Authors: Ian Frazier
The Fish's Eye (6 page)
Deren concentrates on tackle, of course; he also concentrates on information. Information is vital to angling. The fact that anglers are always hungry for information is probably one of the reasons
The Compleat Angler
has gone through over three hundred editions since it first appeared. Anglers are always trying to find out how to fish, where to fish, when to fish, what to fish. They always want to know about new killer lures, new techniques, new hot spots nobody else knows. Nowadays, it is often easier to buy the most esoteric piece of equipment than it is to obtain a really great piece of information. An angling writer will tell about the tremendous fishing on some tremendous stream, and then add that he's not going to give the name or site of the stream, for fear that all his readers will go there and ruin it. Most angling information is subjective. A theory that one person puts into practice with confidence works fine for him but may be worse than useless to the person with no confidence in itâsort of like literature or medicine. Every angler knows one fishing secret that he thinks nobody else knows. One person will say he's just discovered the greatest fly or the greatest technique of all time, then another will come along and say it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard of, and so on. It is a cliché that fishermen are big liars, but some fishermen actually are. Sometimes the land
of angling information is like that land in the riddle where half the inhabitants tell the truth all the time and the other half lie.
The Compleat Angler
has gone through over three hundred editions since it first appeared. Anglers are always trying to find out how to fish, where to fish, when to fish, what to fish. They always want to know about new killer lures, new techniques, new hot spots nobody else knows. Nowadays, it is often easier to buy the most esoteric piece of equipment than it is to obtain a really great piece of information. An angling writer will tell about the tremendous fishing on some tremendous stream, and then add that he's not going to give the name or site of the stream, for fear that all his readers will go there and ruin it. Most angling information is subjective. A theory that one person puts into practice with confidence works fine for him but may be worse than useless to the person with no confidence in itâsort of like literature or medicine. Every angler knows one fishing secret that he thinks nobody else knows. One person will say he's just discovered the greatest fly or the greatest technique of all time, then another will come along and say it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard of, and so on. It is a cliché that fishermen are big liars, but some fishermen actually are. Sometimes the land
of angling information is like that land in the riddle where half the inhabitants tell the truth all the time and the other half lie.
All day long, Deren hands out and receives angling information. People are eager to share with him the one thing they know. Sometimes he will throw cold water on them by giving them an answer that begins with his standard “That's one of the great misconceptions of fly-fishing.” Sometimes (less often) he will tell them they are absolutely right. His agreement or disagreement is never less than vehement. A very large number of people, in his opinion, have no idea what they are talking about. He says, “You follow something long enough and you realize you know as much asâor
more than
âanyone else, and that opens up a door. Most of this knowledge is based on having the problem yourself and solving it. A guy can come in here and ask me a question and I'll know I can answer his Questions 1, 2, and 3. But it might be two years before the guy comes in and asks Question No. 2.” And when Deren is right (as he was when he told me how to catch a trout on that April day) he's really right. In the world of angling information, he gives the impression of knowing everything, and it is this impression that's important. If the stream of people who flow through New York bring Deren sustenance, then it is the weedy tangle of angling information, of statement and contradiction and myth and old wives' tale and supposition and theory and actual fact growing out of five hundred years of angling, that provides him with cover.
more than
âanyone else, and that opens up a door. Most of this knowledge is based on having the problem yourself and solving it. A guy can come in here and ask me a question and I'll know I can answer his Questions 1, 2, and 3. But it might be two years before the guy comes in and asks Question No. 2.” And when Deren is right (as he was when he told me how to catch a trout on that April day) he's really right. In the world of angling information, he gives the impression of knowing everything, and it is this impression that's important. If the stream of people who flow through New York bring Deren sustenance, then it is the weedy tangle of angling information, of statement and contradiction and myth and old wives' tale and supposition and theory and actual fact growing out of five hundred years of angling, that provides him with cover.
I have never fished with Deren, but once (although I did not know it at the time) I fished near Deren. One year I fished in
Montana for two monthsâmostly in the Yellowstone River, near the town of Livingston. Deren goes out to Montana in the early fall just about every year, so when I got back to New York I went to see him. I asked him if he'd ever been to Livingston. “You're goddamn right I been to Livingston. I was hit by a truck in Livingston,” he said. (He and his wife were in their camper, pulling into a gas station, when a kid in a pickup truck ran into them. Deren was not hurt, but his wife had to have her arm X-rayed. Nothing broken.) I asked him if he had ever fished at a place where I fished a lot, called the Sheep Mountain Fishing Access. “I remember smells, I remember the way things look, I remember sounds, but I don't remember names,” he said. (I know this is true. Despite the fact that I have talked to him for many hours, and despite that fact that when I first introduced myself to him he said, “That's a good name for you,” I doubt very much if Deren has any idea what my name is. But when I call him on the phone he always recognizes my voice right away.)
