The first
time I went fishing on Fall River, I thoroughly embarrassed myself. It was June
of 1984, and I had been trying fly fishing for only two years. Linda and I went
out with a guide named Carl Jaeger, and it probably wasn’t very long before he
realized he would be earning his money that day.
To call
Fall River a difficult stream would be understating the case, and a novice
angler who’s all thumbs has no chance. After an unproductive morning (despite a
good insect hatch and plenty of rising fish), Carl tactfully suggested that we
take a long lunch break and do a bit of practice casting. In a short time, he
pinpointed my critical problems, and that was the beginning of my path to
becoming reasonably competent at the sport.
Over the
next few years, I went out with Carl several times, generally with respectable
results. But five years later, in the spring of 1989, I finally had my breakout
day.
You Could Look It Up
At the
beginning of the year, I had become editor of the newspaper, and had been
working at an insanely intense level for four months. I knew from the outset
that that would be the case, so early in the year, I blocked out a week of
vacation to go fishing at Hat Creek, with a day on Fall River with Carl. That
day was Wednesday May 17, 1989.
Weather in
that country at that time of year can be a crapshoot, so I was holding my
breath. It could be wintry, summery, changeable, or something between the
three. It ended up being a wonderfully sunny day — not too hot, and with no
wind to speak of. Sometimes, on a bluebird day like that, the fish go to the
bottom and refuse to feed. Not so on this day. They were hungry all day long,
and there was rarely more than a brief interval (30-45 minutes) that we weren’t
getting action.
A couple of
hours into the day, I sensed that this might be something special. I hadn’t
brought a camera, so I have no pictures, but I began keeping track in my head,
and at the end of the day, before driving off, I wrote down a list of fish
caught in a notebook I kept in the VW camper. That yellowed piece of paper was
still in my desk when I looked just now.
Knowing When to Quit
It shows
that we landed 21 trout that day, 15 of which were 14 inches or longer (and
they were fat and scrappy). And for every one we landed and released, there
were probably two that got away. It was the kind of day you always imagine
you’re going to have when you set out on a fishing trip — before reality
intrudes.
A little
after six o’clock, Carl took me to a place he called “The Office,” where there
were usually a few large fish feeding along the bank in a tight current. It
took a near-perfect cast to have a chance of catching one, but he thought I
might be able to make it. I did, and hooked and landed a 17-inch rainbow. (A
slightly fictionalized version of that fish appears in my mystery novel, Wash Her Guilt Away.)
After
taking the hook out and letting the fish go, Carl turned to me and said, “You
probably won’t make a better cast or catch a better fish. What do you say we
call it a day and head back?” And though there was at least an hour and a half
of fishing light left, I agreed. In doing that, I learned a valuable lesson. A
good fisherman, like a good athlete, has to know when it’s time to quit, and
because I stopped then, I’ll remember that last fish to my final breath.
