The Fish's Eye (13 page)
Authors: Ian Frazier
I
used to have an idea of myself as a person who never came inside. I thought I was someone of no fixed address, at large, freeâspiritual kin to Jim Bridger, the famous mountain man who was said to have gone seventeen years without once sleeping between sheets or tasting white bread. This was, of course, a fantasy. Actually, I spent a lot of time hanging out in basements listening to records like everybody else. I didn't understand that my mostly indoor existence was defined by a hard law of nature, one I have only recently grasped. It is the law that says: Everyone who is outside eventually must come indoors. You have no choice and there are no exceptions; the indoor world will get us all. Jim Bridger himself spent his later years rocking by the fireplace in a community of other retired mountain men in Westport, Missouri. Furthermoreâand I might have glimpsed this, too, if I had taken off the headphones and looked closely at the particular basement where I was sittingâthe law says that when an outdoor guy, real or self-imagined, finally does come inside, the result, almost always, is household turmoil.
used to have an idea of myself as a person who never came inside. I thought I was someone of no fixed address, at large, freeâspiritual kin to Jim Bridger, the famous mountain man who was said to have gone seventeen years without once sleeping between sheets or tasting white bread. This was, of course, a fantasy. Actually, I spent a lot of time hanging out in basements listening to records like everybody else. I didn't understand that my mostly indoor existence was defined by a hard law of nature, one I have only recently grasped. It is the law that says: Everyone who is outside eventually must come indoors. You have no choice and there are no exceptions; the indoor world will get us all. Jim Bridger himself spent his later years rocking by the fireplace in a community of other retired mountain men in Westport, Missouri. Furthermoreâand I might have glimpsed this, too, if I had taken off the headphones and looked closely at the particular basement where I was sittingâthe law says that when an outdoor guy, real or self-imagined, finally does come inside, the result, almost always, is household turmoil.
For many years I lived surrounded by such disorder that it made people seasick to look at it. Sometimes I wondered idly why I couldn't seem to live any other way. Why, for example, were there always big black plastic sacks full of paint chips, relics of some abandoned renovation project, in a corner by my television? Why were there duck decoys on my bureau, and a pair of chest waders hanging from an overhead pipe like the lower part of a hanged man, and an old wooden bookcase with nothing in it but birdshot a friend and I fired into it one night with my 20-gauge, leaving it a sorry, shot-up hulk at the far end of the living room? The simple answer, which I did not know then, was that guys who think of themselves as Jim Bridger are always going to have dwellings that look like mine.
I kept that stuff around because deep down I liked it, uncomfortable and off-putting to guests though it was. I even became kind of a connoisseur of decorating schemes that brought the outdoors indoorsâwhat you might call the Jim Bridger school of interior decor. Friends who visited my first apartment recall the shriveled dead bat that hung from the light pull in my bathroom, but that was really only a sketch of the form's possibilities. Big items, especially those involving large animals and cars, made a stronger statement; I admired saddle blankets drying on a friend's radiator, jars of Bag Balm and stacked-up cases of motor oil in someone's dining room, carburetor parts soaking in plastic tubs of cleaning fluid on a neighbor's kitchen counter. Not long ago, at the house of a friend who is far more Jim Bridger than I, I saw a design innovation that left me in awe. The mirror in this friend's bathroom had come loose from the wall, and rather than trying to affix it again to the crumbling plaster, he had attached the clamps of a set of automobile jumper cables to each of the
mirror's top corners, and had nailed the cables to the ceiling with U-shaped fence staples. The mirror now hung level at its former position, swaying slightly, held by the bright copper of the jumper-cable clamps, the red cable leading upward on one side, the black cable on the otherâa perfection of modern-day Jim Bridger design.
mirror's top corners, and had nailed the cables to the ceiling with U-shaped fence staples. The mirror now hung level at its former position, swaying slightly, held by the bright copper of the jumper-cable clamps, the red cable leading upward on one side, the black cable on the otherâa perfection of modern-day Jim Bridger design.
