I pulled the line through the guides, checked to make sure I hadn't missed any, and then took a Hendrickson from my vest. It was overcast-a good day for fishing. Dad was quiet as he got his gear together. He slammed a back door on his Blazer. I'd just told him that mom's boyfriend, John, was teaching me how to fly fish.
"The Rifle's a good trout stream," Dad finally said, slipping a Mepps Black Fury onto his swivel. "It's not good in July, but early in the season like this, or later, it can be as good as any of them."
I nodded.
The river started miles upstream from us in its headwaters and moved past in a twisting slip of black. John once told me that rivers were always moving and always staying in the same place.
"Remember your first opening day?" Dad asked. "Man, you were an excited little guy. Every place we stopped, you told someone that your daddy was taking you fishing. Remember?"
"I was five," I said. "And, we were fishing for bass."
"I know."
"Today is for trout."
"Yeah," he said, "I know."
Dad lived in Ohio-six hours away. He said his work didn't let him get up to Michigan very often to see me. He'd put together this trip for my fourteenth birthday.
"The holes are deep," he said, "but you can fish them from the shallow water."
I pulled my waders on. "John already showed me how to fish the deep holes." A small blur of bird flew from our side of the river and landed in the trees on the other side.
"Well, fine then, let's fish," Dad said.
In the current, I could feel him watching me. The river was cold even through my waders. He tried to fish close. "We can't fish the same holes," I said, moving away. Exhaling, he crossed to the other side.
We both cast in silence, the river murmuring around our legs and in between us.
"Now this one's a better one," he shouted, after five minutes of working his spinner near the undercut bank. He reeled in the trout. "Come over here for a second," he called to me.
On shore, he bent down and rapped the squirming fish's head against a rock.
I winced. "John does catch and release."
"Why?"
I shrugged. John had said something about the fish making a gift of its life, and anglers could only repay that gift by giving life back.
Dad shook his head. "That doesn't even ... that's just ... that's just his choice, I guess." He studied the fish for a moment. He asked me if I knew how to tell one trout from another.
I shook my head.
"Hmm. Guess ol' John doesn't know everything, huh?" He opened his hand and the fish lay shiny in his palm. "This is a brookie." He told me there were signs, and his finger moved around the body. Squared tail. Wormy olive-colored marks along its spine. Reddish spots with blue halos. "And, see these lower fins? Pinkish with a bright white stripe. No other trout looks like this."
"The brookie's not a true trout. It's like a cousin. It's really a char."
Dad nodded. "I've heard that. Did John tell you that?"
I nodded.
He slipped the fish into his creel and turned back to the river. He exhaled.
"How do you know if you've got one of the others?" I asked as we went back into the current.
"What, browns and rainbows? I mean, the true trout?" He looked back at me. "Browns have spots all over. No wormy marks. When you're reeling them through the water, they almost look yellowish. Definitely no white stripe." Rainbows, he said, have a multi-colored stripe running down the middle of each side of them. "They look more silver than the other two."
We went back to fishing. I worked over in my head what he'd explained and wanted to have it memorized. My arm ached from casting, but I didn't care. I wanted to be able to tell John that I'd caught one on the fly rod.
An hour passed with no more strikes. The sky grew darker and the air cooled.
Dad lifted his hat, scratched his head, and looked at the clouds. "If you wanted to camp around here," he started, "there are some good bass and perch lakes nearby. We could rent a little boat tomorrow, pack a lunch. I've got an extra pole if you want to take an afternoon and drown some worms."
I made a face and shook my head.
"Oh no," he laughed. "You're already a trout snob."
I shrugged.
"Well, we should plan something. We have two more days together."
"I know," I said.
We kept fishing. Behind me, he shouted that I should land the fly upstream from the holes and let it drift in. "I don't know for sure ... but it seems like that's what natural bugs would do," he said.
After fifteen minutes, I tried his advice. It wasn't much later that a fish took my fly under. I didn't do what John had taught me about setting the hook, but I was lucky and the fish hooked itself. My heart pounded something tingly through me. I wound up my slack and used the reel. John said it was easier to play the fish on the reel. I lightened my tension when the fish fought too hard.
"Feel what the fish is telling you," John had told me. "If you don't handle it right, you'll lose it. They have soft mouths. Sometimes giving them some slack is the only way to keep them. You can't be too rough."
I landed it. Pinkish with a bright white stripe-a nice nine-inch brookie. It was beautiful, shimmering its small patterns of color. It was slippery too, like a bar of soap with a spine. I held it tight and a little sound gurgled out of its mouth. Looking at the river, I imagined all the swimming brilliance beneath the moving surface. I wanted to keep some of that beauty. I slipped the fish into my creel and it thrashed about.
"Little live wire," Dad said. He told me how well I did. "Let me try your rod," he said. "I've been watching you."
I looked at him.
"What? I'm not going to break it."
He went out to the middle and started to cast. For a while, the line did nothing, but then he figured out enough to get it moving. When he found a rhythm, the line snapped the water behind him and in front. He tried, but could not get rid of the snap.
I laughed.
He waded the rod back to me. "Okay, what's so funny?" he asked, smiling.
"You can't fly fish. You're like a lion tamer out there. That's what John would say."
He looked at me, and his face changed. "Well," he said, "let's not forget who taught you how to fish in the first place. You weren't too good for perch back then."
He turned downstream away from me and disappeared around a bend. When I came around the same bend, he was already gone around the next. I stopped fishing. My brookie thumped one last time in the creel. The deeper holes seemed blacker, and the water pushed me toward them. The air was damp with mist. I didn't know that I would get him so angry. Starting downstream again, trying to move faster, I had to take wide, funny steps, and the water tangled between my legs. I couldn't catch up.
Standing in the cold river, I opened my creel and looked in on the brookie. Its gill rose and fell, taking in nothing. Its color and detail were fogging over, and it made me sad that I had everything to do with this new ugliness. I didn't even really like the taste of fish. Why had I kept it? I wished it weren't even in the creel. I shook my head, promising myself that I would release the next one.
Looking up, I was still alone. How far had Dad gone?
I came around the bend. Downstream, two football fields away, a man in silhouette was fishing. I squinted towards him. He took off his hat, scratched his head, and then put the hat on again. Relieved, I smiled. It was my father.
Moving towards him, I saw his pole bend. It looked like he'd hooked a good-sized fish. Getting into a shallower stretch, I could almost run over the pebbly bottom. The water rose away from my feet in crashing arcs. The fish pulled the line upstream, and I heard the whining change of my dad adjusting the drag. "I've got a net," I shouted. I kept racing toward him, even when the water deepened again. He turned and motioned me closer. I watched the tip of his pole. "What is it?" I called. "Whatcha got?" Smiling, he shrugged.
The shadow of the fish moved through the river toward us. I thought I saw yellow.
"Looks like a brown," I said.
"Get the net low in the water, so he doesn't see it," my father said. "I'm going to bring him to you."
© 2006 by Jeff Vande Zande.