Montana for two monthsâmostly in the Yellowstone River, near the town of Livingston. Deren goes out to Montana in the early fall just about every year, so when I got back to New York I went to see him. I asked him if he'd ever been to Livingston. “You're goddamn right I been to Livingston. I was hit by a truck in Livingston,” he said. (He and his wife were in their camper, pulling into a gas station, when a kid in a pickup truck ran into them. Deren was not hurt, but his wife had to have her arm X-rayed. Nothing broken.) I asked him if he had ever fished at a place where I fished a lot, called the Sheep Mountain Fishing Access. “I remember smells, I remember the way things look, I remember sounds, but I don't remember names,” he said. (I know this is true. Despite the fact that I have talked to him for many hours, and despite that fact that when I first introduced myself to him he said, “That's a good name for you,” I doubt very much if Deren has any idea what my name is. But when I call him on the phone he always recognizes my voice right away.)
“Sheep Mountain is downstream from the bridge on the road that leads to White Sulphur Springs,” I said. “The river breaks up into lots of channels there. There are a bunch of islands.”
“Yeah, I know the place you're talking about. I've fished there. Not last time we were out. Last time we camped on the river upstream from there.”
“Just this fall?”
“Yeah. We got to the Yellowstone on October 10.”
October 10 was my last full day in Montana. I fished all day, very hard, because I had not caught the fish I had dreamed I would catch out there. The river had filled up with mud and little pieces of moss right after I arrived, in mid-Augustâa man in a fishing-tackle store told me that a whole
cliff had washed away in a rainstorm, up in Yellowstone Park, near the river's sourceâand it stayed muddy for several weeks. Then, after it cleared, the weather became hot and the water level dropped, and my luck stayed bad. I threw nymphs, among them Deren's big stone flies, and grasshopper imitations and bee imitations and ants and dragonflies all over the river every day. I caught whitefish and unimpressive trout. (Just before I left, I told that same man in the tackle store the size of the largest trout I'd caught during my stay, and he winced and went “Oooh!”âas if I had shown him a nasty bruise on my forehead.) On my last day, I took a lunch, drove to the fishing access, fished my way several miles upstream, crossed a bridge, and worked my way more than several miles back downstream. When I noticed that it was getting dark, I was on the opposite side of the river from my car, and miles from the bridge. I started through the brush back to the bridge. The beavers who live along the river cut saplings with their teeth at a forty-five-degree angle. These chisel-pointed saplings are unpleasant to fall on. The fishing net dangling from my belt wanted to stop and make friends with every tree branch in Montana. Occasionally I would stop and swear for three or four minutes straight. At one of these swearing stops I happened to look across the river, and I saw my car where I had parked it, lit up in the headlights of a passing car. I calculated: there was my car, just across the big, dark, cold Yellowstone it was many more miles of underbrush to the bridge, and miles from the bridge back to the car; the river was down from its usual level, and I had forded it not far from this spot a few days before; but then that was during the day, and now I couldn't even see the other bank unless a car drove by. I waded in. I wasn't wearing waders. It took a second for the water to come through my shoes. It was cold. My pants ballooned
around my shins. The water came past my knees, past my thighs. Then it got
really
cold. I was trying to keep my shoulders parallel to the flow of the river. The water came to my armpits, and my feet were tiptoeing along the pebbles on the river bottom. I still couldn't see the bank before me, and when I glanced behind me I couldn't see that bank, either. I was going downstream fast. Then I realized that, gathered up tight and holding my arms out of the water, I had not been breathing. I took a deep breath, then another, and another. When I did, I saw all around me, under my chin in the dark water, the reflections of many stars. The water was not getting any deeper. I was talking to myself in reassuring tones. Finally, the water began to get shallower. Then it got even shallower. Then I was strolling in ankle-deep water on a little shoal about a quarter mile downstream from my car. I walked up onto the bank and sang a couple of bars from “We Will Rock You,” by Queen. Then I raised my arms and kissed my biceps. I walked to my car and drove back to the house I was staying in and took an Olympia beer out of the refrigerator and drank it. The motto of Olympia beer is “It's the Water.” That night, I had a physical memory of the river. It was a feeling of powerful current pushing against my left side so insistently that I had to keep overcoming the illusion that I was about to be washed out of bed.
