Strangers

There was a time when I would walk for miles to avoid other anglers. If - when driving along the river - I came across another car in a parking area then chances are good I would just keep on going. I even tried to mask my movements bank side; at times hopping from rock to rock - like some sort of wader wearing ninja - to avoid leaving footprints in the mud. On the rare occasion when I did encounter another angler, I did my best to avoid conversation, feigning ignorance of the river and answering questions with the usual, "Don't know. It's my first time here." In simplest terms, I was about as antisocial a bug chucker as ever there was. Then two things happened to make me realize my foolishness: I rediscovered steelhead and I joined the ranks of the morbidly obese.

I wasn't always a fat man, although at no point in my life have I ever been skinny, slender, scrawny or svelte. Even when I was a soldier and possessed several clearly identifiable abdominal muscles, I weighed in at 225 pounds on my best days and a little more than that on my worst. I can only trace my family tree back a few generations, but I'm fairly certain that if I followed it to its source I'd discover my forbears hailed from someplace very cold and that they needed every bit of God's natural insulation.

 

While I am grateful for the extra warmth as I stand hip deep in a February cold river, I find the weight does tend to slow me down during the warmer months of the year. I'll still hike as far as I must to get to whatever piece of river I fancy fishing, but I'm not getting there quite as quickly, I'm not hopping along rocks like an outsized frog, and I'm not nearly as likely to go out of my way to avoid other anglers. Some days I'll even pause for a little while and strike up a conversation, and much to my surprise, I've enjoyed the overwhelming majority of those discussions. With few notable exceptions, the other anglers I've met streamside are men and women with whom I would enjoy spending a day on the water. Ironically, these conversations most often occur along the banks of the Salmon River - a stream with a reputation for combat fishing and rudeness amongst the anglers who chase its trout and salmon.

I've said it more times than I count, both on this blog and elsewhere, that steelhead are a special gamefish. They're eager to take a fly, they're big, and they're fast - ridiculously fast. They're also accessible, and within a day's drive of many of the country's major metropolitan areas. This puts an excess of pressure on the most popular rivers as throngs of people embark on a great annual migration to steelhead choked water. The Salmon River likely sees as many anglers as any other steelhead water on either the east or west coast; in all likelihood she absorbs more bug chuckers, gear heads, pinners, and bait dunkers than most any other comparable piece of water. As a consequence, finding privacy on the Salmon River is sometimes a difficult endeavor. So what is a metalhead-loving bug chucker to do?

To my way of thinking, we have two choices. We can accept that the best water on the river is likely occupied, and try to get away from the crowd by fishing less prolific beats, or we can introduce ourselves to the other anglers who frequent the most popular runs. As I've said, there was a time when the second option wasn't even a choice for me. I couldn't bear being anywhere near an angler who wasn't part of my group. My attitude began to change, however, as I realized that the few people I met stream side all seemed to be good people who felt exactly as I did about steelhead - regardless of the method they employed in the pursuit.

I'm reminded of Leon. Leon was an older fella', perhaps in his mid seventies, who I encountered some years ago on a November trip to the river. Leon was nearby when I hooked one especially hot hen that took me into my backing several times before I was able to land her about 200 yards downstream of the run in which she was hooked. Unsolicited, the old fella did his best to follow me downstream - recording on a Flip video camera my attempt to subdue one the hardest fighting fish I've ever hooked. He later asked my email address and sent me both the file and his congratulations. He and I still correspond from time to time.

Then there was Utica. Utica was a 16 year old kid who fished alongside us on one of the rare days when we just didn't have it in us to hike a mile through the snow or pay $50.00 to fish water less traveled. As it turned out, Utica and I were both guilty of the same crime - truancy. He was a student at a local high school, and he was skipping class to hook a steelie. I was a teacher, and I was doing exactly the same. Utica was cordial, funny, and eager to learn. More to the point, he reminded me of the best qualities young people possess, and at the end of the day I was eager to get back in the classroom with my students.

Of course, I couldn't write this piece if I didn't mention Lou. I met Lou in one of the river's many parking areas when I overheard him berating himself for leaving his fly boxes at home; the poor guy had made a long drive and had no flies with which to fish. I opened my boxes and gifted him a dozen or so different bugs and then went on my way. Later that day, I again encountered Lou - this time grinning wide as he had just caught his first steelhead on one of the flies I had given him. We exchanged information and some time later I received a walnut turkey box call, hand made by Lou (who is the owner of Boss Tom Turkey Calls) and inscribed to "The Rusty Spinner."

It may very well be impossible to fish one popular section of the river without running into Char, Dick, Dave or Kenny. They're good guys, regulars on the Salmon who are happy to help the uninitiated if the uninitiated just take the time to ask. The only payment they'll expect is the opportunity to engage in some good natured ribbing every time the initiate loses a fish. I know this first hand.

And as I sit here at the keyboard, I find myself thinking of the fellas from Virginia - whose names I now forget - who inquired about the spey rod I was fishing, and then asked me to photograph them with the fish I caught so that they could impress their wives and friends. We fished together for the better part of the afternoon; I still laugh when I think of them showing off my fish to their sweethearts.