The reason turmoil follows outdoor guys when they come indoors is that the two worlds are deeply at odds. Indoors and outdoors are enemies that coexist, uneasily, but are never reconciled. Perhaps you've noticed that nowadays, regardless of the weather, many cars on the road have their windows rolled up all the way. Many people today live entirely in sealed-up, climate-controlled spaces, from home to work to gym to mall. Sometimes when I walk in the densely populated New Jersey suburb where I now liveâon Christmas Day, for example, when everyone is inside playing with their new electronic toysâI feel as if the sky and the crows and the roadside weeds and I are part of an invisible, abstract dimension of no present use to man. The fact that the outdoors will always be so much bigger no matter how the indoors replicates itself adds a sense of desperation to our sealing-up and walling-in, as if at any little tear in the fabric the whole indoor enterprise will give way.
And when the tears in the fabric do appear, often they take the shape of a person coming indoors after weeks or months outside. The tears often have their own sound. It is the sound of the zipping and unzipping of zippers. Those high-pitched, insistent, drawn-out
zi-i-i-ps
cutting through the indoor quiet are the first warning signs. Then the zipping pauses, temporarily, because the person who is about to leave has finished packing; then the door opens and shuts, the lock clicks, and there follows a silence lasting a long while. Then the lock
clicks, the door opens, the backpacks and duffel bags drop on the floor, and not long after that, you hear the zipping again.
Zip!
The musty sleeping bag is strewn open to air across the back of the sofa.
Zip!
The wet tent fly is spread from chair to chair.
Zip!
A whole bunch of miscellaneous gearâwet socks, too-large hunting knife in handmade wooden scabbard, extra bootlaces, plastic plates still covered with an orange film of spaghetti sauce that camp washing couldn't removeârolls onto the linoleum. Suddenly those nubby little ends of pine branches that collect in the corners of tent floors are all over the place. Chaos has arrived.
zi-i-i-ps
cutting through the indoor quiet are the first warning signs. Then the zipping pauses, temporarily, because the person who is about to leave has finished packing; then the door opens and shuts, the lock clicks, and there follows a silence lasting a long while. Then the lock
clicks, the door opens, the backpacks and duffel bags drop on the floor, and not long after that, you hear the zipping again.
Zip!
The musty sleeping bag is strewn open to air across the back of the sofa.
Zip!
The wet tent fly is spread from chair to chair.
Zip!
A whole bunch of miscellaneous gearâwet socks, too-large hunting knife in handmade wooden scabbard, extra bootlaces, plastic plates still covered with an orange film of spaghetti sauce that camp washing couldn't removeârolls onto the linoleum. Suddenly those nubby little ends of pine branches that collect in the corners of tent floors are all over the place. Chaos has arrived.
Once, at a dinner whose circumstances were too fleeting and complicated to describe, I happened to sit next to the actor Dennis Hopper. Whatever my actual opinion of specific famous people may be, when I'm in their presence I always lose my head and say ridiculous things. Early in the conversation with Dennis Hopper I told him I was working on the script of a movie in which he would be perfect for the starring roleâa complete lie that came out of my mouth with no assistance from me. I have blurred out the rest of what we talked about, except for two pieces of information Dennis Hopper conveyed to me. One, he told me that he was related somehow to Daniel Boone, the famous frontiersman; and two, he said that Daniel Boone, despite his outdoor image, was also a skilled carpenter who invented the built-in closet. Before Daniel Boone, Dennis Hopper said, built-in closets didn't exist, and people kept their clothes in freestanding armoires.
I believed Dennis Hopper unquestioningly. Daniel Boone, inventor of the closet: it makes perfect sense. Of
course
America's original outdoor guy would create that important piece of indoor architecture. Without closets, outdoor guys could
never have come indoors at all. We'd have had to keep them and their stuff in some rude structure out in the yard by the corncrib and the barn. The guy himself, all smoky and tallow-smeared and unpresentable, is bad enough; far worse, from the point of view of proliferating chaos, is his stuff. What to do with the powder horn, jar of foul-smelling trap bait, bullet molds, inflatable India-rubber pillow, small foot-shaped stones ideal for heating and dropping inside wet boots, and on and on multiplied indefinitely? Into Mr. Boone's convenient closet with it all! Dump all the stuff every which way, not even taking the old worms off the fishing hooks; then close the door and forget about it! Your descendants will thank you, Dan'l, and henceforth will honor this tradition always.
