The Big One that Got Away

It was the second week in August, and Friday had finally arrived. I'd worked hard through the week to ensure that I could sneak away from the office a little early. I was out of there by 2 p.m., with conscience intact. Of course, it's probable that I would have snuck away anyway, but it's so much more fun to leave without regret.

Having neither air-conditioning nor the cover of night to keep me cool, I sped across the desert with the window open, wind in my face and thankful for it. I counted myself fortunate that the temperatures had dropped down into the mid-80's in recent days, a welcome respite from the 100 degree days of late July.

The miles passed with nary a jackrabbit or tumbleweed to break the rhythm of the road. By 4:30, I'd stopped in at Red's Riverview Campground to retrieve the drift boat I keep stored there year-round, Tyler had shuttled me up to Milepost 19 in the Range Rover, and we'd bounced the boat down the rocky bank that isn't quite a launch. I had my gear rigged up and I was ready to go.

And so, I went.

Summer fishing being what it is, I wanted to pass some time until the shadows fell over the Rock Garden, so I worked the boat down the railroad side of the river across from MP19, tossing hoppers into the brush and alongside the grassy undercuts. By 5:30 p.m. I was entering the Rock Garden, and had already landed a decent trout or two on the hopper. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say that the fish were feeding actively, but certainly they were looking up, and each cast carried with it the confidence that comes from just plain believing.

How else can I say it? It just felt like a big fish kind of day.

I saw a few fish rising in the shady corners of the Rock Garden, but I only managed to trick one or two of the eight inchers. Still, I felt a certain amount of anticipation as I approached a particular "pig hole" below the Rock Garden. I had caught big fish here before, many times. I knew that this was the time of afternoon when they would be alert to caddis, so I had a size 16 CDC caddis on my line, and despite my preference for fishing light tippets, had rigged my leader to end in a couple of feet of the limpest 4x I could find, insurance against a sudden take by a big pig of a trout.

And finally, I floated alongside the much anticipated spot. A small grassy indent in the bank, a few barely submerged rocks roiling the current, and a trailing tree branch on the upstream side all screamed in chorus "there's fish a-plenty here, boys!" Fond Remembrance chimed in "...and some of them are bigguns!"

Suddenly, a loud "SPLASH!!!" just a few feet from the boat broke the taunting chatter of imagined voices. I caught a glimmer of wet chrome flashing just below the surface, headed for the river bottom as the slack line slid past my fingers. "Time to put the brakes on this puppy!" I said to myself, as I tightened up on the line.

Wait a minute. This sucker's heavy!

Now, I know you won't believe this -- and if you don't, I certainly can't blame you. Every fisherman has watched a sure-thing 20 inch fish mysteriously shrink to 14 inches by the time it reaches the net. Perhaps fly rods ought to come with a warning, like those side-view mirrors on my car: "Caution: Fish in the Distance Are Smaller than They Appear!"

So, yes, I know that imagination plays tricks on even the most scrupulously honest fishermen. And God knows that it plays tricks on lying bastards like myself. But you have to believe me -- I've caught enough salmon in my day to know what 20 pounds feels like. I've taken them home and weighed them on the bathroom scale. I KNOW what 20 pounds feels like on the end of the line from personal experience. And if you've ever hauled in a 20 pound chum on a 7 weight rod and a Pflueger Medalist reel, you know that's the kind of personal experience that leaves indelible impressions on the brain, not to mention your knuckles. Such an experience changes you forever. It recalibrates your expectations of life.

And teaches you what 20 pounds feels like.

And even though I've never, ever seen anything on the Yakima approaching that size -- not even the monster carp that grabbed my fly earlier this year as Vern stood next to me, laughing his ass off at a honest case of mistaken identity -- right now, every muscle in my body told me that I had at LEAST 20 pounds at the end of the line, clinging stubbornly to the bottom. The line that ran between us was throbbing and pulsing like my neighbor's stereo late on a Friday night. A message came telegraphing up the line like a subsonic version of those "telephones" we used to make as kids from a couple of tin cans and some string:

"Can you hear me now?"

(by the way: those tin-can telephones never did work all that well. And of course you could hear me now, dumbass -- after all, you were only standing 15 feet away because that's all the string we could find in the garage.)

