“One consideration for you might be that all of the people on the trip are older men (all over 60), which is the curse of our sport and something I’m trying to change.” I read Frank’s email twice. As host for the Klamath River fishout and president of our fly-fishing club, he is right to acknowledge the detail. But as a 33-year-old female angler, I’ve become familiar with the territory. I pick up the phone.
To claim “angler” is a stretch, because I am by all accounts new to fly fishing. I fell in love with the sport after a year and a half in Montana, where my proximity to superstar guides and world-class waters left me with a false impression of natural talent. Back home in California, where that was no longer true, I joined a fly-fishing club — the Flycasters of San Jose — to learn, improve, and most importantly, find folks to fish with.
On the phone, Frank is organized and direct. He details the trip’s location (Somes Bar), targeted fishing (steelhead half-pounders), arrangements (Marble Mountain Ranch with owners Doug and Heidi Cole), and gear requirements (a 6-weight to 8-weight rod and a handful of Beaded Assassins, CH Herniators, Intruders). He delivers a powerful closing statement — to expect about ten fish a day with hardly another soul on the river. There will need to be some reorganization of the cabins for me as the only female, but nothing that can’t be managed.
I make my decision on the phone call — I am in.
Marble Mountain Ranch
One by one, members of the fishout fall through the door of the lodge at Marble Mountain Ranch in flannels and fleeces, recounting the trials of their eight-hour journeys. “I feel deprived!” Frank laments, having yet to see a bear. (An hour prior, I had slammed on my brakes as an emboldened cub lumbered across the highway. I screamed alone in my car.)
Chatter bubbles up, a beautiful bottle of cabernet pops, and the hope of the weekend wafts through the warm cabin. Despite a surrounding of strangers, there is an undercurrent of familiarity — the thread that binds us: a love of fly fishing.
Beginner’s Luck
I escape from my cabin in waders with four minutes to spare, fumbling a last-minute rod assembly on my way to the group. Today, I will punch above my weight in guidesmanship and company, fishing with Frank in Doug’s boat. As ranch owner and head guide, Doug has a commanding grit, natural authority, and a heart of gold. All this to say, he has nothing on his wife, Heidi.
“Where’s the rest of it?” a bystanding guide asks, touching the blunted end of my rod where my tip section should be. We’re off to a rough start. I trot back to my cabin, locate the missing appendage, and concentrate on the relief of its placement over the humiliation of forgetting it in the first place.
When I silently pray the indignities have ended, Doug asks “What side is your retrieve on, Taylor?”
I hesitate. Last spring, I gave an entire afternoon to disassembling a reel with an incorrectly ordered retrieve. (The mistake was, of course, my fault). The endeavor dissolved my home into chaos; a reel kit dismembered on the table, pages of an instructional pamphlet strewn across the floor, and a riddle of line and backing trailed down the stairs. I have dissociated from knowing my actual retrieve since this trauma.
I relay to Doug that I am right handed, praying the context clues will lead him to an answer. He confirms I am a left-hand retriever and places the reel accordingly. I feel guilty for being this unprepared and quickly jump in on the assembly process, hastily putting the reel’s foot into place.
With readied boats and loaded gear, our club members disappear into trucks and, like an armada headed for battle, take off to conquer segments of the river.
Don’t Horse It In
We descend to the put-in through the misty forest of evergreens and golds. The river below is silty, glossy, and cold. I oblige Frank’s insistence to take the boat’s front seat while Doug briefs me on the simple art of swinging flies: land the fly in the direction requested and manage the line in orchestra with Frank’s. Be sure to twitch on the drift and on the retrieve — it’s important that the fly animates.
My first cast is clumsy. Under the weight of 10 feet of sink tip, my fly disappears into the turbid depths of the Klamath, six inches per second. Trailing it is a wingspan of conspicuous 2X leader, and behind that, a Loop Knot hosting an olive Beaded Assassin dancing wildly in the drift.
Doug maneuvers the boat in broad, rounded brush strokes from edge to edge of the river. Within minutes, a bite arrives. Frank’s fight is graceful and easy, and we soon welcome a silky half-pounder to the boat. The impression that landing a steelhead trout is a relatively uncomplicated affair is now established.