course
America's original outdoor guy would create that important piece of indoor architecture. Without closets, outdoor guys could
never have come indoors at all. We'd have had to keep them and their stuff in some rude structure out in the yard by the corncrib and the barn. The guy himself, all smoky and tallow-smeared and unpresentable, is bad enough; far worse, from the point of view of proliferating chaos, is his stuff. What to do with the powder horn, jar of foul-smelling trap bait, bullet molds, inflatable India-rubber pillow, small foot-shaped stones ideal for heating and dropping inside wet boots, and on and on multiplied indefinitely? Into Mr. Boone's convenient closet with it all! Dump all the stuff every which way, not even taking the old worms off the fishing hooks; then close the door and forget about it! Your descendants will thank you, Dan'l, and henceforth will honor this tradition always.
Once the stuff has been disposed of, the outdoor guy himself is easier to manage. A little hosing off, a quick dusting with louse powder, and civilization can go on. The sixshooter, dynamite, and carbon-steel railroad rails were important to settling the continent, it's true; but without the closet, Euro-Americans would never have crossed the Alleghenies.
I know a few people the floor space of whose houses is about one-third closet, technically speaking. Often the closet area is an entire room of its own, perhaps a former pantry or sewing room convenient to a back or side door. This space may be called, a bit shamefacedly, the “mudroom,” perhaps to explain why a portion of it is devoted to sticks the dogs brought home. Usually I find this room more congenial and affecting than any other in the house. I have a weakness for the ambiguous,
the neither-nor; this room is not outside, of course, but neither does it succeed as the kind of indoor space in which most people would actually want to be. Years ago I sometimes had fun in rooms like these, sitting on stacks of firewood and drinking shots of whiskey with friends. The comfort a mudroom offers, however, is hard to appreciate sober. Such a room is meant for passing through, not staying in. In the war between indoors and outdoors, rooms like this provide the buffer zone.
the neither-nor; this room is not outside, of course, but neither does it succeed as the kind of indoor space in which most people would actually want to be. Years ago I sometimes had fun in rooms like these, sitting on stacks of firewood and drinking shots of whiskey with friends. The comfort a mudroom offers, however, is hard to appreciate sober. Such a room is meant for passing through, not staying in. In the war between indoors and outdoors, rooms like this provide the buffer zone.
Houses that don't have catchall closets or rooms in which the inhabitants can dump outdoor stuff always seem sinister to me. You see these houses more and more in movies nowadays, usually with Michael Douglas living in them, plotting hard-to-follow financial crimes. When I reflect that most of the kids I know would be happy to live forever in these houses watching TV and playing video games and fooling around on the computer, I fear for the world outside. Sure, the kids hear about the environment every other day in school, and they know polluters are bad, and their fruit-scented shampoo has pictures of endangered species printed on the bottle. But if the Everglades, say, disappeared under a giant parking lot tomorrow, are these kids really going to care?
Well, the Everglades themselves probably wouldn't care either. They can afford to overlook such details, extending as they do so far beyond us in time. It's a fact that while we can destroy plenty of beautiful and irreplaceable parts of nature, we can't do much about its mess. Pave the unruly swamp, and it reappears as the brown water rising in your basement, the rare African virus borne by mosquitoes in the park. However we attack it, the outdoor world will always have the advantage of its messiness and its size. And no matter how high-tech
and convenient and comfortable and wired our indoors becomes, the mess and the size out there will lure us, and we'll keep tracking our muddy, unplanned boot prints across the floor.
and convenient and comfortable and wired our indoors becomes, the mess and the size out there will lure us, and we'll keep tracking our muddy, unplanned boot prints across the floor.
(2001)
When we first moved to Montana, I sometimes took my daughter fishing with me. Cora was only six years old, but she liked exploring in the woods, and I thought she might find fishing interesting. As I cast, she stood on the bank and watched. Once she found a grasshopper fly I'd lost, snagged on a log. Sometimes she asked questions, or told me when she saw a fish jump. After an hour or so of dispassionate observation, she would announce that she wanted to go home.
