It’s a fair bet your first trout was bred in a concrete pond, fed pellets while growing up in a school of thousands, then trucked to a lake or stream where it shot out of a hose into the water you angled. Confused and hungry, it ate something at the end of your line.
It’s another good bet that you were proud and delighted. Eastern fly fishers, and those in England fishing fabled rivers such as the Avon and Test — rivers where most trout come from hatcheries — would be today. But if you’re a fly fisher from California or other parts West, tuned to issues of “native” and “wild,” your memory of that bright moment may now be tarnished. You might even liken losing your trout virginity to potted fish with, let’s say, the feelings of somebody who finds out that a first kiss was arranged by a cousin, in an exchange involving a dime and a Snickers.
Then again, in one or both cases, you may still harbor a secret thrill. If so, let me be the first to say, “Shame on us.”
Yes, I know I should be mortified about by my feelings about an eight-inch hatchery rainbow that swallowed a Pautzke Ball O’ Fire and corn kernel combo drifting down one of Arizona’s White Rivers on a chill day when my pal huddled in the truck after his father disappeared upstream. But when a bear sent dad back, he was hardly as excited than I’d been when that little stocker hooked itself hard enough to bend the solid fiberglass shaft of my Zebco 202 outfit. Since the reel drag had never been adjusted — I still wasn’t sure what that black plastic wheel had to do with anything, and mine wouldn’t move anyway — I landed him using the time-honored technique natural to untutored nine-year-olds: I backed up, shouting, until my rainbow was flopping on dry cobble, then threw my body on top of it. (It is possible that a refined version of this process resembled my first kiss.)
It was beautiful. (The rainbow I mean. The kiss was painful, because of her braces.) I’d caught bass, bluegills, catfish, and carp before, and though I considered spawning male ’gills handsome, this trout was lovely, feminine, to my mind, with slim lines and small, smooth, silvery scales. I’d never seen a ballerina up close, but I was pretty sure she would look like this if she were a fish.
In my ignorance, I treasured that memory. I also loved Bob’s Big Boy hamburgers, boxing and baseball, White Fang, Red Sky at Morning, the vastly informative and surprisingly sexual mythological fiction of Mary Renault, and toward the tail end of that era, bands whose bass lines beat through the high school gym floor to resonate in my guts.
“O Callow Youth,” as some literatus once said. And so I was about trout, and callous, until an adventure on a remote part of East Clear Creek, also in Arizona, a few miles from where I thinned timber with my pal Terry.
While meat fishing. It was two hours to any store from our camp. We had no way to refrigerate anything, so lived mainly on cottontails, jackrabbits that we fed through a grinder — the “Original Jack Burger” — PB&J sandwiches, and birds shot by Terry, mainly doves and “woods robins” (meatier than you think), also catfish and stocked trout that it was my job to catch. We’d eaten hundreds of these fish over several months while cutting in the Bradshaw Mountains, before moving camp to a forest south of the Mogollon Rim.
It might be hard today to find a section of water as wild as East Clear Creek was then, in country where we never met another person, but often saw bull elk taller than Terry, who’s still six feet one. The state had planted rainbows and browns somewhere downstream, which held over and spawned and at some point moved up into a canyon so difficult to access that the trick was to get in and out alive. Eventually we would discover stretches where every pool held fish between 16 and 20 inches.
My first was at the short end of that range. But it was the largest rainbow I’d ever landed and unlike any trout I’d seen before. This time “rainbow” wasn’t an inflated adjective, the front end of a proper-noun phrase: iridescent greens, dark to light, deep reds fading to pink, then pearl. Even its eye seemed different to me — blacker and more aware.
I held it submerged for several minutes, ambivalent. I’d released many fish, but never a trophy like this, and never a welcome dinner. But I’d never killed anything that felt so special.
Terry was up the creek, hunting. We had plenty of peanut butter, so we weren’t going to starve, and so, sighing, I slid out the hook. I could always keep the next fish, I reasoned.