Over the next hour, Frank rakes three more fish into the boat. Alluding to the stark contrast of the fishing partners’ performance, Doug asks if I am possibly over animating. I glance down at my hands, free from any notion of restraint, yanking my line as though it’s attached to a lawn mower. I opt to mimic Frank’s steadied exactitude of light pulls with finessed pauses.
As we continue to float, the river’s character registers. Choppy waters appear sheltering. I imagine myself at walking speed to pace the water. As I grasp the new language, I work my Assassin to a boulder near the left bank. I feel two assertive tugs grab my line.
I’m surprised by the strength of the thing and begin to question the structural integrity of my rod, now acutely arched and quivering like a chihuahua. I am snapped to attention as the fish launches into the sky, its pearlescent preview a billboard of expectations hovering on the horizon. As luck would have it, he is big.
The energy of the boat surges. Doug is secretly electrified, but maintaining composure. Frank is hooting.
“Tip up, Taylor. Don’t horse it in. Okay, good. Next time, bow to the jump. Let it run. Now get it to the boat.” I am a puppet to Doug’s commands, committed to self-possession and restraint, refusing the adrenaline trying to grab me.
Six feet from Doug’s hand readily gripping the big net, the fish twists. The energy that once screamed in my hands cuts out. I breathe in a tight, short gasp. It’s gone.
I look back at the boat, now flooded with pin-drop silence. Frank’s mouth is agape.
Check Your Gear
While the pain of the lesson cauterizes in my mind, Doug does the only thing he really can in the moment — make it teachable. He explains that when the barbless fly hook catches the paper-thin lining of a steelhead’s lip, the outcome of the fight now depends on whether it holds there. I archive the lesson and chalk up the loss to the impossible burden of both good and bad luck.
Clouds part in the afternoon hours, and below the boat, dusty sun rays catch the drifting beaded flies in the river. Bites kick up a notch. Under the warming sun, my lazily drifting cast seems to catch a rock on the river bottom. The rock tugs back like a firm handshake; a second chance.
Soberingly aware of my draining shot clock, I reel for my very life. I exploit the mechanism with a rapid, violent up tempo, fighting the animal — with a jump proving it bigger than the last — right up to the boat.
But as most fish are apt to do at the sight of a vessel and three humans peering savagely down at it, it bolts. The shock wave sends a surge through my equipment before a punctuated pop and unnatural release. It’s my reel, completely unhinged from my rod and now, somehow, in my hand. I flash back with horror to my hack job tightening it onto its rod seat this morning.
“Give me your rod!” Doug is in triage, because the fish is still on. I pass my mess off like a hot potato, witnessing the miracle of Doug’s reconstitution of it in seconds. The rod is handed back to me — I barely want it — and as a surprise to no one, the fish escapes within moments.
This rodeo of atrocities has once again rendered the boat nonverbal. Doug takes a beat to recalibrate expectations. “You probably think landing a fish is the usual. It is not.” He recounts the tale of “The Intimidator;” a 32-inch steelhead requiring two attempts by two seasoned anglers over two separate days to land it. In the midst of chaos, one of them cried out, “This fish is intimidating me!” and a star was born. The moral of the story is that people lose fish, very big ones, all the time. But I need to make a habit of checking my gear.
Huddled at the lodge following a hot shower, hot toddy, and a hot meal, I’m half tuned into the volley of fish stories as I fiddle with the group’s trophy shots Airdropped to me for retouching. I am impossibly relaxed and consumptively happy, with good company and easy laughter and a couple blessed fish under my belt today. I didn’t exactly cover myself with glory, but the experience afforded a satisfying release of pressure. I’ll take it.
Alone in the Woods
I answer the door in pajamas to Heidi insistently handing me a walkie talkie. I am wading on my own today, and she wants to keep an eye on me.
The descent to the Marble Mountain run features sweeping views of the river threading deep into miles of alpine-serrated horizon. I find a riffle and leisurely begin to cast. In the quiet of the moment, with the whip of the line in the air overlaying the steadied pulse of the river, I smile toward the sun. On a particularly good cast, I pose a question, letting my line linger at the end of the drift. A committed bite answers.