On a trip to New York City at about that time, she got sick, and her mother and I took her to her former pediatrician in Manhattan. The doctor, making conversation, asked Cora how she liked Montana. Cora said she liked it. The doctor asked her what she did for fun in Montana, and Cora said she went fishing with her daddy sometimes. The doctor asked her what kind of fish she and her daddy caught. “Oh,” Cora said reprovingly, “we
never
catch anything.”
never
catch anything.”
In Missoula in early fall the sky is a bright blue tinted with dust and car exhaust. The maples along the city streets and the cottonwoods in the river bottoms turn yellow, and as you walk among them each leaf is another small variation on that single ubiquitous yellow shade. Then, sometimes in just a couple of days, all the leaves fall, and the yellow that was at tree height moves to the ground. In early fall the weather is usually calm, the nights cool, and the rivers clear.
On a fall afternoon not long after we'd moved, I took my wife and kids out to the Bitterroot River. Self-denyingly, I didn't fish; I thought instead I would fool around the bank and the shallows with the kids. Thomas, who was two, stood on a little gravel beach beneath a willow and threw stones into the water. Boys of that age, and some girls, can throw stones into water for an unlimited amount of time. My wife dangled her feet by him while Cora and I went off into some brambly shoreline underbrush. There were many vines, and she was the right size to scoot through them. Floodwater the previous spring had left a lot of sticks in heaps in the lower tree branches. Cora said they looked like a bunch of cockroach legs jumbled together. Far back in the thicket we found a bird's nest made entirely of pieces of the thinnest tendrils of the vines.
Near where Thomas was playing was a level, grassy stretch of bank just a few inches above the water. You could lie there with your face tip-of-the-nose close to the surface of the river flowing by. I did that for a while. I'd been having almost no luck fishing recently and couldn't understand why. Lying there, I observed the passing insect life, an irregular flotilla made up mostly of tiny mayflies. Some were duns, recently hatched and not yet able to fly, with damp, crumpled wings. They rode with their all-but-invisible legs pinching down the
surface film like a person standing on a trampoline. Sometimes they fluttered their wings and tried to fly away, and sometimes they succeeded, becoming airborne in erratic lowaltitude courses. Others of the mayflies were spinnersâinsects in the adult phase whose mating and egg-laying flights had ended up, as many do, in the river. These were spent insects, not destined to fly away, affixed to the surface by their flat wings and writhing their small black thoraxes ineffectually. They were tiny, but not so tiny that I couldn't imagine imitating them with an artificial. A few fish were hitting the surfaceâfeeding on them, I was sure.
surface film like a person standing on a trampoline. Sometimes they fluttered their wings and tried to fly away, and sometimes they succeeded, becoming airborne in erratic lowaltitude courses. Others of the mayflies were spinnersâinsects in the adult phase whose mating and egg-laying flights had ended up, as many do, in the river. These were spent insects, not destined to fly away, affixed to the surface by their flat wings and writhing their small black thoraxes ineffectually. They were tiny, but not so tiny that I couldn't imagine imitating them with an artificial. A few fish were hitting the surfaceâfeeding on them, I was sure.
The kids waded, splashed, got wet, and soon were ready to leave. We walked to the car, and I took everybody home. In a second I dropped them off, made a plea to my wife, picked up my gear, and headed back to the river. The afternoon had become winy and halcyon, with maple samaras helicoptering on the diagonal through the declining light. Suddenly I was in a near-panic of haste, afraid that someone would get to my favorite spot before I did. This spot existed, as far as I know, only that one year; floods the following spring straightened the shoreline and washed it away. It was a deep eddy at a bend where the river had piled up a quarter acre of bleached driftwood. Cora called it the tree dump. The biggest drift log in it was a monster of a cottonwood, completely without bark, that jutted out into the eddy on the downstream side. Standing on the log, an angler would be three feet above the water. The eddy turned with long swirls of insects and cottonwood catkins clustering on its surface in shapes like the Nike symbol. The water in the eddy was dark and fathomless, and when I waded in it sometimes I got too close to the really deep part, where the bottom angled off beneath my feet. Lots of big fish lived there and came out to feed nearby.