But I digress. This time, the message coming up the line was loud and clear: "I'm staying on the bottom, and you can't make me move!" I fed out some slack line, hoping to relieve the pressure and tempt the bad boy into moving. No luck. I pulled the slack back in, and the pulsing tension on the line let me know that we were still connected, still engaged in this tug-of-war.

"C'mon, you stubborn S.O.B.!!!" I yelled. "I'll let you go again. Just let me bring you up to the boat!" But it was to no avail. He wasn't going ANYWHERE.

We sat locked in this battle for a full 5 minutes. Occasionally, I'd think I had made a little headway, but then I'd realize it was just wishful thinking.

I was afraid it might come to this. I pulled the Bowie knife out of the side storage box, unsheathed it, and let go a heavy sigh. I cut the line. As I did, I briefly caught a glimpse, a final flash of silver from behind the boat.

"You won this time, but I'll be back" I said, as I floated downstream. And of course I'd be back. I always come back.

But damn, I hate losing a good anchor!

Without any way to stop the boat, the rest of the drift down to Red's was largely a sightseeing trip. Floating below Frustration Flats, I made a few futile attempts to set the boat up on a good drift, and cast from the rowing seat, but there was just enough wind to make this an aggravating, if not quite dangerous undertaking. I'd just get a good drift going, when I'd realize that the wind was blowing me into the bushes, or that the boat was suddenly broadside in the current, heading towards some rocks. So most of the time I just drifted and watched the canyon walls turn colors in the setting sun.

I did pull over in the slack water below Umptanum footbridge, and tied on a large stimulator. I have done very well this year, using big flies on a certain stretch of water between Umptanum and Red's, especially when I've timed my floats to hit the stretch as the sun is sinking below the hills. I figured I might be able to get a few casts in before my boat went crashing into the bank.

And sure enough, as I approached the spot, with one hand holding the oar handles to keep the oars from dragging in the shallow water, and the other hand casting the size 8 stimmy with my 5 wt, my index finger looped around the slack line, I managed to drop the fly into a little brushy pocket. There was a swirl as a big trout poked his nose out of the water, and instinctively I raised the rod. The line went taught. But this time it wasn't the anchor line, and instead of 30 pounds of steel chain throbbing at the end of the line, it was a feisty 15 inch trout. I fought it as well as I could with one hand holding the oars, periodically working in a couple of corrective moves with the oars to keep the boat lined up. We drifted downstream together, fish, fisherman, and fishing boat all drifting out of control in the current and coming dangerously close to the brushy banks of the river. But ultimately, self-preservation instincts (mine, and the trout's) won out, and I broke the fish off, tucked the rod into the side of the boat, and hauled on the oars just in time to avoid leaving a red, white and blue Hyde imprint on the bottom of Smiley Face rock.

After all, I didn't want to give Smiley Face something new to laugh at.

I pulled into Red's around 8:00 p.m., just slightly ahead of schedule despite the loss of an anchor. Nightfall comes earlier as the autumn approaches, and on the way home, I found myself alone in the darkness, drowning my sorrow over the lost anchor with a big dose of Tomato Juice. Tomato Juice Hole, that is -- my one true secret weapon, my ace in the hole, my last chance at salvation, a place where even Vern can shake off the ugly smell of a skunk. A guarantee against skunk funk, if you will. And Tomato Juice came through as usual. In half an hour of dapping and short casting size 8 stimulators to trout rising in the darkness, I pulled up five more trout, ranging from 14 inches to 16 inches. I held the last one, the largest, against my arm by the light of my flashlight, and it stretched from the crook of my elbow to the tip of my middle finger. No anemic supermarket trout, this one -- he was big and full bodied, and lived up to the name "rainbow." It was an honor to spend some time with him, and a joy to feel his strength as he shot from my hands with a single flip of his tail. So, despite the fact that trout were still splashing at my feet in the darkness, and despite an encore performance by the local coyote boy's choir, I decided that was a good fish to end the day on.

I took my time putting away my gear and pulling off my waders. The stars were out in all their glory, the waning moon still lurking just below the horizon. I could have sat and listened to the coyotes for hours, but settled for driving home listening to some sub-par fill-in for Art Bell on the radio, interviewing a guy who was hawking a book on reincarnation.

I wondered: "which is higher on the reincarnation ladder: fish, or fisherman?"

And I fell asleep that night wondering what it would be like to come back in the next life as a trout.

Comments? Compliants? Compliments? Send them all to scott_butner@charter.net.