by David Giblin
Lenny had trained his guests well. The guy with the cigar still sat with his feet on the gunnel, patiently watching his rod tip. Lenny hadn’t told him to reel in, so as far as he was concerned he was still fishing. His partner was the only one that seemed to notice that Lenny had left the boat. He looked over at Big Jake’s with a casual air; perhaps Lenny needed something from Jake’s boat, his expression seemed to suggest. He waited for Wet Lenny’s return as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
Luckily the whirlpool was short-lived. It closed up on itself and disappeared as though it had never existed. Big Jake took Lenny over and reunited him with his boat. Lenny told the cigar smoker to reel up. We all went back to fishing.
Lenny dealt with the aftermath by himself. There was a considerable amount of water in the boat, all gathered in the stern where it lapped about Lenny’s ankles. The water would have to be removed before they could return to fishing. Lenny could have bailed the water out by hand with a bucket he kept for the purpose, but there was something decidedly unprofessional about doing it that way, and Lenny was sensitive about being seen as unprofessional. He decided to open the seacocks and let the water run out.
Like the big luxury yachts, the guide boats were also equipped with seacocks. All Lenny had to do was open the seacock and bring his boat up to running speed with the big motor, and the water would magically drain. Lenny started the big motor and headed off into Vancouver Bay.
Lenny had overlooked two things. He had forgotten to open the seacock for a start. So, with the big motor straining to lift the boat out of the water, he had to reach under his seat where the valve was located. It was right back in the very stern, and he couldn’t see it or quite reach far enough. He put his head between his legs to get a better look and strained to get his fingers on it. He almost had it when his other hand slipped off the tiller arm of the engine.
At this point the other thing he had overlooked took control of the boat.
With the boat underway, the combined weight of Lenny, the motors, and about fifty gallons of water sloshing around in the stern made it highly unstable. The moment Lenny’s hand lost its grip, the motor swung violently to one side. The boat and the water on board swung with it. Lenny, with his head down to reach under his seat, was ejected into the water.
Back at the Far Side we heard the distinctive snarl of an engine revving wildly out of control. There was a loud whump and once again we all turned to look in unison.
Lenny’s guests had the boat all to themselves again. It was whooshing them around in big circles as though they were back in the whirlpool. Lenny was nowhere to be seen—the only sign of him was his cap floating in the water.
There was a moment when we all thought he must have hit the motor as he flew out of the boat. Then we heard coughing and sputtering as he surfaced beside a floating log.
Once more Big Jake was there to pick him out of the water. He caught up to the spinning boat and called out to Lenny’s guests to reach back and push the kill switch to stop the engine. Once more Big Jake reunited Lenny and his boat. Afterward, all the guides agreed that such a spectacular performance deserved to be acknowledged in some way.
“Maybe the guy just likes being wet,” suggested Troutbreath. And Lenny was given a nickname.
eighteen THE BULLET TRAIN TO TOKYO
I DIDN’T ESCAPE the dogfish entirely unscathed either. A couple of days later I was fishing the Log Dump. Named for its use as a landing for logging operations back in the thirties, it’s on the same shore as the Far Side but to the north, above the Arran Rapids and farther inside the mouth of Bute Inlet. I was with two of Herbert’s employees. They were large, red-faced men with a tendency to shout even in normal conversation. They moved their hands and arms about, not so much to emphasize their loud words, it seemed, but to claim territory. The first thing they did when we got to the fishing hole was offer me a pinch of chewing tobacco.
“Ya care for a chew, Dave?”
When I declined the offer they flashed me a suspicious look—a look that suggested a real fishing guide chewed tobacco. I run across this attitude all the time. I don’t care one way or the other what people put in their mouths, as long as it doesn’t end up all over the side of my boat. Yet many men expect certain behaviour just because they meet me in an outdoor setting. Nobody has ever explained to me what chewing the molasses-soaked leaves of Nicotiana tabacum has to do with catching fish. None of the books I’ve read have ever mentioned its importance.
I have observed that the people expecting me to chewing tobacco are always Americans; it’s almost a national obsession. To them it seems you can’t truly enjoy the outdoors unless you’re covering it with tobacco spit. I’m quite certain it has more to do with some kind of cultural rite of passage than anything to do with fishing.
The chewing is usually accompanied by a great deal of drinking so that a constant stream of liquid is either entering or exiting their mouths. Its not like they are practised drinkers, either. Regularly they proceed to get so drunk they wouldn’t be able to land a fish if they caught one. The amount of alcohol consumed must partly explain their florid complexions.
My two gentlemen soon forgot their misgivings over my refusal to chew. Soon we were joined in the hole by four more boatloads of their buddies, with whom they were quickly hollering back and forth, trading insults.
(“Hey, you ugly sonofabitch! What are you doing out here?”)
While also dispensing advice on fishing.
(“Hey, if you piss in the water like that you’ll scare all the fish away, you ugly sonofabitch!”)
And making inquiries into others’ luck at fishing.
(“Hey, you caught anything yet, you ugly sonofabitch?”)
