Ketchum

On that last day along the North Fork of the Big Wood River in Idaho, I reluctantly tried to tear myself away from a piece of perfection that I haven’t seen in over forty years. 

I decided to forestall the inevitable for just a moment longer and wade upstream in the liquid cathedral that I had immersed myself in for the past few days. It was as if in fact I was trying to not only imprint my own soul and psyche with indelible memory, but was also imprinting the setting around me with the essence of myself there in the eternal, in the tapestry of green forest. My being was like a dry sponge soaking up the sound of the river, a watercourse that begins not far from where we were in occult springs and seeps far up the rocky mountain slopes of the Sawtooth range. Flowing water speaks gently in an ancient and untenable  language that only our hearts can understand amid the dainty, almost mystic roll of native trout as they gently inhale an offering of fur and feathers tied around a minuscule hook . 

A fly that will comfortably fit on your fingertip looks like a gigantic and tawdry imitation of the real thing cast upstream, floating down a river so fragile, cold and shallow that the bottom looks like stained glass glistening in the alpine sun.  

Pondering this great remaining mystery, I extract the number 16 olive caddis fly from its ornate  box and fumble for several long minutes to get the thread like leader tippet through the almost microscopic hook eye, contorted into an acceptable knot. Flash back many years ago, to the Metolius River in Oregon where I gave in to a full blown fly fishing addiction that cost me a college degree. Warm and lazy days in the thick of fly hatches so intense that the entire stream surface was pockmarked with the circles of trout greedily slurping up the offerings of natures fall, gorging the same as their terrestrial counterparts in anticipation of the long and silent paucity of winter. A much younger participant then, with eyes that could keenly see each detail of the fly, knotting was automatic and easy. Now I cuss the damn thing, I cuss my eyes and age, all the while silently thankful that I am still here, still drifting down the stream of time to repeat the cycle once again much like the pupa, midge and hatch of fly that nightly clouds the river before me.

Here in late August, the snowmelt fed rivers are at their warmest. Still icy enough to warrant neoprene socks for any length of stay in this crystalline world of stream ecology to which we are truly, intruders, it warms during the midday and allows me a longer trespass. I walk down the access point and quietly slip into the shin deep water, working my way upstream to the gentle, shallow midstream where I have frenetically flailed these living waters for the past several days. The trout are now wary, cautiously rolling my offering, occasionally inhaling it in, in an act of defiance, or perhaps sheer meanness. I roll a small rainbow who willing impales himself on the Lilliputian fly, gently playing the little torpedo to the net, swiftly unhooking him and returning him to the laughing waters, all in one fell swoop. 

A few more casts to that sweet spot where the slack water meets the swift, I work my way upstream sloshing over the flat multicolored rocks. The sun gazes down, causing the water to explode into millions of tiny diamonds rushing by and the whole thing blurs in a vivid synchronicity of exquisite motion. Sweet poetry of the cadence of my flyrod, the line shooting out in a gentle whoosh, the fly dropping as if a living being on the water, gingerly drifting back towards me and at just the precise moment it gets plucked up off of the dancing current with an almost inaudible sucking sound only to have the whole process repeated time and again.

Now the trout are not having any part of it, but I am content just to be a part of this magical stream, the wooded banks and the verdant forest beyond. The Sawtooth Mountains towering above me observe the scene in mute testimony as I pray to the maker of all things through my rod, through my line, my fly, through my soul. I am forever suspended in time and memory here. 

Memory both ancient and new.

In a spot almost midway through this straight section of stream that meanders and cascades down the graben valley I position myself, pause and fire a long roll cast upriver, cross the rapids toward the left bank, into an area of calm and deep water. Almost instantly a large trout bats at my offering and I rear back to set the hook.

The caddis flies off the surface of the water, for a gossamer instant alive, and out of the mouth of the fish. I glide a bit further upstream shorten the cast and drop the fly in that same radius. Again the trout smacks at the fly and again I jerk it free before he has a chance to transfix himself on my barbless hook. The same agonizing ritual is carried two more times. This fish is certainly hungry if not territorial and angry. 

My old friend Captain Steven and I often talked of the disease called fishing. He taught me how to fish the waters of the Laguna Madre and offshore in the very southern tip of Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico decades ago when I was newly returned form Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. I am in agreement that the truly hardcore go through this disease in a series of stages, not unlike any other chronic and pathological affliction. It is a terminal condition and one which can and often does linger one’s entire life. 

It begins early on. In it’s nascent stage it is the longing to just catch fish, then it becomes the need to catch all the fish. They are our prey, not unlike a bigger predator hunting and consuming a smaller one. 

Those who enter the chronic phase of the disease, like my friend Steven and myself move on to the next phase. That phase manifests itself in the need to catch the biggest fish. To this end,  I have wrestled with a Blue Marlin over 400 pounds. It was a feeling not unlike being attached to the bumper of a Volkswagen for several hours. Sweating and cursing I wanted only for the thing to break off or maybe I’d just cut the line, but in the end I persevered and brought the Goliath alongside to be tagged and released. I chased and caught other outstanding behemoths of many different species, King Salmon, Largemouth Bass, Shark and Wahoo to name just a few. I do not hang them on my wall to brag to others about, but instead opt to release them to prowl the depths from which they came. 

As the disease progresses, the third phase is encountered. It is a phase characterized by the overwhelming desire to catch the most elusive and special species. Some spend years traveling to distant and exotic locations to fulfill that need. From bonefish to peacock bass the fisherman is as driven as the fish in his pursuit. Special fish require special equipment and industries have evolved along those lines. This was a very brief period for me. There was always a nagging tug deep within that whispered that it was about the fish, not the fisherman. Whatever species I was in pursuit of, whether carp or rainbow trout was equally important. It is about the connection that exists between the fish, the water, myself. It was a revelation that brought me to this final stage.

The final stage is an epiphany, a discovery within yourself when you come to the realization that the true joy of fishing is the connection you possess with the fish, when it is neither predator nor prey, but rather equal. It doesn’t matter if the fish is caught and landed at all. It is the act of fishing then that is the end phase. Just as the tiny dry fly on the end of my line is that magical connection to the water and the life below, I am the piece of the grand puzzle that defines and completes the world around me. 

I cast upstream to the left bank again, under that clump of alders growing there and shading the water. There’s an instant upwelling of water as the big trout rolls my barbless caddis fly. An almost audible glug noise and I rear back on the rod, as the fish impales himself violently rolling and tailing, as if to prove once and for all that he is the master of these waters, not me. He has offered me this fight in this shallow universe and even though he is greatly outgunned in the aerial, in this silent crystalline environment, he is truly in charge. He darts back and forth in the nexus between the rapids and the slick slow deeper water until finally I coax him into my net. 

As I reach in to unhook him, in a flash of brilliant color the fish rockets from the net and back into the water in sheer defiance and the fight is on once again. The shallow water giggles over ancient rocks, the autumn summer skies ultramarine blue gaze down in approval and the entire forest seems to nod in approval as the late morning sun creates a stirring breeze that binds the whole tapestry together.

Once again the fish comes to the net, this time tired and spent, gills pulsating in the brilliant light.  I unhook the diminutive, magnificent creature and slip him back into the talking water where he rests a moment against the stained glass river bed and with a couple of ballet tail swooshes disappears into the rapids.