Not a chance. It was a brown, bigger, and to my mind, even more beautiful, its red spots surrounded by gold circles, each scale darkly defined along the bronze back and sides. It had the first kype I’d ever seen and even had teeth on its tongue. I thought it was the wildest thing I’d ever pulled from water.
No doubts this time. Not even when I heard Terry tromping up behind me. And I didn’t rush the release, though I knew what would happen when I let go of its tail. Hell, Terry waxed wroth when I tossed back sunfish the size of county fair goldfish — which I strongly suspected he would eat, too, if ever he had the chance. The fish slipped away. I looked at Terry, who stared after it, eyes blank, hands looped over the barrel and stock of a 12 gauge side-by-side slung across his shoulders.
“What?” he said flatly. “What just happened?”
“That was a wild fish.”
He pondered this with a furrowed brow. I noticed that he looked tired and hot and that there wasn’t any bulge in his game pouch. “So. . . you can’t eat wild fish?”
Terry knew nothing about fishing or fish, save that he desperately loved to eat them.
Because he had worms, I was sorely tempted to say: Terry had a terrible fear of tularemia — “rabbit fever” — which he fretted about every we time we prepped Original Jack Burgers. It’s the Law might have worked better, because he followed rules as carefully as one would expect of somebody who’s now a district attorney.
Blatant lying was not my habit, unhappily. And since this sort of release was also a first for me, I’d not yet developed a favorite analogy: that stocked trout are like cattle, born and raised for consumption, while wild fish are like deer or wolves or elk, part of the forest, not the products of man’s machinations. No matter, really: that dog would not have hunted with Terry.
“No, no,” I said. And then, with a philosophical tilt to head, added, “Just too special to kill.”
Wrong tone. Wrong word. Wrong concept. “Too . . . special.”
“Or something.” “For dinner.” “Yeah.”
“ My dinner. And pro’bly tomorrow’s lunch, you think? Too damn special?”
About then I wondered if the shotgun had shells in the chambers. Slow as Terry is to anger — well, not all that slow — when his fuse lights, things get lively. Then and now, I’ve never known anybody else over the age of eight or weighing 200 pounds who actually stamps the ground, marching around pounding earth beneath boots, this time shouting about “first-rate protein!” and “God created the animals in order to . . .” and “Whoever heard of anybody wasting such a big, fat fish!”
He had a point. Points, as it happens. And to be fair, months of isolation and sustenance living had worn us both thin, literally. Here I’d sacrificed food for an impulse. Worse yet, I couldn’t begin to claim a noble purpose. Had these been channel cats, I’d have gutted them both. To Terry, it looked like mere aesthetics had directed my actions.
Timber thinners are rarely aesthetes. Terry still isn’t. While I never really expected him to forgive me, I might have hoped he’d forget. It’s been 40 years, and he hasn’t, so far, and reminds me once or twice a decade. With vigor, though lately I’ve noticed he hardly stamps his feet anymore. You’ve got to admire his constancy.
I am less stalwart. I’ve spent lots of time and many words contemplating fish issues. General courses of action seem clear to me: release stream-born fish; protect what’s left of native salmon and steelhead spawning runs; stake out poachers, if possible, in the sun. But sometimes I cringe with ambivalence: Do I really want to eradicate California stripers, basses with small mouths and large, brown trout and brookies, American shad, along with stocking in waters where spawning no longer happens or tailwaters where today it does?
These questions infiltrate my ruminations. They share my mind with other, unrelated concerns about family, immediate and extended, friends with cancers, a country I no longer understand, and a world rife with conflicts for which I can not imagine resolutions — you know the drill. A read through the morning paper, a tour of news sites, and what I want most is to go back to bed — seriously.
I can’t. I work and, late on a good day in early summer, I make myself go fishing. Where I can, in the time allotted, and since time has been short in the last few years, with whatever systems and gear available.
In short, I make do in more ways than one.
And on this day, among others, that’s where stocked trout come in.