cliff had washed away in a rainstorm, up in Yellowstone Park, near the river's sourceâand it stayed muddy for several weeks. Then, after it cleared, the weather became hot and the water level dropped, and my luck stayed bad. I threw nymphs, among them Deren's big stone flies, and grasshopper imitations and bee imitations and ants and dragonflies all over the river every day. I caught whitefish and unimpressive trout. (Just before I left, I told that same man in the tackle store the size of the largest trout I'd caught during my stay, and he winced and went “Oooh!”âas if I had shown him a nasty bruise on my forehead.) On my last day, I took a lunch, drove to the fishing access, fished my way several miles upstream, crossed a bridge, and worked my way more than several miles back downstream. When I noticed that it was getting dark, I was on the opposite side of the river from my car, and miles from the bridge. I started through the brush back to the bridge. The beavers who live along the river cut saplings with their teeth at a forty-five-degree angle. These chisel-pointed saplings are unpleasant to fall on. The fishing net dangling from my belt wanted to stop and make friends with every tree branch in Montana. Occasionally I would stop and swear for three or four minutes straight. At one of these swearing stops I happened to look across the river, and I saw my car where I had parked it, lit up in the headlights of a passing car. I calculated: there was my car, just across the big, dark, cold Yellowstone it was many more miles of underbrush to the bridge, and miles from the bridge back to the car; the river was down from its usual level, and I had forded it not far from this spot a few days before; but then that was during the day, and now I couldn't even see the other bank unless a car drove by. I waded in. I wasn't wearing waders. It took a second for the water to come through my shoes. It was cold. My pants ballooned
around my shins. The water came past my knees, past my thighs. Then it got
really
cold. I was trying to keep my shoulders parallel to the flow of the river. The water came to my armpits, and my feet were tiptoeing along the pebbles on the river bottom. I still couldn't see the bank before me, and when I glanced behind me I couldn't see that bank, either. I was going downstream fast. Then I realized that, gathered up tight and holding my arms out of the water, I had not been breathing. I took a deep breath, then another, and another. When I did, I saw all around me, under my chin in the dark water, the reflections of many stars. The water was not getting any deeper. I was talking to myself in reassuring tones. Finally, the water began to get shallower. Then it got even shallower. Then I was strolling in ankle-deep water on a little shoal about a quarter mile downstream from my car. I walked up onto the bank and sang a couple of bars from “We Will Rock You,” by Queen. Then I raised my arms and kissed my biceps. I walked to my car and drove back to the house I was staying in and took an Olympia beer out of the refrigerator and drank it. The motto of Olympia beer is “It's the Water.” That night, I had a physical memory of the river. It was a feeling of powerful current pushing against my left side so insistently that I had to keep overcoming the illusion that I was about to be washed out of bed.
“Did you fish that day, on the tenth? How did you do?” I asked.
“Oh, that first day we were on the Yellowstone I hardly even got out of the camper,” Deren said. “I was pooped from driving, and I honestly did not think that conditions were at all favorable. The water was down, it was too bright. I did take one walk down to the river, for the benefit of these two guys who were following me. When I'm in Montana, guys follow
me wherever I go, because they think I'll lead them to good fishing. I showed these two guys a piece of holding water where they might find some big trout, and then I went back to the camper. Later that evening, after dark, the guys came to my camper, banged on the door, woke me and Catherine up. They had this goddamn huge brown trout they'd caught, right where I told them. They were pretty happy about that.”
me wherever I go, because they think I'll lead them to good fishing. I showed these two guys a piece of holding water where they might find some big trout, and then I went back to the camper. Later that evening, after dark, the guys came to my camper, banged on the door, woke me and Catherine up. They had this goddamn huge brown trout they'd caught, right where I told them. They were pretty happy about that.”
“I didn't catch any big trout, but that same night I forded the river,” I said.
Deren looked at me. “That's a big river,” he said.
On the inside of the door to his shop Deren has posted what is probably his most famous maxim: “There don't have to be a thousand fish in a river; let me locate a good one and I'll get a thousand dreams out of him before I catch himâand, if I catch him, I'll turn him loose.”
