Downstairs, garishly printed on one of those faux-rustic-Western wood panels, reads a bromide I grok: “Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by moments that take our breath away.” What pleases me about this is the plural pronoun: “our.” For me, this often applies to our fishing, our adventure, sometimes even our fish.
This sense of experience shared stopped me the other day when an idle eye landed on an old photo of my friend Steve holding a pair of steelhead. It’s always around, and sometimes it makes me grin a little longer than usual — this time probably because Steve and I talked on the phone last week.
Boy, does he look happy. Young. Tall and square shouldered, wearing a full gold beard and one of the faded blue, button-down dress shirts he always wore under his vest, also a plaid shirt jacket — the only plaid he ever wore — because back then, Pendleton didn’t make solid colors (I don’t think).
Great smile. You know how some people look really good when they smile? Not goofy or giddy, as if an excellent moment has loosened all the muscles in the face of some wall-eyed, slack-jawed victim of oral surgery emerging from nitrous oxide.
Steve doesn’t look like that. He looks every inch a fisherman. And it doesn’t hurt that a crappy camera with a Ziess Ikon lens picks out all the color and detail of the two Feather River steelhead he’s holding.
Our fish, one his, one mine — the first steelhead I caught on a fly.
Enough daydreaming. But it’s a distracted morning, so eventually, the other eye migrates to an adjacent wall, where a young son Max and his first buck salmon both show snarling kypes to the camera. Two feet away hangs a pic of his sister Sophie proudly holding a pompano from Mexico, which should be a Jimmy Buffet song title. (It was taken in the mid-2000s; Sophie wears what might be her first bikini, and I am still not comfortable with that.) Below, pinned into a bulletin board and partially hidden by baby Sophia’s first birthday picture, peeps part of an image of somebody you can’t see casting to a humpback whale porpoising not 20 feet off a Zodiac pontoon. I happen to know this Anon Angler is faux-presenting a “Snickering Krill” pattern that, purely by accident, looks like a size 12 Mike Mercer–inspired Poxyback Scud tied on an extremely heavy hook. . . .
This is almost all the fish porn adorning my office walls, and there’s none anywhere else in the house. Of course, there are seven shelves of fly-fishing books and other stuff: a print of an October Caddis adult and pupa by the late and missed Barry Glickman, three full fly boxes given me as gifts that I promised to fish (and technically did, one fly from each), an Andy Puyans PT in a specimen vial, messes of fly-tying materials. . . .
Still and all, for a moment, it strikes me that the collection of images seems pretty paltry, given what I do, suggesting that either everybody else catches fish when I don’t or that I am modest.
Neither is true, I know, so I suddenly wonder what’s up. My photo albums and slide carousels are full of pictures displaying many hundreds of fish, many larger, rarer, more beautiful, some hero shots, but none as important as these wall finalists, apparently.
And after some contemplation, this seems entirely right to me. Not that I’m knocking trophies proudly presented. Fly fishing is, after all and in my opinion, the finest of solitary sports, an activity that I’ve probably practiced alone far more often than not . . . but has there ever been a time when fishing, for me, was without human connections?
Yes. Emphatically yes. Lots of times. Early, isolated years, seeking refuge from Lord of the Flies Junior High on golf course ponds and Arizona canals; in Malaysia, cautiously stalking jungle rivers; law school, escaping Civil Procedure to catch crappies, bass, and bream; living on the Colorado prairie back when mutilated cattle were showing up in our county every other week.
These episodes cover a decade, or two — three? — eras when a fish was a fish was a fish, and that was enough.
So when did this change? How and why? From whence came the notion of “shared fish,” when this best solo sport became so often something more?
Probably when Steve and I starting fishing together. He was the first person who actually tried to teach me technique, especially reading water: “See the seam coming off that rock? Try just this side of the current.” And when his advice worked for me, he’d celebrate, much like my father when we played baseball or golf.
Simply put, we were partners. And while mine was mostly the apprentice role, I did have my uses besides netting his fish. Specifically, whenever what should work didn’t, he would turn to me saying, “You’re the one with the imagination.”
I’m fine crediting this friendship with the start of the shared fishing connection, but Steve won’t mind if, while recollecting my history with rod and reel, I came up with other vignettes of shared fish, each caught in a context that shaped me as angler, boy and man.
