Medawar took a crude river map out of a drawer and spread it out. “We’ll put you in above the Spook Pool and you can run down to Little Red Bridge.” He marked the place with a pencil. “That’ll be a good day’s float. Just work the holes or it’ll be a heckuva lot longer. We’ll be there to meet you tonight, nine sharp. That too long for you?”
“No, that’s fine.”
“Good, you’ll see a lot of water. Sure you’ll be okay? We could send somebody with you and you ought to have a lunch.”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t bother with lunch.”
It took about thirty minutes to get my gear and load it. Medawar outfitted me with two rods, then trekked back to the fly shop and bought some tippet spools, a box of flies, a bag of sandwiches, and a six-pack of pop. I was going to have a lunch, period. I would learn that at Sturdivant’s, rules were rules.
I was on the river and afloat by seven-twenty a.m. and it was light, but I took it easy and played with the driftboat and practiced turning and stopping with the heavy drag-chain anchor until I felt a modicum of control.
The first major hole was a surprise, a horseshoe to the right, but in the back of the bend there was shallower flat water and sinewy ropes of foam. The hole was more in the middle of the river than against the bank, and the current rocketed quietly around the section. I beached the boat and dropped my chain anchor onto the bank. The chain was as big around as my forearms.
I did not fish immediately. I found a spot up high, sat down on a stump to smoke, and watched. A surface feed this time of year and day wasn’t likely, but every river had its own rhythms and ways, and I wanted to be sure. One of the tricks in fishing is to deal with the reality of the situation, not your perception of it.
No fish were rising. When the light was better I climbed back down to the river, unlimbered a nine-foot rod, and started working the front of the hole. I tied on a dark fly called a Deep Side-to-Side and affixed it to a short four-foot leader. I used a pinch of weight a foot or so above the fly and cast and retrieved and added weight a little at a time until the fly started ticking bottom. This is the thing about rivers. They are always dynamic. You have to read and adjust constantly, which is what makes time go so quickly. Like life.
On my tenth serious cast I had a hard strike and set the hook. The fish played up quickly and I brought it into the shallows to release. It was a handsome creature, all muscle and dark, sixteen inches. I cupped a hand under its belly in the water and floated it while I worked the fly loose. I held the fish by the tail for a moment before it pulled loose and slid back into the current.
The day passed swiftly and I lost sense of anything except the river and the fish. By midafternoon I had gotten a dozen strikes, but only three fish in. One of these was twenty-six inches, a wonderful, bright-colored fish that left me smiling.
I had only a rough idea of how far the Little Red Bridge was in float time, but it was getting to be time to start thinking about the rendezvous instead of fish and I decided I would fish only those holes that looked exceptionally promising. River time and river distances are different than time and distances on hard ground and easy to underestimate. I had already put in a long day and been so busy that I hadn’t touched my lunch.
At six o’clock I found myself sliding along a slate wall and decided that the base of the wall would hold big fish, this a matter of intuition as much as experience. Sometimes you look at a place on the water and you just know.
I had to slide downstream of the wall to find a place for the boat, then work my way back up the shoreline shadows on foot to where I wanted to be. I was almost there when I thought I saw something move in the woods. I watched for a while, saw nothing, and decided it was a trick of evening light. Maybe a deer walking by.
I took no fish from the hole, but it was beautiful, deep water and I felt good. I got back in the boat and fished other holes quickly and when I finally saw the bridge, Medawar was on shore, waving me in.
“Any luck?”
“A few.”
He eyed me. “You’re the first one I heard that even saw a fish today.”
“Probably some are just being tight lipped.”
Medawar laughed. “Around here, people always talk about their fish. Fish are money and talk attracts customers.”
•••
I met Sturdivant in his office. “Mister Medawar informs me that you got on the fish today. How many?” He leaned forward.
“A dozen or so strikes, and some follows, but only four fish in.”
“Size?”
“Biggest was twenty-six inches.”
He was very still. “Where and on what?”
I explained.
“Why a Side-to-Side?”
I shrugged. “Good motion, sort of circular, a little different from what the fish usually see.”
“Do you always catch fish?”
“Nobody always catches fish.”
“I do,” Sturdivant said. “A few do, the special ones, but then I’m certain you already know that.”
“I was lucky.”
“Maybe,” Sturdivant said. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“A stranger comes to the Dog, risks his life saving two strangers, then takes fish when the best guides in the world can’t? Half my people didn’t even go out, the water as high and murky as it is. Why did you?”
“I fish when I can, not when conditions are just right.”
•••
The cabin had a common room between two small bedrooms, a large bath with a small tub, a kitchen and dining nook, an aged silver cedar deck covered with gold lichen, and a wooden platform that looked out on the river. I heard the muffled sounds of people moving toward the morning feed, but pulled a pillow over my head and tried to sleep on.
At noon I went out onto the deck and found fishing gear on the table. There was a nine-foot six-weight glass rod, reels with floating and sinking lines, tippet spools, a new vest stuffed with boxes of flies, soft and pliable waders, a wide-brimmed hat, everything I could want, even a map showing the river and the names of its holes and runs: Shrovetide, Maridly’s Rock, Silverfish, Gordon’s Whirlpool, Yoni’s Triangle, Walter’s Log Slide. There was a card with the gear, and a scribbled message, “Tools for a master artisan. S.” Why was Sturdivant being so generous?