For Larry Madison, a wildlife photographer and magazine editor who often fished with Deren thirty years ago, a thousand dreams were hundreds more than his patience could stand: “Jim would get in a pool and just pound it all day. I'd say, âOh, Christ, you been in there for ten hours and you haven't had a hit. Let's go home.' Not him.”
Fishing is worth any amount of effort and any amount of expense to people who love it, because in the end you get such a large number of dreams per fish. You can dream about a fish for years before the one moment when your fly is in the right place, when something is about to happen, when you hold your breath and time expands like a bubble until suddenly fish and fisherman feel each other's live weight. And for a long
time afterward the memory of that moment gives you something you can rest your mind on at night, just before sleep.
time afterward the memory of that moment gives you something you can rest your mind on at night, just before sleep.
(The last word I had from Deren came via my brother-in-law, John Hayes. A few months after this article appeared, in 1982, I moved to Montana. That December, John stopped by the Roost, and Deren asked why I hadn't been coming around. John said that I was now living in northwest Montana. Deren said, “Tell him, âDon't drown.'” Jim Deren died, and the Angler's Roost closed, the following year.)
O
n the West Branch of the Ausable, an Adirondack river three hundred miles north of Manhattan, the stone looks the same as the stone downstate, only wilder. Big rocks of the kind that people sun themselves on in Central Park spill down the bed of the river, which sometimes pools around them and sometimes rushes by, white and fast; granite boulders the light gray or rose-pink of building fronts sit in mid-current in skirts of eddies; smaller boulders on the stream edge make a chain of bathtub-sized pools filled by small waterfalls. Looking into some larger pools from above, you can see sharp-edged blocks of granite lying toppled on the bottom. Tea-colored water pours steadily over lips as smooth as subway stairs. Cliffs of granite climb from the river in small terraces of pine and alder. Crotches between streamside boulders collect bunches of driftwood, along with spiderwebs and pine straw and pieces of broken picnic cooler lids and wads of fishing line. The underwater rocks are so slick with gray-green algae that you have to grope along each one with your foot as you wade. Felt-soled boots are a must;
wading staffs, too. The smooth granite of the big boulders, cool in the morning, warm on a sunny afternoon, does not give you much to grab on to when the current starts to pull. In the fast sections, the sound of the main channels is so loud it overpowers the smaller noises of streamlets at the edge. Underneath the rushing is a deep, muffled grinding of the rocks in the bed. The sound is like a train passing under the street. I don't wade out in mid-current unless I really need to. At a place miles from any town I saw a boulder a ways out in the river with a strange marking. Slipping, sliding, turning sidewise against the current, nearly falling, I waded to it. The mark was a borehole, a hole drilled for blasting at a quarry or a construction site. There is an old quarry near the river someplace far upstream. I climbed onto the boulder, noticed a likely place I couldn't have reached before, braced my knee in the borehole, cast. My dry fly, an Ausable Wulff, had less than a second to sit on some slack water before the current would snatch it. A rainbow trout shot to the surface, took the fly, dived.
n the West Branch of the Ausable, an Adirondack river three hundred miles north of Manhattan, the stone looks the same as the stone downstate, only wilder. Big rocks of the kind that people sun themselves on in Central Park spill down the bed of the river, which sometimes pools around them and sometimes rushes by, white and fast; granite boulders the light gray or rose-pink of building fronts sit in mid-current in skirts of eddies; smaller boulders on the stream edge make a chain of bathtub-sized pools filled by small waterfalls. Looking into some larger pools from above, you can see sharp-edged blocks of granite lying toppled on the bottom. Tea-colored water pours steadily over lips as smooth as subway stairs. Cliffs of granite climb from the river in small terraces of pine and alder. Crotches between streamside boulders collect bunches of driftwood, along with spiderwebs and pine straw and pieces of broken picnic cooler lids and wads of fishing line. The underwater rocks are so slick with gray-green algae that you have to grope along each one with your foot as you wade. Felt-soled boots are a must;
wading staffs, too. The smooth granite of the big boulders, cool in the morning, warm on a sunny afternoon, does not give you much to grab on to when the current starts to pull. In the fast sections, the sound of the main channels is so loud it overpowers the smaller noises of streamlets at the edge. Underneath the rushing is a deep, muffled grinding of the rocks in the bed. The sound is like a train passing under the street. I don't wade out in mid-current unless I really need to. At a place miles from any town I saw a boulder a ways out in the river with a strange marking. Slipping, sliding, turning sidewise against the current, nearly falling, I waded to it. The mark was a borehole, a hole drilled for blasting at a quarry or a construction site. There is an old quarry near the river someplace far upstream. I climbed onto the boulder, noticed a likely place I couldn't have reached before, braced my knee in the borehole, cast. My dry fly, an Ausable Wulff, had less than a second to sit on some slack water before the current would snatch it. A rainbow trout shot to the surface, took the fly, dived.