Most recently, I had the good fortune of meeting Sergeant First Class Trent Myer. Sergeant Myer is stationed at Fort Drum with the Army's 10th Mountain Division where he is the program leader of the post's branch of Project Healing Waters. He and I found ourselves fishing within seventy-five feet of each other when I hooked a 20lb king salmon that I was forced to chase right through the water Sergeant Myer's group was fishing. After I brought the king to hand, Sergeant Myer introduced himself, his son Hunter, and their friend Jim - a PHW volunteer who shares my penchant for Orvis Odyssey reels. We talked and fished together the remainder of the day.

My point here is not to be anecdotal, but rather to demonstrate the quality of people we may meet if only we're open to the experience. Solitude certainly has it's place, but if fishing brings us some of the best moments in our lives then I have to wonder how much better those moments might be if we shared them with someone. After all, we're all strangers until we've been properly introduced, and if we're meeting on the banks of a river then chances are we have more in common than not.

Milestones

*** Disclaimer ... All that follows is very personal in nature, and probably not worth your time. If you're looking for fishing photos, casting videos, or a fly tying how-to article then this post will not be for you. Go get your car's oil changed or yourself a piece of pie ... if I were you then cherry or apple would be my first choices, but I suppose Key-lime or chocolate cream would suffice. ***

I remember the first time I ever recognized the pride my father felt at witnessing one of my accomplishments. I was nineteen years old, and for much of my adolescent life I had been something of a prodigal son. Throughout high school I was a poor student, but not because I couldn't handle the work. Rather, I lacked focus and ambition, and like so many of my peers I was more concerned with girls than grades. I drank alcohol to excess, came home far past curfew most nights of the week, and even had a brush or two with the law. My parents tried, but the more they tried the less inclined was I to do the same.

Even twenty odd years after the fact, the reminiscence is tinged with regret. My mother and father deserved better, and I was too stubborn, too juvenile to understand a son's duty to his family. Fortunately, time has a way of healing the rifts between parents and their children, and I think this is especially true of fathers and their sons.

For my father and I, the process of reconciliation began one chilly November morning on the red-clay parade fields of Fort Benning, Georgia. On that day, I stopped being a delinquent child, and started being a man. On that cold November day, so many miles from home, my mother pinned a blue cord on the right shoulder of my uniform, a cord that signified my status as an infantry soldier in the United States Army. My father shook my hand, looked straight into my eyes, and told me that he was proud. I felt - both in the steel of his eyes and the stone of his grip - that he meant what he said. He was proud, truly and genuinely proud.

That moment was for me a rite of passage. My parents, my father in particular, saw me differently on that day. Even though my path was so often uncertain, on that day I managed to navigate my way out of the morass of my youth, and become the person Mom and Dad had known I could be and had so hoped I would be. After my service was fulfilled and I returned home, my father treated me not so much as his child but as his peer. We talked as men talk, and together we did the things that fathers and their grown sons do.

These memories were refreshed on a recent trip to the river as a friend and I drove along a country road that parallels the river's course. As we navigated its many twists and turns, we passed a young boy of maybe 10 or 12 years and a man that was almost certainly his father. The boy was seated behind the wheel of a well worn, emerald green John Deer lawn tractor. His father was explaining - quite vigorously explaining - the purpose behind each pedal, button and lever. Next to the tractor, seemingly discarded in favor of the larger piece of machinery, was a walk-behind push mower. To my eye, the scene had the appearance of a graduation. The boy had reached some sort of landscaping benchmark, and was being rewarded with the tractor and his father's guarded trust.

Accompanied by thoughts of the boy, his father, and memories of my own passage into manhood, I quickly settled into a cast-step rythym, flailing the water as best I could. Before long I was into a good fish, which I quickly played, photographed, and released.

My eyes followed the brown as it swam off into the current, eventually losing itself amongst the cobble. I waded downstream a stretch, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching my friend - who had been learning to double-haul - cast to rising fish. I thought of the pain I endured while learning the same cast. I thought of the years I spent on the bends and twists of the river. I thought about that last fish, and I thought about my first fish. I thought about the milestones I've passed as an angler; milestones that have made me - at least as much as having been a soldier or a son - the person I am today.

That is - perhaps more than anything else - what those folks who don't fish may never understand about those of us who do. The milestones we encounter as fishermen are sometimes as significant as any other we might experience in the various facets of our lives. Learning to cast and then learning to cast well, tying that first perfectly proportioned fly, hooking our first fish and landing the last: we learn something from each of these and myriad other moments. Not only do they make us better anglers, but oftentimes they makes us better people.

Yes ... the river is both instructive and redemptive. She teaches us patience, and the need to sometimes move more slowly. She teaches us to forgive ourselves of our failings, and to see past our partners' peccadilloes. She shows us triumph and disappointment alike - often in the same afternoon - and we learn to smile regardless. Perhaps more than anything else, the river teaches us hope. Hope for that next fish. Hope for a better day. Hope that we'll recognize the importance of the moment when the moment happens.

And it may just be that hope is the very best of things.