It’s been more than a week since the season opened. Hoping the frenzy’s subsided, I toss a rubber-backed throw rug across the top of my car, flop an orange float tube onto that, drop it’s hind-end D-ring tag through the cracked-open sunroof, and attach this to a bungee cord that I wrap around my rearview mirror mount. Just in case, I pass rope over the tube and through its side straps, poking each end onto through a back window to tie onto an interior handhold.
I’m not recommending this technique — make sure the carpet is soft enough to protect your vehicle’s finish — but it works for short trips on slow roads. So does tucking a pair of rigged fly rods under my windshield wipers, carefully trapping the reels beneath blades so the shafts angle back along the float tube’s sides. I use loose loops of polyester cord to lash the rods to its side straps, again just in case. They look a lot like antennas — the whole assembly resembling a very big ladybug.
This rod trick is a strange and frightening habit I picked up from guide Ralph Wood on the North Fork of the Yuba. Naturally, I refused to risk it, until one day I got tired of breaking rods in car doors and when removing rigged outfits from tubes with built-in sleeves, when flies can snag fabric and snap tips before you know what’s happening, unless you’re more careful than I am, apparently. In fact, it was with a busted rod that I first tried Ralph’s method. Say hey, the amputee stayed in place, assisted by physics. Though not for the timid — nor for fragile, expensive rods — it’s never damaged my workhorse gear. (Once, almost: choke your first impulse when it starts to rain.) Of course, I do draw stares from the motoring public, which I pretend to ignore, smiling into the middle distance while wearing what I like to believe is a sanguine, sage, even enlightened expression, similar to that of a Prius driver doing 10 miles an hour less than the speed limit. Of course, there’s a thin line between buffoonery and inspired practice — ask the first fisher who abandoned bait for a feather — and it’s possibly that on occasion, I cross it.
What it is, works: 15 minutes at 25 miles an hour, 5 more at 40, and everything’s copacetic on my arrival at 3:00 p.m. That’s when I find out from a cell phone call that the pal who intended to meet me can’t today, for reasons you would understand if you, too, are one of the sandwich generation.
Not to worry. And not to fret that this isn’t exactly my favorite lake. Too round, too much of the bank occupied by houses and cabins. It’s mostly put-and-take, though at least the regs forbid gas motors, reducing noxious traffic mechanical and human, also the release of benzenes and other toxins. Even so, the mayfly species have disappeared here, as they seem to in still waters near to people, but caddisflies remain and midges enough to support stocked fish that soon learn to eat organic.
The ramp’s located in a shallow cove split by a channel choked at both edges by drowned trees and, later in the summer, lily pads. In June, I might work these for bass, but today, I fin toward a drop-off. There I lay down an intermediate sink tip with four feet of fluoro leader, to which I’ve knotted a small black Bunny Leech laced with a few strands of red Flashabou tinsel. There’s 18 inches of tippet tied to the Bunny’s hook bend, and on point, a maligned fly I like, a size 10 Hornberg with a crimson tinsel body. Call the latter a stocked-fish standard, but test it against wild things before you call me crazy.
It doesn’t take long to hook up, casting to a patch of nervous water. I’m surprised at the pull, then the size of the fish when it leaps higher than my eye level (low, because it’s a pretty feeble float tube), then when the speed with which the fish strips out 30 or 40 feet of line, and then again when it circles a full 120 degrees one way, then 240 degrees around the other way. It’s eaten the rabbit, I discover, and when held to the submerged and crumpled apron, it measures 16 inches, suggesting maybe 14.
A stocked trout, for certain — the lake no longer has viable spawning streams. But not one of the too-typical pale, soft creatures once standard fare. Its fins are full, and the dorsal stands surprisingly high, with only the last few rays bent. Maybe a holdover, but that’s unlikely. Besides anglers, the lake’s a hunting ground for a pair of bald eagles and their offspring every year, also a pair of ospreys and the chicks the eagles don’t kill. Together, these raptors don’t take a fraction of the fish eaten by scores of cormorants that work this 70 acres whenever conditions allow.
