Catch and Release

(Preface: I wrote the following blog in my journal on Sunday morning but have not had time to post it till tonight. Chronologically, it would have come before "Any Port in a Storm".)

(Sunday, July 5th, 2009. 10:30 am, WJF)

My wrist, my left wrist, my writing hand, is already sore.

Pulling and twisting against the tension of the garden hose to rinse sand from our wading boots, aggravated what has been a chronic inflammation these past 2 or 3 weeks; maybe even the past month.

With the windows open and shaded, the breeze moving through the living room is cool. We ate breakfast in the shaded breeze and I watched the distant field for the rest the view brought to my eyes. Karen wondered where the horses were that pastured there last summer. How would we now what happened to the gray, and the brown, horses? Certainly they brought movement and color and obvious life but for me, this morning, the field is just restful for my eyes.

The sky is full of hot July blue and the grasses in the distance wear the coppery tarnish of a field gone wild with sunlight and neglect; gone wild with freedom to grow, to be a field and nothing else.

The morning is quiet- a few sparrows; no mowers or wheelers or leftover firecrackers, no dogs chopping the stillness up into hoarse, bite-size chunks. The pine plantation is stippled with black shadows, giving depth to offset the flatness that comes with distance.

Last night we fished the river again. Two nights in a row we waded the slow cool waters trying to lure trout up from the depths. We fished with our friends, Jeff and Cindi. Together we went down to the river to look first, to gauge the water- the speed, the clarity, the depth; all relative. And we looked for rises: there were none. Just the surface dimpling of chubs. And maybe we just went to look at life, at some living thing. flowing by, inviting and somehow, yet, out of reach.

Out of reach? Maybe.

Fishing for trout is a reason to visit a river. One should not need a reason and I am glad Karen and I visit these waters just as often without a rod and waders. I did not need a trout as much as I needed to be in the wild, to be out of walls and alarms and people and work. I needed to be out of, away from, that part of me that takes up too much of my life and I cannot help feeling just a bit smug because I got what I asked for: two nights on the river.

Karen almost got what she always asks for because she found a perfect otter print in the soft mud at the water's edge. Seems like if we aren't looking for trout we are looking for otters. Either one is a good enough reason for coming back again and again and again. They are both symbols of fluid grace and strength, flashing speed and vitality. One, at least, will mock you out loud. The other just splashes your fly away.

Karen also got the deer. She said it was my deer because the other day I mentioned a red doe stepping from the wall of green grass, into the river, to drink. The deer Karen got was a buck, velvet antlers beginning to swell into forks; large liquid eyes peering down a long red nose at the yellow-shirted intruder in the water. From three rod lengths away he regarded my wife, moving his head from side to side and up and down, trying to gain a measure of her depth- perhaps to see what lurked behind her. For her part, Karen's intent was pure. No deer yet has reason to fear my wife armed with a flyrod in her hand.

When the trees on the horizon grew tall enough to hide the sun and a slight chill filled the air in the river bottom I lost a trout. In a deep hole where the high spring run-off scoured a cavity under a bankside willow, a trout, or as we found out later, several trout, spend their days waiting for the cool of evening, I caught and promptly lost a large, heavy, strong rainbow. Shortly after that Karen came up on her way back to the van. The twilight was growing into darkness and I hooked and lost another trout. Possibly the same one, or a brother perhaps; we could not tell but my evening was complete. I caught, I lost, I laughed.

That was the first night. Last night I caught and released another fat rainbow deep in the shadows of overhanging willows and alders. The light was so dim I cut the line to release him rather than risk injuring him to remove the fly. I worry, always, about letting them go when they are hooked deep. The struggle is hard on them and at this time of year the warmer water is stress enough. I pray his strength kept him alive for he was strong. He pulled my old bamboo into a stiff arc and dug for the bottom and hung on in a way known only to trout. I pried him against his will but maybe at that point it was a matter of my pride? Like the previous night I could have lost him and that would have been ok. But sometimes we have to touch that wild we seek; sometimes we have to hold it a moment before letting it slide back into the dark waters.

Peace friends,
Pinch those barbs down,
Mike