I parked at a pullout by the river and put on my waders, hands shaking with angling fever. Three or four cars were there already. I hurried down the shoreline trail, breaking into a jog, maneuvering my fishing rod among the brush. Through the leaves I saw the bleached expanse of the tree dump. I ducked under an alder branch and stepped out onto the driftwood. Successânobody fishing there! Hopping from log to log, I made my way to the water. I stood at the edge and rigged my rod, keeping one eye on the eddy.
Fish were rising everywhere. You had to look closely to see them, because the rises were small and the currents brisk and many. A half-dozen fishâall of them big, probablyâhad taken the best feeding lanes, at the far side of the eddy, where it adjoined the main current of the river. Past experience had taught me that they would be beyond casting range. Other fish were rising in the eddy's swirls, some in current lanes that were actually going upstream as the eddy turned. Those would be hard to reach, too, because the fly would have so little time to sit on the surface before the conflicting currents snatched the leader and caused the fly to drag. I tied on a plausible imitationâa size 18 Blue-Winged Olive; like the newly hatched duns I'd observed earlier in the day. Wading in carefully, I began to cast.
And then nothing. Every time I fished, this seemed to happen. I did everything right, in my view, and got no response at all. I cast again, and again nothing. Nothing and nothing. This is a part of fly-fishing that can drive you madâthe stubborn, inexplicable blank nothing. Fish kept rising without noticing me. Normally I would fall into a gloomy frame of mind at this point, but somehow on this day I maintained an alert, lucky, improvisatory feeling. A guy in a tackle store in Missoula whom I had told about my recent lack of success advised me
to fish with longer, finer leaders. He said that he fished with leaders sixteen feet long. I decided to make a radical change. I quit casting, cut off the fly, and made my leader twice as long. I tied on three feet of 5X tippet, three feet of 6X, and two feet of 7X, fine as hair, at the leader's end.
to fish with longer, finer leaders. He said that he fished with leaders sixteen feet long. I decided to make a radical change. I quit casting, cut off the fly, and made my leader twice as long. I tied on three feet of 5X tippet, three feet of 6X, and two feet of 7X, fine as hair, at the leader's end.
To the 7X leader, straining my eyes, I tied a little fly with white Mylar wings and a black body; it looked a lot like the spinners I'd seen. These little mayflies are called
Tricory-thodes
âtricos, for short. They're especially abundant in the fall. Now the leader was so ephemeral and the fly so small that I wasn't sure I was casting at all, but I waded back in and laid leader and fly on the eddy's currents, I couldn't see exactly where. When I went to pick up the line to cast again, I found it was attached to a good fish. The rod suddenly bent in a deep bow, the fish gave a short, sharp tug, and the 7X leader snapped.
Tricory-thodes
âtricos, for short. They're especially abundant in the fall. Now the leader was so ephemeral and the fly so small that I wasn't sure I was casting at all, but I waded back in and laid leader and fly on the eddy's currents, I couldn't see exactly where. When I went to pick up the line to cast again, I found it was attached to a good fish. The rod suddenly bent in a deep bow, the fish gave a short, sharp tug, and the 7X leader snapped.
No failure this encouraging had happened to me on the river in weeks. Sure now that I had the right leader and the right fly, I tied on another trico spinner with black body and white Mylar wings. First I cut off the hair-fine 7X tippetâI have never caught a fish of any size on a 7X tippet, though I know it can be doneâand instead used the length of 6X tippet as the leader's end. Tying leader to fly was again a challenge to the eyes; finally I did it, fitting the hook over the edge of my left thumbnail to pull the knot tight.
Again I studied the eddy. The fish were still rising. I began to cast, and I may have had a strike or two, but the circumstances of the light, the bright-yellow reflection of the trees on the far bank, made it impossible to observe the tiny fly as it floated. A few yards upstream from the eddy, very near the bank, fish were rising in a more straightforward current pattern in not difficult casting range. Even better, the surface reflection
there was not yellow-gold leaves but only the mild blue eastern sky. I moved up and laid the fly on a fish that was rising regularly with little saucer-shaped rises. The fly drifted over him four or five times with no response. I cast beyond him for a while, aiming for a fish farther upstream. I recalled that, when I had tried here before, all the fish did that typical trout thing of continuing to rise while sidling in a leisurely manner out of casting range. Now, however, they were staying put.
there was not yellow-gold leaves but only the mild blue eastern sky. I moved up and laid the fly on a fish that was rising regularly with little saucer-shaped rises. The fly drifted over him four or five times with no response. I cast beyond him for a while, aiming for a fish farther upstream. I recalled that, when I had tried here before, all the fish did that typical trout thing of continuing to rise while sidling in a leisurely manner out of casting range. Now, however, they were staying put.
