaronedollaronedollarSOLD to the lovely gentleman in the pinstriped suit.” As for me, I drive to one of the few wild places left, try to raise a fish, hold him in my hand, and get one last look while I still can.
*****
In all of my years talking to other fly fishermen, few have shared my passion for native fish as deeply as Ron Rash. He still calls them specks, a word passed to him through thick Appalachian roots (even the title of one of his short stories). Ron’s hound dog eyes light up like struck matches when I mention a twelve-inch native brookie; his methodic southern accent speeds to a New York pace, and his limber frame begins to shift from foot to foot. One word describes his posture: excitement.
When Ron asked me if I would take him and his son to a native stream, I couldn’t say no. Chances to share my passion with someone who knows and understands my blazing desire are rare. With Ron, I shared two passions: writing and trout. I could tell him about secret streams because as soon as the words were spoken, they were remembered but dead, resonating in his mind and memory alone, never to be spoken of again, taken to the grave.
The May sun was pushing straight down on my shoulders. Ron’s wife was pulling weeds in an area crawling with fire
ants while he and his son, James, stood by the open door of their minivan. I grabbed my waders, boots, vest, rod tube, and reel from the cab of my pickup. I threw my gear in the van, and we all hopped in: James behind the wheel, me riding shotgun, and Ron in the back.
The music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers came through the speakers; James drummed on the steering wheel as the van curved through mountain roads on the way to my secret stream. Ron was reclined in the backseat, his hands pillowing his head, his long, slender legs straightened and crossed between the front seats. We swapped fishing tales, the stories ricocheting off one another and triggering more: stories of fish caught, fish lost, and fish seen. “Tell him about that carp I caught on the fly rod,” Ron urged his son.
“Man, that fish was big. Dad and me were fishing in a pond and he hooked that big ol’ sucker. It took him for a ride but he got it in,” James explained, words rushing from his lips.
“Yeah, I saw that thing feeding, and I went over there and put my fly in front of him, and he sucked it in,” Ron continued in his soft, lackadaisical voice, the words never rushed, only chewed for a while and then coming out effortlessly. “My rod was bowed up pretty good before I got him in. He was about this big…” He held out his arm, and ran his finger across his forearm to where the fish would’ve ended.
“That thing was big,” James finished.
“Yeah, I hooked into a huge carp when I was a kid,” I continued the stories without a pause. “That one was about three feet long and around twenty-five pounds. I fought that thing for an hour or so before I ever got it close. Snapped my tippet and was gone.”
“Some folks eat them things.” Ron rolled the conversation on.
“I know,” I replied. “My uncle caught one one time, and a bunch of guys fishing from the bank asked him if they could have it. When he asked them what for, they told him they were going to make carp burgers. Seems like them fish’d be greasy as hell. Pull over right there.” I directed James to a carved-out section of gravel, the last parking spot for anything other than off-road vehicles.