A bluebird sky overhead told me that the trout would spook at their own shadows and the big fish would stay deep, under the food tube. Like men, trout had a hierarchy of needs: Food and refuge were at the top. I had no idea where reproduction ranked for a trout, which was equally true for me. Sex was high, but not reproduction. The drive, not the practice. It had been quite a while since I had enjoyed that pleasure and I thought of Karla. There had been the chance with Hannah along these lines, but we had not taken that step and in some ways I was glad. River days sated something in me and gave rise to other needs. I fought off the introspective mood and turned my attention back to the river.
No insects were hatching. I tied on a tiny beetle, squeezed on a dollop of flotant, and rubbed it in gently and thoroughly. No rises either, but this wasn’t unusual at midday. I waded zigzag downstream, casting forty-five degrees upwater, reach-casting to eliminate belly and drag as the fly bobbed through intersecting currents along the far bank. Every cast had purpose. The rod was a bit stiff, but manageable. I took two nine-inch browns on successive casts into an eddy near the bank, at the base of a decaying sweeper. They were healthy fish with thick sides and brilliant colors, with less yellow tint than browns elsewhere.
In the head of the next hole the beetle brought out a thirteen-inch fish that had been holding in the cutout of a sunken stump. I made it a short fight and released the creature without taking it out of the water, working with one hand, as deft as a surgeon.
In an hour I had landed and released fifteen fish, all legal, including a lethargic
seventeen-incher. The farther I waded downstream, the bigger the fish seemed to get. I kept fighting off thoughts of the fifty-six-pounder on the fieldstone fireplace in the main lodge.
I sat on the bank and smoked. There were large bright green hoppers in the brown grass, but I saw none floating in the water and heard no telltale slurps announcing that hoppers were on the trout menu. When I reentered the river, I reversed course. I was glad I was wading and not tied to a boat. Now that I had seen the stretch and created a mental map, I could work upstream with intent. Most water in any lake or stream is fish-dead and there is no sense wasting time on it; this is where most fishermen, including trouters with a fortune in equipment, go astray. Hundreds or thousands of dollars of gear all aimed at giving you precision is washed out when you put your fly over unproductive water.
At the first bend I saw faint smudges of dark patches of insects fluttering around the tag alders at the water’s edge. I paused against the bank and watched. The cloud of insects descended, plopped on the surface, and were carried downstream, spewing eggs. For the first two or three minutes there were no takers, but then I heard the rises begin. I selected a small Adams and watched for white mouths winking open to inhale the flies. Most fish stayed near a single position and fed in a rhythm. Watching, I picked up the timing and, when I saw a wink several times in the same place, roll-cast to within inches. The fish struck hard, diving deep for cover, bending my rod momentarily, but it was small and the physics of the rod too much for it to overcome with pure instinct. The feeding frenzy lasted less than twenty minutes. When it was over, I cupped my hand and splashed water onto my face. I had landed eleven more fish, all small, but it had been a glorious hatch.
I was full of myself, drunk on freedom. I continued wading upstream.
There was a sip against the bank in black water under a brushpile. In front of the brush there was a narrow chute of fast water that struck a boulder, splitting the flow and turning it upstream, a curling whirlpool that pushed food gently under the branches. The fish in there was protected, confident, focused on food, certain of its invincibility.
I circled the brushpile from a distance, finally spotting an opening. It would be a one-chance thing; the slightest intrusion would put the fish down. Only a large fish could hold such a sweet spot. Nature’s laws were immutable: The strongest ruled. Genetically all species were accidents. Man included.
I considered changing flies but decided that if the fish felt secure enough, it would take anything that drifted into its zone. I backed up, began false-casting, concentrated on nothing but the channel to the fish, focusing everything not on the nearly weightless feathers at the end of the tippet but on the target, the fish. For a moment I thought I had missed and wrapped a branch, but when I lifted the rod tip I felt resistance and faint movement and with a firm twist of my wrist I lifted the rod tip.
The water behind the brushpile exploded and I stripped line hard as I waded through thigh-deep water toward the disturbance. The fish would try to swim into the pile and break me off, but I had the rod tip high and the rod was bent severely. I tore at the pile with my free hand, trying to clear a path, kicking at it, breaking it apart piece by piece, until I had an avenue in.
The fish’s dark back was visible just below the surface, but there was no time for admiration. I saw that it had wrapped me once and I found the branch, slid the line loose, and pulled firmly to encourage the fish to run, which it did, stripping more line. My drag muttered under the strain.
I chased the trout up a series of riffles, splashing and slipping, trying to maintain tension, but the fish reversed and charged downstream; instinctively I scrambled up the embankment to get a high position, braced my foot against a dirt hump, and eased the fish into a small pool. No horsing: I knew the light tippet was probably abraded by the brush and I was on luck’s clock.
We were frozen in space and time, my chest heaving, the fish holding. After what seemed a prelude to eternity I felt the fish turn and give way to the tension of the line, exhausted.