The closer fish, no more than twenty feet away, was still rising to the trico spinners. I put the fly over him again andâ
sploop!
âhe rose, I set the hook, and the line came tight. Immediately the fish turned downstream out of his lie with a good-sized shouldering wake. Wincing, I waited for the leader to part. Sometimes when I'm afraid I'll lose a fish I pull too hard, hoping to get him to the surface so I can at least see him before he breaks off. Now I let line out as the fish made strong downward runs to one side and then the other in the deepest part of the eddy. Still, I had not caught a glimpse of him, and my desire to see him was like greed. I had my net in my left hand; many uncertain minutes passed with the fish down deep, refusing to budge. Then I saw a gleam of white as the fish rolled near the surface. I backed toward the shore and led him into the shallows. At my feet, he veered away again. Finally I scooped him with the net and walked all the way out of the water, to a muddy piece of bank among some bushes upstream. He was a beautiful heavy rainbow, about seventeen inches longâthe biggest fish I had ever caught on such a tiny fly.
sploop!
âhe rose, I set the hook, and the line came tight. Immediately the fish turned downstream out of his lie with a good-sized shouldering wake. Wincing, I waited for the leader to part. Sometimes when I'm afraid I'll lose a fish I pull too hard, hoping to get him to the surface so I can at least see him before he breaks off. Now I let line out as the fish made strong downward runs to one side and then the other in the deepest part of the eddy. Still, I had not caught a glimpse of him, and my desire to see him was like greed. I had my net in my left hand; many uncertain minutes passed with the fish down deep, refusing to budge. Then I saw a gleam of white as the fish rolled near the surface. I backed toward the shore and led him into the shallows. At my feet, he veered away again. Finally I scooped him with the net and walked all the way out of the water, to a muddy piece of bank among some bushes upstream. He was a beautiful heavy rainbow, about seventeen inches longâthe biggest fish I had ever caught on such a tiny fly.
I laid the fish, still in the net, on a shoreline rock and whacked his head with another rock. There was that moment when the eyes went dull. Then I unhooked the fish and took it
from the net and held it up and said a prayer, exalted. Killing one good fish is enough for me. I drove home and cleaned the trout and sautéed it carefully, and my wife and I ate it for dinner, leaving the bones as clean as an exhibit in an ichthyology museum.
from the net and held it up and said a prayer, exalted. Killing one good fish is enough for me. I drove home and cleaned the trout and sautéed it carefully, and my wife and I ate it for dinner, leaving the bones as clean as an exhibit in an ichthyology museum.
One reason I moved to Missoula was an article in the
Missoulian
newspaper which my friend Bryan sent to me. It was about fly-fishing for whitefish in local rivers in the middle of winter. The accompanying photograph showed Daryl Gadbow, the article's author, standing in a wide expanse of river and unfurling a long, looping cast over pewter-colored water while snowflakes came down all around. I looked at that photograph many times. The fishing regulations in Montana let you catch and keep certain species, including whitefish, all winter long. I had never fly-fished in winter. Fly-fishing on a snowy afternoon seemed like a luxurious winter pastime.
Missoulian
newspaper which my friend Bryan sent to me. It was about fly-fishing for whitefish in local rivers in the middle of winter. The accompanying photograph showed Daryl Gadbow, the article's author, standing in a wide expanse of river and unfurling a long, looping cast over pewter-colored water while snowflakes came down all around. I looked at that photograph many times. The fishing regulations in Montana let you catch and keep certain species, including whitefish, all winter long. I had never fly-fished in winter. Fly-fishing on a snowy afternoon seemed like a luxurious winter pastime.
