Is there fly fishing after the world ends? I don’t see why not. As long as the trout survived. You’d have all the best waters to yourself. Unless the other survivors took up angling. Then again, they’re more scavenger than angler. They crave ammo and Dinty Moore, not that delicate white flank of a rainbow trout.
Hig is the one who will find out. He’ll fly fish with his dog Jasper after the world’s ended in The Dog Stars, the post-apocalyptic book by Peter Heller, and new film by Ridley Scott.
I caught up with The Dog Stars author Peter Heller, an avid fly-fisherman himself (who had yet to see the final film), for a quick round of tight-lined questions. I suppose these would count as Hig’s answers as well.
SS: Your favorite fly pattern?
PH: Elk Hair Caddis, no contest. Hook, fur, thread.
SS: Favorite place you’ve fly fished?
PH: Opoyastin River, Kaska Coast, Hudson Bay; sea run brook trout, with polar bears. Mostly because it’s invigorating not to be at the top of the food chain.
SS:Favorite fly-fishing writer?
PH: Chris Dombrowski [The River You Touch] and David James Duncan [The River Why].
SS: Favorite cold drink after a day on the water?
PH: Spindrift Grapefruit.
Now, if you’ve yet to meet Hig and Jasper in Heller’s 2012 novel, they’ll be found in the deciduous meadows high in the Colorado foothills. You’ll recognize Hig with a 5-weight and a rainbow dancing on the end of his line. Jasper will be watching from the bank, eyes intent on the trout, ears perked, drool pooling from his maw. If you find them there, at a time of contentedness, count yourself lucky. For the world has indeed ended, and they are on the defensive from the slack-jawed and dead-eyed drifters that raid the valley floors and small towns for food and gasoline and weapons.
Hig whiles away his days with fly rod in one hand and submachine gun in the other. It’s kill or be killed, after all. Oh, and he’s a pilot too, with a 1950’s Cessna single-prop and a thin airstrip, and enough fuel to fly scouting missions to look for other friendly survivors. Perhaps one of them will be a hip brunette in worn-in jeans and an aw-shucks smile. Perhaps.
Fly fishing solitary waters (alongside your dog) and taking joy rides in your airplane (and finding a cute-as-a-button survivor girlfriend). If it weren’t for those other ravenous human scavengers, this apocalypse sounds pretty nice.
Hig, played by Jacob Elordi, has his homestead set up in a small-town airport hangar. He has one neighbor over in the next hangar, Bangley. Played by square-jawed Josh Brolin, Bangley’s the ultimate survivalist (and badass). Together they thwart the horde of less-than-friendly survivors with sniper rifles and night vision. Bangley loves it. Hig is more reluctant but proves to be as good with a rifle as he is with a fly rod.
Oh, and Jasper is Hig’s dog, the third central character in this tale, while Margaret Qualley plays Cima, the hip brunette. It’s as good as it can get in the post-apocalypse, and the fishing’s swell in the mountain streams. Those rainbows provide a culinary reprieve from the cans of whatever goulash are left. And when the armed riffraff continue to pop up, Bangley continues to pop their heads.
But a fuzzy cockpit transmission leads Hig to wonder if more is out there besides the mundane survival and his revolving memories of the world before. Perhaps there’s more civilization, others like him, valleys where amity exists rather than this ramshackle existence of putting down each attacker like a rabid dog.
Heller’s book is the perfect stage for Ridley Scott’s direction. Scott’s films need not be listed in full; you’ve surely seen them. From Blade Runner to Thelma and Louise, to Gladiator and Black Hawk Down and Alien. Character-driven epics. Thumping action, with an artist’s eye.
An early start as a painter, his films have an expressionist quality to them, almost a tinge of oil on canvas. His Gladiator was directly inspired by a French oil painting of a slaying in the Coliseum. He’s as accomplished a film director as you’ll find.
Heller too is a rich storyteller. He cut his teeth in nonfiction before laying out this yarn about Hig and Jasper. A number of novels have followed: The Painter. The River and Burn. All stellar. Each is set in a wooded locale with protagonists who belly up to the river with an Elk Hair Caddis.
And each novel comes to a heart-pounding end, The Dog Stars included. The film takes its Hollywood liberties (the Italian Dolomites serve as a stand-in for Colorado. Blasphemy, I know, but beautiful nonetheless … and cheaper to film there), but it adheres to the heart of Heller’s tale. The film is big and glossy, and the protagonists of a virus apocalypse are all coiffed and handsomer than a cutthroat.
The film serves the novel well. The adventure and the heart are there. I would’ve liked to spend a little more time with Hig and Jasper fishing in those mountains on the big screen, but I can always return to Heller’s novel. After all, the characters and landscapes you build in your mind will always surpass anything they can put on the screen.