They all dressed alike in check shirts, blue jeans, and heavy leather boots. The boots were especially interesting: the feet are delicate, vulnerable things it seems. They must be properly protected. The boots my guests were wearing were made of thick, hard cowhide. Dense lug soles gave their feet about the same ground clearance as a Jeep. There was an impressive display of buckles and straps, cinched tight to make sure the feet couldn’t possibly suffer exposure. The boots looked so heavy I was concerned that if someone fell into the water, he would be dragged down feet first before he could ever get his boots off.
I noticed that both my present guests each had a small leather case attached to their belt. I believe the case held a sharp-bladed folding knife, but, again, in all the years I’ve taken guys like this out fishing, I’ve never seen any one wield such a knife. They’ve been wearing it, like an external appendix, for so long they’ve forgotten why it’s there.
We were fortunate enough to catch two nine- or ten-pound salmon in the first couple of hours. My guests got very excited, and there was much whooping and hollering each time. They compared their fish with others caught by their friends in a manner and with a choice of words that suggested they were comparing something else.
“Let’s see how big yours is.”
“You call that big? Hell that ain’t nothing but a little trouser trout. We’ve got bait in the tank here bigger than that little pecker.”
“You put that thing in the fish box and the box won’t even know it’s there, you ugly sonofabitch!”
After our initial success, the fishing died down. The yelling back and forth died down, too, and we were left to talk among ourselves. There was a long silence before finally one of them cleared his throat and asked, “Say, Dave, ya do much hunting?”
I knew that my hunting experience was completely different from anything in their realm of experience. The deer on the islands, for example, were nearly tame. They would come out to feed on the apples fallen from the trees in the orchards. If you really wanted to eat one of these animals, you could walk up to it and take it out with a fish club. I knew this wouldn’t be very satisfying to someone into chewing, alcohol, and big-bore ammunition.
That subject didn’t go anywhere. We spent some minutes commenting on the
eagles in the trees all around us; after that there wasn’t much for real tobacco chewers to talk about. Fishing, hunting, and eagles in the trees were the only topics open. They fell silent. I sensed a profound boredom settle over the pair. They squirmed and sighed like bored adolescents. One of them sat hitting the knob on the handle of his reel and watching it spin. We spent most of the next hour like this, drifting from one end of the Log Dump to the other.
I was about to suggest moving to a new location when the man named Charlie suddenly became excited.
“Hey, Dave, something’s pulling on my line.”
His rod bent over into the water, the tip disappearing beneath the surface. We were fishing at a depth of 120 feet in over 400 feet of water, so I could eliminate the possibility of being snagged on the bottom. If it was a salmon, it was taking no run at all; it merely bent the rod and seemed to be swimming with the boat.
“Look at it pull, look at it pull my rod! That’s a fish, ain’t it, Dave? Whooeee, look at that.”
Of course Charlie was no expert on what a fish was supposed to feel like on the end of the rod. To be honest, I couldn’t tell Charlie what he had either. There was always a possibility it was a salmon, but it could equally have been any number of other things. This was what made fishing so endlessly fascinating. From long experience I had learned not to assume anything.
The line started moving away from the boat.
Whatever it was was heading for open water.
I followed it with my boat. The line began to run off the reel.
“Hey, look at this! It’s running! It’s taking line!”
It was a slow, steady pull, not the slashing run usually associated with a salmon. Sometimes a fish won’t realize it’s hooked right away. As if to confirm this it shook the line and started peeling it out faster.
“Whoooooeeee!” yelled Charlie. “Look at that thing run!”
I knew he was completely convinced he was playing a salmon, and I knew what the next question would be.
“Say, Dave, how big do you think it is?”
I’m not as superstitious about fishing as Lucky Petersen, but there are a few things I avoid. Like most of the guides, I have a horror of weighing a fish before it is in the boat. Without fail, as soon as an estimate of weight is uttered, you may as well kiss the fish goodbye. Even if the fish is exhausted and lying over on its side begging for the net, if someone says, “Look at that! It’s got to be at least thirty pounds,” I know in a matter of moments I’ll see the hooks drift out and it will wave its tail at me as it swims away.
“I don’t like to guess about things like that,” I told him simply.
“You’ve seen enough of these, you must have some kind of idea,” he insisted.
“I don’t like to say anything until it’s in the boat.”
“The way it’s pulling, its got to be at least thirty pounds, it’s got to be a tyee, don’t ya think, Dave?”
I knew now that this could only end badly.
“Ummm . . . try to keep your rod tip up if you can, or you’ll lose whatever this is.”
“I think you’re trying to change the subject on me, Dave. You’re not superstitious, are you?”
“You do this as long as I have, it’s inevitable,” I admitted.
We had caught the fish near some of Charlie’s buddies. At first they hung around, yelling words of encouragement.
“Whooeeee, Charlie, fight that sonofabitch! Hey, look, Charlie’s got a big one on.”
“Get that little thing in the boat, Charlie, someone might see it!”
“Don’t let it get a look at you, Charlie, or you’ll scare the poor thing to death, you ugly sonofabitch.”