In 1950, the angling writer Ray Bergman, in his book
Trout
, described the West Branch of the Ausable:
Trout
, described the West Branch of the Ausable:
A river rife with fishing legends, the home of numerous trout; a stream wildly fascinating, capable of giving you both a grand time and a miserable one; a stream possessing a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde temperament and a character strong enough to spread its fame from one corner of our country to the other. The Ausable commands your respect. It tests your skill and ingenuity. It is not a stream that will appeal to the timid, the weak, or the old. You like it best before you reach the age of forty. After that you wish you had youthful energy so
that you could enjoy it as you did before the years of striving for existence had sapped your strength and made you a bit fearful of slippery rocks and powerful currents.
that you could enjoy it as you did before the years of striving for existence had sapped your strength and made you a bit fearful of slippery rocks and powerful currents.
He does not mention the blackflies. When I stepped from my car late one morning in June, the sunny forest of conifers and hardwoods directed them at me like a ray. I got back in the car immediately and drove to Au Sable Forks and bought some Cutter insect repellent in a solid tube. At the elementary school there, it was recess; kids stood around on the playground twitching and swatting. I rolled the repellent over all exposed skin, stinging that morning's razor cuts. On the river, when I began to sweatâchest waders can be suffocatingâdrops flavored with repellent got into my mouth and made my lips tingle. The flies orbited me at several quantum levels, chewed my forearms through my shirtsleeve vents, made inroads under my collar, took long excursions between T-shirt and skin. I continued upstream, swatting and casting, slithering over rocks, splashing, stomping down brush. I didn't see a single fish. Nothing touched my dry fly, I got no strikes on my nymph. It began to rain lightly, then to pour. I decided to go back to the car. I left the river and climbed a steep cliff and got lost. I found an old logging road, followed it to a gravel road. By a hard-to-explain theory, I reasoned that if I just kept turning left at every intersection I would end up at the car. The theory turned out to be correct; however, the counterclockwise loop I described in the process covered perhaps five miles. I went up and down hills, on paved roads and unpaved. Rain fell so hard it made a loud noise on my hat. Even the money in my wallet got wet.
This particular trip, I was going nuts because I had not
caught a fish in a while. In fact, I had fished two days on the river the month before without catching anything at all. People say, “Well, it's nice just to get out.” But when you're not catching anything, a heron flies by with wings creaking like a wooden pump handle, and a kingfisher ratchets over the water, and a beaver with its hair slicked back swims at you and spots you and pounds the water with its tail as it dives, and a robin flies back and forth across the river with something in its bill on each return trip, and a cedar waxwing stops in midair to snatch an insect, and a white gull flies along the river course and disappears around a bend, and two woodcocks go up, one after the other, from a patch of alders, and bluets and violets and purple trilliums and swamp buttercups bloom along the bank, and it all seems vaguely to make fun of you. I'm not really there until I catch a fish. I reached the car, finally, and took off my stuff and drove, soaking wet, to another place on the river without stopping to eat.
caught a fish in a while. In fact, I had fished two days on the river the month before without catching anything at all. People say, “Well, it's nice just to get out.” But when you're not catching anything, a heron flies by with wings creaking like a wooden pump handle, and a kingfisher ratchets over the water, and a beaver with its hair slicked back swims at you and spots you and pounds the water with its tail as it dives, and a robin flies back and forth across the river with something in its bill on each return trip, and a cedar waxwing stops in midair to snatch an insect, and a white gull flies along the river course and disappears around a bend, and two woodcocks go up, one after the other, from a patch of alders, and bluets and violets and purple trilliums and swamp buttercups bloom along the bank, and it all seems vaguely to make fun of you. I'm not really there until I catch a fish. I reached the car, finally, and took off my stuff and drove, soaking wet, to another place on the river without stopping to eat.