I sat in the water with the brown trout between my legs, her huge head pointed upstream, my hands guiding her side to side, trying to keep her gills working, supporting her until she recovered.
When she went, she slid quietly downstream past her demolished hiding place and dropped slowly like a submarine into a deep pool below, there, then not, gone, in search of a new place.
I stared at where the creature had been; head to tail she had stretched from my boot laces to well above my knee, twenty-nine inches, thirty. I had never caught anything like her. I laughed when I realized I was shaking. Fifteen pounds, maybe more, I had no idea. The river there was no more than thirty feet across. Where had such a monster come from? How had she survived? I lay back in the cold water and let it run into my waders. Had she been real? Sometimes it was hard to tell, and this was part of the attraction.
“Ascending the embankment was sheer genius.”
The stentorian voice startled me. I turned to find the sightless white eyes of Sturdivant staring down at me.
“There was nowhere else to go.”
“You didn’t think it,” the old man said. “You felt it. The good ones never think. When they connect, it’s alive. You felt it and it felt you. You were linked in your minds.”
“I did what I had to.”
“Like yesterday.”
I shrugged.
Sturdivant grinned. “If you want work, Mister Rhodes, I could use a competent guide.”
“Me?” Hannah had made a similar offer and I had turned her down.
“It pays handsomely.”
“I don’t know the river and I’ve never guided anyone. Why me?”
“You know more important things. A river can be learned. What you know, can’t. You’ll be replacing the man you saved. I relish the irony. In any event, he’s lost his sap for river work. He considered his accident a warning from God.”
“I was just lucky.”
“That too. Even Christ needed some luck. There’s always big fish under brush. Most of them break off and never move.”
“I caught her shallow. She didn’t have enough time to get tricky.”
“You knew to go to her and get her into open water. I’m certain she had never faced an opponent like you.”
I studied the old man and it suddenly struck me. He was supposed to be blind. “You can see?”
“Seeing incorporates a plethora of physiological possibilities.”
“How big was the fish?” I asked him.
“Twenty-plus pounds. She’ll go thirty later in the fall. What about that job, Mister Rhodes? I’ll pay four hundred a week. You’ll get room and board on top and I assure you, the food here is the finest. Days without clients are yours. You get paid no matter what and all tips are yours. If it makes you more comfortable, we’ll call it a trial period.”
“Tell me about the snowfly.”
He grinned and nodded his head. “You stay and maybe I’ll do that. You can take one of the boats for the next few days, run the river, learn the holes, the get-ins and get-outs. Talk to Mister Medawar and he will explain all procedures. When you’re comfortable, you let me know.”
“How about you hold the salary until I take my first client?”
“Suit yourself.”
I had always tried to do just that.
18
My first day as a guide was scheduled to be the first day of the official season for hard drifts—Sturdivant’s term for his most favored and best-heeled clients, who paid double and triple the usual fees and were treated like family. The night before the season began Sturdivant called together his twelve guides for a group dinner. We were seated at one long table, all looking out on the river. Sturdivant was in the center, Christ-like, with me to his immediate right and a woman to his left. I tried to recall which was the Judas seat but couldn’t.
There wer
e six men and five women, all wearing navy blue polo shirts. I was surprised to see so many women working as fishing guides. Sturdivant tapped his water glass with a spoon. “Miss Allen, will you please introduce your colleagues to our newest member?” he asked. I had seen most of them around and talked to a few of them, but until now there had been no formal introductions.
The woman to Sturdivant’s left pushed her chair back and stood up. She had short silver hair and purple glasses on an orange string. “Phaedra Allen,” she said. “Trax, Arizona. From my far left: Armand LaRue, Paradise Valley, Labrador; Selwyn Berlin, our rabbi, Sloveridge, New York; to his right, Van Dunlop, Circle Tree, Michigan, an almost-homey; Dusty Whipkey, she worked Tierra del Fuego and spent last season in England; Angus Macquoid, from the wee hamlet of Clahdon-Spey, Scotland; and King Sturdivant, himself.
“At the far end: Laird Bennett, Electric Oak, Maine; Hessian ‘Eddie’ Edmann, Missoula, Montana; Badger Barney Turner, Ashland, Wisconsin; Magdalen Cyrilia Deleven, Sulac Camp, Michigan, she goes by Maggie; and Carl Collister of Jeannie-Gone Key, Florida, here for his first season. Carl holds two dozen bonefishing records, which is what got him to this dance. And you, sir, what are your credentials?”
“I’m Bowie Rhodes, sometimes of Grand Marais, and I was offered the job,” I said. “All other things being equal, that would seem to be the qualification that carries the most weight.” The remark drew cool stares.
I expected conversation, but the group ate in silence and afterward went their own ways. I went out front and could hear Sturdivant roaring about something in the kitchen.
Carl Collister was seated on a bench beside the trail to his cabin. I saw the ember of his cigarette before I saw him. “About what you expected?” he asked.
“Pretty subdued,” I said. “Last Supper–ish.”
“Have a sit,” he said. “They’re all good,” he went on, in a low voice. “Arguably the best in the world.”
The Snowfly Page 38