In the next three hours, I land 8 or 10 fish, mostly on the Hornberg. They’re all fat and bright and over a foot, though none as long as the first. I miss that many while sharing the water with other anglers. “And look how many fly rods,” says an old-timer who’s been steadily troll-rowing back and forth at a polite distance. “That’s good to see. Been fishing here for 30 years, never used to see any.”
Turns out he’s 88 years old. And did I mention he’s rowing? Yes, but with an interesting technique. He leans his rod against the gunwale and doesn’t grab it to strike when a fish hits. He just rows on, maybe with one sharper stroke, waiting for those that will hang themselves.
It’s . . . economical. And fun to watch, since he’s struck often, though it jars me when his tip snaps down and he just pulls on his oars. One in five, maybe one in seven fish stick, though one big hit almost drags his rod overboard. “About eight feet down,” he shouts.
I’m likely less than half that deep, but casting at the very occasional rises and doing well on my streamers.
Just what those fish are rising to, occasionally, isn’t obvious. No hatch I can see, no cripples, spinners, or shucks on the surface. I’m tempted to write off the jumps and swirls as reactions of hatchery trout loosed in a semi-wild environment. But they’ve been in here a month or two, so should be settling down. Terrestrials?
Not lots around this early in the year. But I’ve started seeing crane fly adults around my house, probably the species whose grubs turn up when I turn over soil in my lawn, “mosquito hawks” splayed out on walls or performing barrel rolls in the entryway. Why they want in is a mystery, but maybe they’re trying to save themselves from themselves: they are terrible flyers, especially in wind, smitten with a strong urge to travel, often over water. I’ve got a pattern I’ve wanted to try for them, a curious contraption tied with an overlong, too-orange extended foam body, a couple of turns of long hackle, and two pairs of thin rubber legs. Unfortunately, the ones somebody sent me are tied on 3X-long, size 6 light-wire hooks, but what the heck.
The fly won’t raise fish on f lat-water slicks, I discover, but will where the surface is wind-riffed. The trout miss far more often than not, but each take is a thrill, and I finally land a release a smallish rainbow with bad eyes and a big mouth.
I look up to see an eagle chasing an osprey, but only halfheartedly, probably because the lake is so flush with prey. Oddly enough, the bite fades soon after, around 6:30. I’m sated anyway, maybe a little sedated, as well — not cold, but wondering if any tubers experiment with Depends. It hasn’t been a bad afternoon at all, and I’m still feeling a tiny bit giddy about that first stocked trout and its surprising fight that rotated my tube one way, then the other.
I’ve made do.
The next day, I sign a petition demanding that state agencies stop polluting rivers with hatchery salmon and steelhead that compete with native populations, including remnants of runs in my home river, barely 10 miles from this too-round, too-colonized little lake. I add a small donation, because every fin helps. While hitting “Send,” I insist to myself that the situation on coastal rivers is so different from the water I just fished that I’m not a hypocrite — or in Terry’s vernacular these days, “a bonehead liberal moral relativist” guilty of “situational ethics” who “probably believes in climate change,” conspiring again to rob him of dinner.
I can hear him stamp. And he would have a point: I could have kept a stocker.
Addendum: a few weeks later, I finish reading Art Flick, Catskill Legend, a book written by the late Roger Keckeissen, edited, introduced, and published by Russell Chatham, lord again of Clark City Press. How this biography came into print is now one of my favorite publishing stories. I will leave that and more for a reviewer to tell. But on page 162, at the head of a chapter, runs a quote by Theodore Gordon. “The father of American dry-fly fishing,” also the first trout bum, that took me by completely by surprise and — surprisingly — by my lights captured “making do” better than anybody else: “The man who has fishing bred in the bone will cast his line in anything that looks like water and find pleasure in catching almost anything that has scales or fins. This innate love of sport is one of the best gifts of a kind Providence and will do more to create and maintain a cheerful spirit than any other recreation in the world.” Theodore Gordon, Forest and Stream Magazine, March 19, 1910.
