CUTBANK SMOKE ON THE WATER “Where’s your next destination?” I asked. “Hard to say. I like to surprise myself.” He took a long pull from the cigarette, and rather than blow the smoke back out, he let it escape the way steam rises from a freshly poured cup of coffee. I told him about the fish that broke my tippet and how I wished I had another shot at that one. “Did the fish break off right away?” he asked. “Yes.” “Well, you can probably catch that one again. I worked as a cook in Colorado several years ago in Silverthorne, where the Blue River flows through town. An old brown trout lived near a boulder be-hind an outlet mall. If it was behind the boulder, it was resting, and you couldn’t catch it. When it was in front, it was feeding, and you could.” He took a long drag, squinting his eyes to shield them from the escaping smoke and to emphasize his next sentence. “I shit you not, sir. I caught that fish 23 times that summer, and I bet you can catch that one tonight. Happy trails, mi amigo.” It was close to dusk then, and after his dark sil-houette disappeared down the trail, I tied a small spinner to my 5X and waded out near the boulder, writing off his encouragement as the sort of thing hippies say when they want to say things that can never happen. Another fish was taking every spent mayfly that floated by, and my fake proved no excep-tion. After my leader and tippet survived the first encounter, the fish turned and swam downstream, pulling line from my reel in a manner that sug-gested I’d hooked it in the tail or side. When my backing knot was just past the tip of my rod the fish stalled, and I felt the shake of its head. I reeled in the line and started moving—running, actually—in the fish’s direction. First the backing reentered the reel, followed by the blue running line, then the gold belly, and finally the gray front taper. I guided the trout into the shallow water near shore, coaxed it into my net, and squatted on my knees to remove the fly. I gently pushed a small snowshoe emerger from the corner of the trout’s mouth and briefly thought my leader had somehow come free from the tippet ring. “What the heck?” I asked out loud, before real-izing what had just taken place. I caught a whiff of the burning weed, looked up and saw a dark figure standing on the trail behind the cedar trees. “Nice job, my friend,” he said through clouds of smoke and mosquitoes. “Nice job, indeed.” • BELOW • A brown trout caught during an early season sulphur hatch in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Photo: Timothy Schulz
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.3: Page 104