I’ve chosen the two earliest here, connected only because both taught me lessons. One isn’t even my own experience, quite, except as a kid who took reading awfully seriously. I wish I knew its author’s name and hope if he is still alive, he won’t mind me sharing a piece so wise it really should endure. I will do my best to render it rightly, 50-odd years later, or at least with its spirit intact.
Sometime back in the mid-1960s, I found my first-ever story about fly fishing, possibly in some anthology from the Lord of the Flies Junior High library. While I had little idea how this technique differed from the one I practiced with a Zebco spin-casting rig, I had no problems understanding a tale of an epic pursuit by anglers with whom I shared an obsession.
The protagonist was a boy around my age or a couple of years older —13 or 14, let’s say. His farming family was poor enough that his chores sounded far harder than mine, but whenever possible, he explored, plying small mountain waters for “squaretails” — a kind of trout, I decided eventually — using a late grandfather’s frayed tackle. This included a rod, inexplicably made from bamboo, already damaged by an oft-repaired split. The kid — I’ll call him “Guy” — worried about this constantly, probably, I presumed, because when making a splint, he, too, had learned the limits of rubber cement and duct tape.
But Guy had hope. His small town’s hardware store was sponsoring a limited-time big-fish contest, first prize a new rod — a modest model, but to him a magic wand, Charles Foster Kane’s Rosebud, Hans Brinker’s coveted silver ice skates, and a Mitchell 300/Garcia outfit all wrapped up into one.
And he was going to win it. Despite competition from the local rich kid, Guy had learned the location of the biggest squaretail around and for months had saved this great fish for just this occasion. Not only did he know where it lived, how and when it hunted, he’d figured out the proper way to stalk it, the right fly and cast . . . stuff that made my bluegill fishing look pretty haphazard.
And his plan went well, all the way until the tremendous fight, when suddenly Grandpa’s old rod shattered.
Guy and I were devastated, of course. He splinted the break as best he could: badly, he knew. But he had no other options and only three days left in the contest.
Then even less time. On a brief visit to admire again the prize he now had small chance to win, the hardware store owner offered Guy an opportunity he couldn’t refuse, to guide a very old gentleman from the city for two days on what looked to be the man’s last fishing trip.
Guy agonized. But not for long. The money would be a windfall for his family. Even at that age, he knew needs were more important than desires, no matter how great. And besides, he would still have one day left. . . .
The following days were a mix of misery and fascination, as I recall. The Old Gent was an expert who fished exquisite tackle, also friendly and kind, with elegant manners, delighted with the trout he caught, and he appreciated Guy’s skills in a way Guy had never experienced.
All this only made it harder when the Old Gent confessed a hope that caused Guy pain: “All my life, I’ve wanted to catch a squaretail over three pounds. I guess this trip’s my last chance.”
At the end of the second day — also the end of the contracted trip — that opportunity seem to end. The old Gent was philosophical, but sad (“wistful” was a word I wouldn’t learn for a while). The boy was . . . torn.
So was I, reader. Seriously. You’re an adult. I wasn’t, when I considered this dilemma, and while you may suspect what will happen, I certainly did not. And so it was that while I sympathized with Guy — I, too, knew old men I liked — my mind was set and steeled when, to my dismay, the boy surrendered his last chance to capture the greatest prize he could imagine.
The Old Gent took the fish. He was as happy as could be imagined. Delighted, fulfilled, gratified beyond measure — the squaretail he had always hoped for. . . .
Guy tried to celebrate with him. Maybe he succeeded in moments, but this story’s author, whose name I really wish I could remember, made no attempt to convince readers that the kid’s generous gesture half salved his disappointment.
Or mine. Not even close. I was bitter, disgusted, then furious when the rich kid won the rod he didn’t even need. Too young, too selfish, I vaguely recall dropping the book to stalk about, demanding Guy, of my ex-alter-ego “Now what will you do! Now what?”
Sure as heck, I knew this wasn’t how stories were supposed to end. Heck yeah, I knew real life isn’t fair, but I expected better outcomes from things written in books. Otherwise, what was the point?
No. This ending was wrong. Except it wasn’t the ending at all.
I finished the last few pages out of obligation, or maybe to cauterize the wound, never suspecting the outcome until it came.
Guy mourned. But a week or so later, a package for him arrived with his name on it, a long tube carefully wrapped, holding an exquisite gift, a bequest Guy recognized. Along with the Old Gent’s premium rod came a note I bet Guy would keep for the rest of his life.