Charlie’s fish continued to pull us out into the inlet. One by one the other boats left for lunch. After playing the fish for almost an hour, we were the only ones left on the water and the Log Dump was disappearing in the distance. We had yet to see the fish; not only is the water deep, but the glacial runoff from farther up the inlet clouds it heavily. A fish has to be almost on the surface before you can see it.
Charlie gained line and then lost it again. He would get the fish close to the surface and then it would slowly run back out. It was more like Charlie was taking the fish for a walk. The fish was taking another run when his friend finally voiced what I had been thinking for some time.
“Do you really think you’ve got a salmon, Charlie? We’ve been playing it for a long time and we haven’t seen it yet. A tyee would have rolled or something by now, isn’t that right, Dave? Maybe we should forget it and head in for lunch. I’m getting hungry. What do you think, Dave?”
“I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been thinking the same thing myself.”
I had to start preparing to let Charlie down easy. His face was red from exertion and excitement. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and small flecks of spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth.
“Hey,” Charlie yelled over his shoulder at us, “I can’t believe this. We’re on the BULLET TRAIN TO TOKYO and you ladies want to get off for lunch!”
I settled back into my seat. I knew we had to see this thing through to the end. I continued to follow the fish as it headed out to the middle of the inlet. The Log Dump was now barely visible in the distance, and ours was the only boat for miles. The only sounds were the water lapping at the hull and Charlie’s laboured breathing. Charlie was beginning to tire; his arm shook holding the rod and the hand turning the reel was clearly cramping.
I don’t know if the fish was getting tired as well (I doubted it), or if it was just getting bored with Charlie. It swam toward the surface. Charlie was able to reel in the line and the spool filled. The weight appeared just under the water.
“Hey, I can see the weight!” Charlie yelled.
His excitement was building. He frowned in concentration and gathered the line until the weight was at the tip of the rod. Whatever was on the line was only twelve feet away on the end of the leader.
“Lift the rod, Charlie. I know you’re tired but you’ve got to lift it up.”
His whole body shook with the effort. The line sang like the string of an instrument. The rod bent over double and wobbled back and forth as he strained. A grey shape took form underneath us and suddenly there it was.
It was a dogfish.
“It’s a damn dogfish!”
Charlie’s friend had a way of stating the obvious.
It was a dogfish—but it was a damn big dogfish, I had to say that much. It was almost five feet from nose to tail and had to weigh well in excess of thirty pounds. It was rare to see them that big.
The hooks had snagged the back near the dorsal fin. The skin is very tough, so the hooks would never pull out; but as far as the fish was concerned they were simply a nuisance.
Charlie said nothing at all. He was numb with disappointment. I cut the line and we watched the fish swim away.
Charlie and his friend were quiet on the way back to the resort. I had some idea of what would be in store for us when we got back there. They were all waiting for us on the dock as we pulled in.
“Hey, Charlie, what did you get?”
“Yeah, Charlie, what did you get? Show us the fish.”
“Is it a tyee, Charlie?”
I tied up the boat and the three of us stepped out onto the dock.
“Where is it?”
“Yeah, Charlie, where’s your fish?”
Charlie looked stricken. His friend kept silent out of loyalty. The rest of his friends gathered around us. They were all looking at me expectantly. They knew the guide had to tell the true story.
“It got away,” I said.
Which was true, though I was leaving out a few things.
“It got away?”
“Well, did you see it?”
“Yeah, did you see it at least?”
Though the question was addressed to Charlie they were all still looking at me, none more intensely than Charlie. I felt bad for him. His bravado of earlier in the day
had evaporated. I looked at the faces of his friends crowded around. They were flushed with alcohol and filled with tobacco juice. I noticed their little leather knife cases on their belts. These men all believed in survival of the fittest. They accepted it as a primal law of nature, no matter how wrong that might be; it was one of their core beliefs. Any sign of weakness and they would turn on Charlie like mink on a stunned chicken. He would be known as Dogfish Charlie for the rest of his life. Whenever they got together they would have a good laugh at his expense, and that would have been the mildest of it.
Survival of the fittest wasn’t a part of my worldview. My experiences as a fisherman had led me to believe the universe wasn’t quite so predictable. There was only one thing for me to do. I lied.
“We never did see it.”
“Wow . . .”
“It must have been a big one.”
“Yeah, Dave, how big do you think it was?”
“Huge,” I said. “It was a tyee for sure.”
nineteen THE TROUBLE WITH FREE ENTERPRISE
TROUTBREATH WAS IN charge of the only fuel supply in forty miles. He was in reality a lowly dock boy, a gas jockey, and a member of the subgroup known as shore staff. At most of the lodges in the area it was a very menial position, subject to the whims of the owners, and looked down upon by the guides. However, Mr. Carrington didn’t pay much attention to the day-to-day running of things. As long as there were no complaints from either the guests or the guides, he didn’t care what happened. Other people had worked the gas float before Troutbreath, but there had always been problems, annoying little things that distracted Mr. Carrington and took him away from his work. Since his wife had hired Troutbreath, though, things had never run more smoothly.