Not long after we got to Missoula, I met Daryl himself. (I had met him once before; as it happens, he is Bryan's brother-in-law.) Daryl writes about fishing and other outdoor subjects for the
Missoulian
. He grew up in Missoula and remembers as a boy hunting for pheasants in fields where Target and Barnes & Noble stores now sprawl. His adventures are well known around town. Once, in the mountains, he was chased up a tree by a grizzly bear. While hunting on a nearby Indian reservation, he came upon the body of a dead man. He spends many days on the water all year round. When he and I met at parties, we talked about fishing at lengths that caused people to roll their eyes and edge away. I told him that I had admired
his article about winter fishing for whitefish, and that it was partly why I moved here. Daryl said that some winter day he would take me along.
Missoulian
. He grew up in Missoula and remembers as a boy hunting for pheasants in fields where Target and Barnes & Noble stores now sprawl. His adventures are well known around town. Once, in the mountains, he was chased up a tree by a grizzly bear. While hunting on a nearby Indian reservation, he came upon the body of a dead man. He spends many days on the water all year round. When he and I met at parties, we talked about fishing at lengths that caused people to roll their eyes and edge away. I told him that I had admired
his article about winter fishing for whitefish, and that it was partly why I moved here. Daryl said that some winter day he would take me along.
Our second winter, it really snowed. That part of the country is arid, and when snow comes it is often drier and lighter than snow back East, falling in a fine powder that piles up almost weightlessly. On windless days it accumulated in the links of the chain-link fence around the playground at my daughter's elementary school, filling the lower half of each link with a triangle of white. On Christmas Eve day and Christmas Eve, thirty inches of snow fell. It buried the lights on people's shrubs; you could see them glowing through the snow. At night, by porchlight against the black sky, I followed the courses of individual flakes coming down. Some fell almost plumb straight, some descended in clockwise or counterclockwise spirals, and some meandered back and forth among the other snowflakes as if lost. The air never got terribly cold; ice lined the edges of the rivers, but from bank to bank the water did not freeze. Framed with white, the rivers took on a coppery sheen, like car windows made of privacy glass.
One Sunday afternoon Daryl called me up, and we grabbed our gear and went. He drove to a spot on the Bitterroot in the town of Lolo, about ten miles upstream. We followed narrow streets with high snow berms in a neighborhood of one-story ranch-style houses, and we parked in a plowed-out turnaround at a dead end. Daryl's dog Rima jumped out and began to play, pouncing and feinting and throwing new-fallen snow in the air with her nose. Sitting on the truck's tailgate, we pulled on our waders and strung our rods. As we crossed the rocky floodplain on the way down to the river's edge, the drifts came above our knees.
In a landscape blurred and softened by snow, the river seen
close-up seemed to have an extra clarity, the stones on its bottom distinct and precise, like the one in-focus part of a fuzzy photograph. Daryl stationed me at a knee-deep riffle where he said there were lots of whitefish, while he and Rima moved just upstream. I tied on a seven-foot-long leader and a pheasant-tail nymph with a brass bead at the eye of the hook to give it flash and make it sink. About eighteen inches above the fly I added two pieces of lead split shot, biting them onto the leader with my teeth. Casting a weighted rig like that requires a slinging-and-flinging motion I have never quite mastered; the tackle went whistling close to my ear. I began to sling it upstream and across, letting it drift back down, trying to feel out with the line the lowest part of the riffle, where I knew the fish to be.
close-up seemed to have an extra clarity, the stones on its bottom distinct and precise, like the one in-focus part of a fuzzy photograph. Daryl stationed me at a knee-deep riffle where he said there were lots of whitefish, while he and Rima moved just upstream. I tied on a seven-foot-long leader and a pheasant-tail nymph with a brass bead at the eye of the hook to give it flash and make it sink. About eighteen inches above the fly I added two pieces of lead split shot, biting them onto the leader with my teeth. Casting a weighted rig like that requires a slinging-and-flinging motion I have never quite mastered; the tackle went whistling close to my ear. I began to sling it upstream and across, letting it drift back down, trying to feel out with the line the lowest part of the riffle, where I knew the fish to be.