I was happy for a couple of hours, I think. Then, thinking things through, I was ashamed. Although he had been happier for catching his squaretail, the gift and note meant the Old Gent was dying. That was sad, but what made me sorrier was that while I love my Grandpa, I doubted I’d have been so generous in sharing “my” fish.
This lack of character gnawed at me for quite a long time. But some months later, this same Grandpa helped dispel my shame a little, reminding me of something “crazy” I’d done the Christmas before, when I’d cashed out my savings and coin collection and begged him to take me down to the sporting goods store, there to buy my father a catcher’s mitt that wouldn’t leave his hand black, blue and swollen when I pitched to him.
Not the same thing. Baseball wasn’t fishing and I hadn’t sacrificed nearly as much as Guy. But maybe, just maybe, I figured, I wasn’t rotten to the core.
Of course, not every fish story involves a moral melodrama.
A few of mine were as funny as instructive, like the first time I ever saw somebody fishing a fly rod.
Not lovely, not graceful, not lyrical: still, those hours mark a special and silent form of expectation, tension always at the very edge of violence. I was Guy’s age now, more or less sexually innocent, and I had never before felt so engaged. This played out in a deceptively quiet and lovely tableau.
Late evening on an ancient, ballfield-sized impoundment dammed to water cattle. Wide, dense mats of water weeds surround every bit of a shoreline that is also ringed by thickets of reeds and cattails twice my height. Beyond these lies a narrow circle of red dirt that gives way to brooding pines, descendants of larger ponderosas that rise up the foothill slopes of the Bradshaw Mountains.
To the west, those peaks are now limned by copper dust from distant mines. (I know this. I was born just to the south.) More immediate, almost alarming, are the wild flights of bats dashing between the shadows and the planes of pale sky, each so quick to bank and turn they seem to fly dotted lines. Bullfrogs poke heads from the moss mat barrier. A few dare to bellow, but the air stinks of snakes.
There are other predators, sure. We’d found ’coon and coyote tracks in the feeder streambed walking in, dragonflies still strafe the surface, and I’d been told that if somebody spent time in this flat valley, they’d hear the scream of a puma echoing out of Sycamore Canyon.
But not this evening. For my money, the most determined hunter in this moment stands a couple dozen feet away, a dark olive, birdlike shape, wearing a green-billed ball cap, wading belly deep in work jeans and rough-out Wellington boots. And JT has almost reached the edge of the weed bed.
He holds entirely still, except for short, stripping movements and those seconds when he gently waves a rod. No cast extends beyond 20 feet. JT doesn’t know how to cast farther — this is only his second or third time fishing this way — but what he can manage is just enough to reach a half dozen feet of open water with a big black fly I will someday recognize as a Woolly Worm.
I cannot have held my breath for often or long, but that’s how I remember the feeling of watching JT. I am almost 14. He’s my boss at the small lake lodge 10 miles away, also kind of my hero since I was 8 or 9 years old, when I crossed an invisible barrier between Elm Street and Highland, because somebody said over there somebody else had hung a deer from a tree.
JT’s younger brother and I would be friends throughout middle school, but it was JT, the woodsman, we both worshiped. If JT knew little about fly fishing, he knew lots about fishing of every other kind, and hunting — ducks, doves, rabbits, and deer, obviously — also trapping beavers and cutting timber. In short, he is to us The Real Thing, someone who, while expressing marginal respect for “book learning,” has a masters in forestry. When not silent or rolling snuff tucked under his lip, he is wise and sometimes funny to a fault.
I was trying to be, too. But right now, JT’s another kind of mentor. Right now, completely intent, he’s as focused as my father when soldering transistors.
And I am intent, watching him, even if my body is, as usual 24/7, a quivering collection of amped muscles big and small and my thoughts are as antic as always. Even so, not a second goes by without my stare returning to the bent line leading from JT’s rod and line into the water. I’ve been this gripped for half an hour, ever since JT said aloud, “Pretty sure there’s a fish here. . . big trout, hunting. See if I can find him with this fly rod.”