As the animal get its bearings, our dance for an audience of no one begins. I laugh out loud. It is a watershed moment of profound joy, its gravity delivering perfect clarity: these are the only real moments of life. I begin to marry my lessons to the fight.
The fish jumps. Her body — a sturdy shock of brilliance and gargantuan in size — bucks twice. “The Intimidator,” I whisper under my breath. She is here to teach.
The battle of wills kicks off with a run. My hands respond to her decided pull with rapid, controlled cadence. More belly laughter. Have I had this much fun in my life? More runs, more retrieves, with each of us showcasing the best we’ve got. My arm begins to burn.
On her approach, I am both seized by the prospect of landing the fish and struck by the horrors of completing the capture myself. I reach for my net — what else can I do? The gesture is assumptive and offensive, and the fish will have none of it. She throws the fly from her mouth as though it was an act all along and darts off into the shadows.
For a moment, I am suspended between grief and denial, but it passes through me. Isn’t the entire performance — the tension and laughter, pushes and pulls — in this theater of the wild what this sport is all about?
Word spreads through the lodge by the time I sit for dinner. Doug is quietly proud — fighting an adult steelhead while wading a river is noteworthy. Someone suggests I did catch it, I just didn’t land it — the waters are muddied for the debatable territory of SDRs (short distance releases). I begin to grapple with the credibility of the group at large.
I work through the grueling details of The Intimidator’s fight strategy with fellow club member Dan, as though the two of us conjuring a solution may bring the fish back. I chalk up the tale with a vaguely aspirational platitude. “Some fish just aren’t meant to be caught.”
Dan holds back a grin in his reply. “That’s not true.”
Hero’s Journey
“There are four kinds of fly fishermen,” Doug narrates over the lull of his paddle strokes on our last day on the river. “The first is the one who wants to catch the most fish. The second wants to catch the biggest fish. The third wants to catch the most difficult-to-catch fish. And the fourth fisherman finds gratification simply by being there.”
“What kind of fisherman are you?” I ask, speculating the answer.
“Definitely somewhere in the four range.” I smile to the river. Where will I fall on this spectrum?
My boatmate, Mason, and I take in the scene with today’s slow bite. Jurassic-sized elephant ear leaves scatter the riverbank, marbled swirls of bubbles pool alongside the boat, sunlight throws glitter on the water’s surface. A family of deer ford the river, heads bobbing like ducks, throwing water droplets with each bound into the forest. I am here.
As daylight fades, the boat quiets in surrender to the cold. Doug places us on the eastern pile of Dillon Creek Bridge and requests a left cast. What happens next I can barely recall. Mason recounts the following over the phone.
“It always feels like it’s taking forever.”
Mason claims the video he captured — 58 seconds in total — accounted for a vast majority of the fight. Did I transcend time and space in the fight of my life?
“Okay, how many jumps would you say?” I lead the witness. “Two, three?”
“Oh, at least three jumps.” Mason understands the assignment.
He narrates the footage as he revisits it. “I see Doug rowing toward the right of the river. Okay, now you are going over the top of his head. There: he nets him. You are laughing big and having so much fun. It’s beautiful.” I look up to the sky and let out a single sigh doing the work of a thousand.
I remember Doug beaming as we rowed back toward the ranch. “This is what it is all about.” These confluences of circumstance — good company, creatures too beautiful for words, the gratification of taking on something new — gathered into blissful moments like these on the river.
I’ve replayed Mason’s video for countless victims, ranging from close confidants to complete strangers. Regardless of the viewer’s plausible uncertainty that this fish is one they should even be impressed by, their reaction is always the same: they mirror back the pure joy bannered across my face.
The Open Road
I wrestle temptation as the long road home braids down the Klamath. Every riffle and boulder call me to fish it, but to step out of the car — no walkie-talkie with Heidi at the end of it, nor Doug, Frank, Mason, or friend from the club — would prove a far cry from the peace experienced at Marble Mountain, and lack the compounded joy of sharing it with others. I dismiss the notion, settling into the comfort of three magnificent days with people who invited me into their world and shared the best parts of it with me.
I promise myself to welcome more friends of mine; more sisters and mothers, fathers, or maybe someday, someone special mostly to me, to join me here.
This sport, in all its transformational heartbreaks and glittering wonders, is too wonderful not to be shared.