Suddenly I saw a flicker of white and jerked the rod, and the fish began to run. It fought hard and stayed stubbornly far out in the river; for a few minutes I thought it might be a trout. When I got it in close, I saw it was indeed a whitefish, with a torpedo-shaped body and silver, fingernail-sized scales and a back darkening to mossy green. As I landed it, Rima barked with excitement and jumped at the fish and for a moment locked on point, her nose quivering and needle-straight, at the fish lying in my net on the shore. I killed it and put it in the pouch in the back of my fishing vest. Daryl said the best way to eat a whitefish was smoked. I said I would fry it up fresh that night and have it for dinner, just for the sake of experiment.
Storm clouds moved in, and the afternoon light became a wintry gloom. Snow began to fall hard, hissing in the bare branches of the cottonwood trees. The river sceneryâbare-rock bluffs, dark-red willows, and tawny grasses along the shoreâfaded like something you see as you're falling asleep.
Daryl and I waded in deeper, crossed the river, tried different spots. The water in the Bitterroot actually felt warmer than the melted snow trickling around our ears. My fly line began to make a raspy sound in the line guides as it passed over the edges of ice building up in them. Steam rose from the water and moved in genie-sized wisps with the current. For a couple of hours, getting colder, we caught nothing more.
Daryl and I waded in deeper, crossed the river, tried different spots. The water in the Bitterroot actually felt warmer than the melted snow trickling around our ears. My fly line began to make a raspy sound in the line guides as it passed over the edges of ice building up in them. Steam rose from the water and moved in genie-sized wisps with the current. For a couple of hours, getting colder, we caught nothing more.
Then I was standing chest-deep at a new place we'd driven to some miles downstream. Daryl was near one bank, throwing long, effortless loops of line, keeping more in the air at one time than appeared physically possible, like a juggler's trick. As I watched, one of those casts descended to the water and got its reward: his rod suddenly bent, and far from him the hooked fish jumped. As often happens, I was mysteriously persuaded that I would catch the trout of my life if only I could get to a part of the river difficult to wade to and far away. In this case, the ideal water seemed to be at the opposite bank, beneath an undercut bluff with snow-covered roots protruding. But as I approached, the bottom shelved off alarmingly and the river came up to the very top of my waders.
Stymied, I stopped and cast from where I was. I had on the same pheasant-tail nymph, with a smaller nymph in a Hare's Ear pattern tied to the hook on a short length of monofilament for a dropper fly. I flung the line, dispiritedly, and flung again. Not being where I wanted had dimmed my concentration. After fly and dropper sank, I let them drift back to me as I'd been doing all day. Then a fish hit, hooked itself, and began to zip back and forth down deep. I thought it might be big, but then it jumped and flipped over in the air and I saw that it was a battling little trout. I pulled it in and landed it quickly. Before I let it go, I admired the fish lying on its side in the wet brown mesh of my net: a rainbow of about eleven
inches, not skinny but rounded and full-bodied. Trout, especially little ones, have a more precise appearance than other fish, somehowâas if they were drawn with a sharper pencil, their details added by a more careful hand. Daryl's fish, the one I saw jump, turned out to be a rainbow of more than twenty inches. It looked impressive even from a distance when he held it up to show before releasing it. The whitefish I kept, which was about fifteen inches, made a satisfactory (though bony) dinner for my wife and me when I cooked it that evening. But the little rainbow I caught is the fish I remember from the day. It fit with the wintry light, the clarity of the river, the shivery air. The strong streak of color on its sides was the exact same red as the backs of my cold, red hands.
inches, not skinny but rounded and full-bodied. Trout, especially little ones, have a more precise appearance than other fish, somehowâas if they were drawn with a sharper pencil, their details added by a more careful hand. Daryl's fish, the one I saw jump, turned out to be a rainbow of more than twenty inches. It looked impressive even from a distance when he held it up to show before releasing it. The whitefish I kept, which was about fifteen inches, made a satisfactory (though bony) dinner for my wife and me when I cooked it that evening. But the little rainbow I caught is the fish I remember from the day. It fit with the wintry light, the clarity of the river, the shivery air. The strong streak of color on its sides was the exact same red as the backs of my cold, red hands.
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