Thomas McGuane - The Longest Silence

Mostly, however, it works quite well. Besides, if you are not a “local,” some sacrifices must be made. You are free to camp near the fishery or work out little innovations with cheap motels or indulgent friends. If you take this latter course, plan to have plenty of time at your disposal; after arranging all the food, shelter, and transportation, you’ll have little time left for fishing. It is easily possible to get in sixty hours of angling in a week of fishing from a lodge or fishing hotel. It takes twice as long to get in the same amount of fishing if you are looking after yourself. Yet both options have their charms and place, and I’d never give up either one. It must be said, though, that it is nearly impossible for the out-of-towner to make much of a hand at Atlantic salmon fishing without lodgelike arrangements. While that is still possible in steelheading, it remains to be seen if the fish themselves can survive these democratic times. Certainly one sees little on steelhead rivers of the patrician ways noted on Atlantic salmon fisheries. In fact, only with the recent advent of double-handed rods have tony sport trappings heretofore unknown among steelheaders become apparent: single malt Scotch, good cigars, tweed caps, and the somewhat random use of the word “heritage.” And it is a great relief when these high-falutin’ new steelheaders continue to fracture the English language in their customary way, referring to MacAllan whiskey, for example, as “some good shit.” And when the Number Six Ring Gauge Upmanns are unavailable, the Lucky Strikes will do quite nicely, thank you.

The final type, a derivative of one already described under Atlantic salmon, and the classification to which I ardently aspire, is the roaming sponge. This angler, grinning, obsequious, excessively convivial, seems too stupid to have a plan. Sleeping in or next to the vehicle in which he arrived, he cuts such an unarresting figure that he has bored in past the ejection level before the locals are on to his game. Too late, they realize he has increased the pressure on their favorite water. I feel it’s the duty of the roaming sponge to make up for this to his hosts, especially in good works of river conservation. Consider it a form of life insurance. The sponge must acknowledge his indebtedness and work hard to pay it off. Only when he himself becomes the target of continuous sponging can he be said to have arrived.

However you accomplish it, every salmon, steelhead, or sea trout river you manage to get under your belt is something to be treasured. Obviously, it may be neccessary to put self-esteem to one side or to give remarkably inaccurate impressions of your character to people whom you like. A private agony may ensue — indeed may haunt your old age — but it gets you on the water.

RECENTLY, and among people we didn’t know that well, my eleven-year-old daughter said something that made jaws drop. Having heard the phrase “the F-word,” possibly from a potty-mouthed sibling, and assuming in our house that it must mean fishing, she told a group of guests, “All my dad cares about is the F-word.” In the astonished silence that followed this showstopper, she added, “When he’s not doing it, he’s reading about it.”

Well, it’s true, but I don’t like every kind of it, and some of the latest forms of trout fishing as applied in my home state of Montana make me loath to bump into any of its practitioners for fear I will again see the tall man on the banks of Poindexter Slough who was tinting his neutral-colored flies with Magic Markers to match the mayflies rising around him. There’s always some little rivulet no one else wants: a brushy bend, a pond back from the road under wild apple trees. Go there.

This summer I jumped at the chance to escape the latest techedout fly-fishing with its whirring splitshot, 7X leaders, and transitional subaqueous lifeforms imitated in experimental carpet fibers. I spent a week in a portageur canoe with Wesley Harrison who was guiding for his fifty-third year on the Grand Cascapedia River of Quebec. A portageur canoe, which is what Wesley called it, “Not a Bonaventure and not a Gaspé,” is a broad-bottomed and commodious rivercraft big enough to carry nets and rain gear, light enough to be driven by a small outboard, and lithe enough to slip along quietly in the river from drop to drop, as the precise settings of the killick or anchor are called. This task calls for a bowman, in this case a cheerful young Canadian named Jeff, who deferentially helped Wesley move the boat through its daylong ballet on the rapids and meanders of the great river.

I was warned that if I did not fish seriously the entire time that we were on the river, if I repeatedly misstruck fish or failed to turn over my leader in the wind, Wesley would return to shore and put me off the boat. He has taken more than one sport in early with the recommendation that he go elsewhere to learn to fish before coming back. I was tuned up by such admonitions forty years ago on the Pere Marquette River by my father and my “uncle” Ben Ruhl, and there was a certain solace in having the majesty of a great river presumed as a place of seriousness, if not solemnity. These men grew up before the advent of Jet Skis and other entertainment doodads of this dubious age. The river was your great wife and the very hem of her skirt must be honored.

I rose from bed in the wonderful music of birds in the forest surrounding the camp. To my western ears, the sliding notes of the redstart made a summery mystery. I thought of the warm haze in the skies, the nearness of the sea, the plain thrill of fishing for strong North Atlantic ocean fish whose legend required their seasonal presence in what otherwise was a woodland trout stream. The mind of an angler is stretched to account for this.

I had breakfast with my hosts, who took very good care of me with homemade pastries and jams, tawny local bacon and farm eggs. I gathered my rod and sweater, a book of low-water salmon flies on Patridge Wilson-style hooks, some hard candy to suck on at tense moments, then walked across fields of wild strawberries swept by a warm, balsamic breeze. My only fears were that I would be struck by lightning or that news of a world war would come over the little radio in the kitchen or that Wesley would kick me out of the canoe.

Whereupon, I met the man himself and his bowman, Jeff. Wesley Harrison was a tall, strongly made, and cheerful man in his seventies, flannel sleeves rolled over arms that had poled his canoe thousands of miles. Jeff was that rare, quick-witted youngster without a phony bone in his body. He kept one eye on Wesley to be sure of the right syncopation of effort.

The river was a little dark and I mentioned this to Wesley. He shook his head faintly. “Not good,” he said. “The old Indian calls this poison water.” We pushed off and started the motor. Sitting in the middle of the canoe, I rested my fingertips on the fly rod I’d laid across the thwarts. I kept one eye on the unscrolling river behind and one on Wesley, whose billed cap shifted left and right as he sized up our course.

We passed another canoe with two Mic Mac Indians guiding a well-dressed sport who failed to acknowledge our passing. “Oh, that old Indian feller there now,” said Wesley, “he’s quite comical. I asked him yesterday if they were catching anything and he called out, ‘Nothing! Fisherman no good!’ He’s a comical one, that one.”

Wesley shut the engine off and tilted it on the narrow transom. Then he grasped the paddle and, finning it skillfully alongside the ribbed hull, eased us silently downstream to the head of a long pool. “Let ’er go, Jeff,” and our bowman dropped the iron.

The canoe settled into a stop as the Grand Cascapedia whispered past the hull. “No shipwrecks with a lad like Jeff,” said Wesley. He thought for a moment. “If we drowned, poor old Jeff’s girlfriend would be running up and down the riverbank crying her heart out.” Jeff was gazing at the sky and I got the feeling this had been going on for a while. Then, to me: “We’ll fish this one to the right.”