JT moves out a few steps. Now the water reaches his armpits. “Dang,” he says, because he only swears when he means it. “Wet my snuff box, I think . . . ”
Reader, you know the kind of take that comes now. Not a sip, not a swipe, but that lunge when a heavy fish attacks prey the size of a dragonfly nymph or giant water beetle and in the same moment feels steel, weight, something wrong. Half its body emerges into the air, strings of weed already draped down its head from the leader; its fall is also a plunge.
“You got him!” I shout, just in case JT missed the explosion and hasn’t noticed his rod’s doubled over.
“You got him!” I repeat, only because I don’t have at hand tympani drums, a gong, or lanterns to light and carry around on horseback.
I may have repeated myself another time or two before JT finally said softly, “Think I got him, do you?”
One day I would realize that life might have been easier if I didn’t catch JT’s sarcasm so swiftly and surely. But seeing where his line began bending through the weeds, my muted reply of “Maybe” wasn’t a smart-ass retort, entirely.
Not to worry. Much. JT was in his element, had wrestled more largemouth bass out of heavy cover than I’ll likely catch in this life. Not that he couldn’t have lost this fish but he was patient, also willing to wade into the mat to sort out things out, and, finally, looking back, I suspect he had even by then chopped back his only leader. (Tippet? What was a tippet?)
The fight was long, though I don’t think the fish ever got more than 30 feet from him, even during a dash or two into open water. The lack of theatrics didn’t matter to me, however. From the hookup, I knew this trout was larger than any we saw in the lodge’s lake, bigger than I’d ever seen or would for many years: 19 inches, well over three pounds.
I wish I had a photo of JT holding that fish or a video of him scrambling to shore wearing what looked like some SEAL sniper’s aquatic camo outfit — dipping down to land the fish had soaked JT completely. And yes, that certainly included his snuffbox.
The events above are as close to fact as I can make them, the dialogue reported faithful to the tone, however enamored; I’m quite sure of my feelings. What we said after JT emerged, barely lacking gills, is lost to me now. If this had happened one of the other, later summers I worked for him, I like to imagine that what we said was clever, because as much as anyone else, JT taught me how to tease in ways that made people laugh, not hurt; to engage, instead of ostracize; establish camaraderie, rather than hierarchy. This fish, this evening watching him, assured that I would some day fish a fly rod, stalk and hunt as he did. But JT also set other kinds of standards I would never forget.
For example: I was new to his lodge, cabins, and trailer park, and a lot of the older, longtime regulars treated me with suspicion, this only partly related to my shoulder-length bird’s nest of hair. JT noticed, and only days before the catch — but after watching my uncomfortable interactions with people for a week — he took me aside. “Now we already know that you’re a pretty smart guy, right? People can tell by all the long words you like to use. Problem is, these folks are smart, too, but haven’t had too much education. They don’t understand what you’re saying, so as smart as they might think you are . . . well, you know, they might not like you too much. So you need to decide what’s most important to you, if you get what I’m saying.”
I did. And I promised to try. Thing was, I had no idea how to go about things. JT did. He didn’t even stop at the lodge when we brought the monster home to the big lake. Instead, he led us on a tour of cabins, campsites, and campfires. It really was the biggest trout many had ever seen, so their eyes went wide, reflecting more than flames. But after a while, I noticed how these stares changed whenever JT finally, finally answered the inevitable question: “Well hell, what did you catch it on!”
“A fly.”
Back then and there, fishing flies was as exotic — and as pointless, people thought — as bird’s nest hair. But JT, always the savvy woodsman and generous lodge host, sold the idea over and over, sealing the deal by leaning in to whisper the information his audience never knew they needed to know.
”But here’s the secret, OK? . . . That fly? Believe it or not, I think the only reason it works. . . ” JT would stop and stab at me with a forefinger . . . “is ’cause it’s tied from a piece of the new kid’s hair.” Certainly not everyone — 15 or 20 people — took this seriously; those who knew JT best knew he was also a prankster. And while a few folks laughed, every time I managed to lift my head hanging down from embarrassment, it looked like some of those round red eyes had narrowed to slits.
Did this tale help people look past my unacceptable, but potentially fish-catching hair?
Of course it did. By the time doubt prevailed, everybody had enjoyed a laugh, and I was the sort of sympathetic butt end of another JT legend. I met smiles everywhere, and nods, even hellos. All it took was a shy smile, a “Hi,” and avoiding “perspicacious” to convince friendly people “He has such good manners, for somebody. . . well, you know.”