The West Branch of the Ausable contains lots of different kinds of water, from rapids to dammed-up narrow lake to waterfall flume to deep pool to slow, semi-marshy meadow stream. Actually, that's almost in reverse order. The river's upper reaches, near the town of Lake Placid, flow over mud-and-sand bottom through a level valley, sometimes past an expanse of potato fields. I had seen big fish rising on that upstream section the year before. It is thirty or more river miles from Au Sable Forks, about twenty by car. I parked behind several other cars at a one-lane bridge over the river. Fly fishermen were standing in the water upstream and down. I walked a long way upstream and emerged from the brush and
saw another fisherman. I continued until I couldn't see anyone. I was hoping to coincide with a hatch of the big mayfly called the green drake. A big hatch or spinnerfall of green drakes can make the river percolate with feeding trout.
saw another fisherman. I continued until I couldn't see anyone. I was hoping to coincide with a hatch of the big mayfly called the green drake. A big hatch or spinnerfall of green drakes can make the river percolate with feeding trout.
As soon as I stepped into the river, a mayfly disengaged itself from the surface film and flew waveringly by me. I snatched it from the air, saw that it was a green drake, and ate it. Mayflies taste a little like grass stems, and have a similar crunch. Once, I was fishing the Sturgeon River, in Michigan, with my friend Don when drakes began to hatch, and the trout fed so eagerly, chasing insects five feet across the surface and coming clear out of the water and slapping logs with their tails and gulping and splashing, that we got hungry, too. We began to grab insects from the water and the air. They were like hors d'oeuvres, little winged shrimp. They left a bitter aftertaste and a dryness, but no other ill effects, and they do fill you up.
This time I saw no drakes after that first one. The black-flies were as bad here as downstream. On my way I had passed a man fishing in beekeepers' netting. I fished listlessly and hopelessly. Two guys came by spin-fishing from a canoe and politely dragged it through a shallow channel rather than disturb the deep channel where I was. They asked if I was having any luck (that's what you ask, I've found, in the East; out West, the query is “Doin' any good?”), and I said no, and they said they'd just started. Hours later, I still hadn't caught anything. At least the wading here was easier than in the rapids. I ambled with the current, waist deep, half buoyant, bouncing along like someone walking on the moon. I got out and went through brush when I neared other fishermen. The river began to take on that sort of metallic color of a river with no fish in it. I kept casting out of nerve reflex and
changing flies faithlessly. The guys in the canoe paddled by again; they had been downstream and were now just cruising around. At my question, the guy in the stern reached down, fumbled for a moment, and, with both hands, lifted one of the biggest rainbow trout I had ever seen. It was two feet long, its belly sagged, its silver sides had just begun to fade in patches of discoloration.
changing flies faithlessly. The guys in the canoe paddled by again; they had been downstream and were now just cruising around. At my question, the guy in the stern reached down, fumbled for a moment, and, with both hands, lifted one of the biggest rainbow trout I had ever seen. It was two feet long, its belly sagged, its silver sides had just begun to fade in patches of discoloration.
This revived my concentration wonderfully. I tied on a weighted fly meant to imitate a crayfishâI had noticed bleached shells of crayfish claws in mud along the bankâand flailed it all over the river. It was the size of a hood ornament and caused me to flinch and duck as it whistled past. I lost it on a birch log. I tied on another fly and kept flailing. Rain began to fall again, and lightning flashed. As I approached the pool under the one-lane bridge, the guy who was fishing there left. I moved up to and past where he had been. Close to the bridge I saw a fish hit the surfaceâthe first rise I had seen all day. I tied on a White Wulffâa fly that resembles the green drake. I cast, watched the fly float among raindrop splashes. A fish rose, and I set the hook. I knew from the fight that this would be a decent-sized fish. I maneuvered him alongside and scooped him up in my net.
I am tempted to lie about how big he was, because it sort of embarrasses me to have been so pleased with a sleek, plump brown trout of no more than twelve inches. But there it is: I felt fine. Calm, justified, highly skilled, even a little dangerous. I released the trout and stepped from the river into the Adirondack scenery, to which I now belonged. I walked to my car. Up ahead, I saw the ski-jump towers used in the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. One tower is ninety meters high and the other is seventy. Lights to warn airplanes blink on top of the taller one. The rest of the structures were dark
against the dim gray sky. John Brown, the abolitionist, is buried a few hundred yards on the other side of the towers. He had a farm here in the 1850s, when he helped to build a community of free blacks, called Timbucto. A New York abolitionist gave the colonists the land, but John Brown paid for his own farm. After he was hanged for the raid on Harpers Ferry, his wife brought him back here by train, boat, and wagon. Eleven of his sons and followers lie in the small cemetery with him. John Brown loved this place, and pointed out the beauty of the scenery to his children. The mountainsâWhiteface, Marcy, and othersâreminded him of the fortresses in the Alleghenies he had planned as refuges for the slaves he would free. He lies next to a cabin-sized outcrop of granite in his former front yard.
against the dim gray sky. John Brown, the abolitionist, is buried a few hundred yards on the other side of the towers. He had a farm here in the 1850s, when he helped to build a community of free blacks, called Timbucto. A New York abolitionist gave the colonists the land, but John Brown paid for his own farm. After he was hanged for the raid on Harpers Ferry, his wife brought him back here by train, boat, and wagon. Eleven of his sons and followers lie in the small cemetery with him. John Brown loved this place, and pointed out the beauty of the scenery to his children. The mountainsâWhiteface, Marcy, and othersâreminded him of the fortresses in the Alleghenies he had planned as refuges for the slaves he would free. He lies next to a cabin-sized outcrop of granite in his former front yard.
Another morning, my wife and daughter dropped me off at the river near the ski jumps. They were going to Santa's Workshop, a little-kid amusement park in Wilmington, and would return in the evening. The day was hot and still. Trout were rising all up and down the river, feeding on tiny mayflies called tricos. These insects are the size of half a little-fingernail paring, or smaller, and the artificials that imitate them require tiny hooks with tiny eyes attached to wispy, hair-fine leaders. Working in such dimensions is right at the limit of my patience and dexterity. Many anglers ignore the trico hatches altogether. I found a fly that looked good in my box of tiny ones, and tied it to an 8X leader. Casting something so light and so hard to see is an activity bordering on mime. Finally, I put the fly more or less where I wanted it, and spotted it after it landed, thanks to its white wings. Fish rose all around it but
ignored it. I switched to another flyâsame result. I tied on tiny fly after tiny fly. The fish continued to rise eagerly. My flies floated unscathed through rising fish like plucky couriers through bomb explosions in a war movie.
ignored it. I switched to another flyâsame result. I tied on tiny fly after tiny fly. The fish continued to rise eagerly. My flies floated unscathed through rising fish like plucky couriers through bomb explosions in a war movie.
I worked my way far downstream and stopped at a gravel beach for lunch. A water snake zigzagged fast across the surface, in what looked like a shoelacing race. A hummingbird approached a honeysuckle bush in a series of right-angle lines, emerging from each blossom with a small, businesslike chirp. Suddenly I decided I should be fishing someplace far from where I was. I took off downstream, going overland through the brush so as not to disturb the water. There had been plenty of rain, and the bottomland was especially jungly. My too-small waders caused me to walk penguin-styleâa style that inhibited leaps and vaults. I suffered several pratfalls. I thrashed through deep brush for forty minutes or more. At one point, a dead tree had fallen onto the dense willows and alders, providing a kind of elevated highway. I walked on the tree until a rotten part of it gave and dumped me into the understory. More plunging and thrashing. I emerged onto a redmuck section of riverbank and breathed deep and looked at my watch. It was gone.
The watch had been my father's, a gift from my mother inscribed with a motto and the date of their marriage. She gave it to me after he died. My mind swerved toward panic, imagining the sad-sack story I would tell my wife, and how sorry she and my sisters would be for me. I looked back at the brush I'd been in for half a mile. No way, man. Then I took off my wadersâI had ripped out the crotch in the brushâand put my wading shoes back on. The watch must be somewhere. It was shiny metal. I had time before dark. Once I got back in the brush, it all looked the same, and I could not find
where I'd been. I found boggy places with no footprints in them. I kept going, tacking back and forth. Off to the left, through the green gloom, I recognized the fallen tree I'd walked on. I climbed on it again, traced my path to the place I'd fallen. Suddenly, among the nondescript broken gray branches below, I saw the brown of the leather watchband, and there it was, there the watch was! I held it in my right hand and raised it in the air and hoorahed.
where I'd been. I found boggy places with no footprints in them. I kept going, tacking back and forth. Off to the left, through the green gloom, I recognized the fallen tree I'd walked on. I climbed on it again, traced my path to the place I'd fallen. Suddenly, among the nondescript broken gray branches below, I saw the brown of the leather watchband, and there it was, there the watch was! I held it in my right hand and raised it in the air and hoorahed.
(1993)
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