Thomas McGuane - Nothing but Blue Skies

“Smell the cold air on the surface of the river.”

“Stop,” said Holly, peering closely at the water. They were on either side of the thread of current and mayflies were starting to appear, unfurling their tiny wings and struggling to float upright. Every few seconds one would come by, some still in their nymphal stage, the case just beginning to split and release the furled wing; others were sailing upright like pale yellow sloops.

“ Ephemerella infrequens ,” said Holly.

“Little sulphurs,” said Frank.

“Pale morning duns,” said Holly, “like I told you last night.”

Frank hung on to his old names for flies, had never learned the Latin of Holly’s generation of anglers. “Pale morning dun” was the compromise, reasonably objective compared to the sulphurs and yellow sallies and hellgrammites and blue-winged olives of Frank’s upbringing.

At the bend, the wild irises looked as if they would topple into the stream. The narrow band of mud at the base of the sedges revealed a well-used muskrat trail, and on this band stood a perfectly motionless blue heron, head back like the hammer of a gun. It flexed its legs slightly, croaked, sprang into wonderfully slow flight, a faint whistle of pinions, then disappeared over the top of the wall of grasses as though drawn down into its mass.

Around this bend was the otter pool, so called because, when Holly was twelve, she and Frank had watched a family of river otters, three of them, pursuing trout in its depths. Holly took the position that the otters were just like their family: one otter was Frank, one Holly, one Gracie. When the three seized the same trout and rent it, Holly cried, “Oh, poor trout!” and sent the otters into panicked flight upstream.

They stopped quietly at the lower end of the pool, which was wide and deep and surrounded by aspens and cottonwoods. At the top of the pool was a rocky run that looked like a watery stairway. It enlivened a silvery chute of bubbles that didn’t disperse until a third of the way down the pool. The movement of water folded into a precise seam of current only at the end of the pool. All along the seam, trout were rising and sipping down the mayflies under a tapestry of reflected cottonwood leaves.

They stopped to watch. “Hm,” said Holly.

“An embarrassment of riches.”

As they watched, a fish rose about halfway up the pool, a quiet rise that displaced more water than the others, sending a tremor out toward the sides of the pool. Holly grabbed his arm.

“See that?” she asked.

“Mm-hm.”

The fish rose again and, in a minute, again.

“Has it got a feeding rhythm,” Holly asked, “or is it just taking them when they come?” The fish rose again, its dorsal making a slight thread against the surface.

“I think it’s on a rhythm. There’re just too many bugs coming off now. What kind of leader have you got on?”

“Twelve-footer, five-X,” Holly said. “You’re not going to make me cast to that thing, are you?”

“Didn’t I thank you for that last rainbow?”

“Can I get by with this tippet?”

“You’ll have to. I hate to take the time to change it now. I don’t know if you could hold this fish with anything lighter, assuming you make the cast.”

“Assuming I make the cast …”

A light breeze moved across the water and turned it from black to silver, a faint corrugation that obscured everything that was happening. “Right-hand wind,” Holly said gloomily. Then it went back to slick black. “Am I going to line those little fish, trying to reach him?”

“I think you’ve got to take that chance,” said Frank, easing over to the bank in a slight retreat to the ledge where the heron had stood. “If you think about them too much, it’ll throw you off.” The fish fed again. Even Frank had a nervous stomach. Holly stood and stared. Frank said, “I’m going to try to get up the bank where I can see this fish better. Why don’t you try to get in position?”

Frank left his rod at the side of the stream and pushed his way through grass as tall as his face until he got up onto the top of the bank. He worked his way back through the brush until he could look back and see the pool glinting through the branches. Then he got on all fours and crawled to the slight elevation alongside the pool. By the time he reached it, he was on his belly and perfectly concealed. He could see right into the middle of the pool. “Ready to call in the artillery,” he said.

“I can’t even see you,” said Holly.

“Nothing going on.”

“Do you think he’s gone?”

“No.”

Small fish continued making their splashy rises. Frank could see well enough to make out the insects. He rested his chin on the backs of his hands and didn’t have to wait long. He tracked a dun mayfly out of the bubbles at the head of the pool, then another, then another. When this one reached mid-pool, a shape arose, clarified into a male brown trout with a distinct hook to its lower jaw and sipped the fly off the surface. It was a startlingly big fish, leopard-spotted, with its prominent dorsal fin piercing the surface. The low pale curve of its belly appeared to grow out of the depths of the pool itself. It sank almost from sight, but even after it had fed, Frank could make out its observing presence deep in the pool, a kind of intelligence.

“See that?”

Instead of answering, Holly began to strip line from her reel. She had the fly in her hand and blew on it. “I’m just going to cast,” she said. “I’m thinking too hard. How big?”

“Big.”

“Oh, I wish I hadn’t asked.”

“You have the fish marked pretty well?”

“Yeah, here goes.”

Frank could see her false casting, but the fly tailed the loop, turned over too soon and hooked on the line. “Shit!” Holly brought her line back in and cleared the fly.

“You’re rushing, Holly. You’re turning it over too soon. Cast like you always do. Don’t press.” She started again. “Slow, slow.” And she did, resuming her elegant cadence. The curve of line opened. The fly floated down and the fish arose steadily from the depths. “Whoa whoa whoa,” said Frank. “Don’t strike, he’s taking one in front of yours. Let the current take your fly away.” The fish eased up, made a seam as he broke the surface, then sank. Frank heard a pent-up breath escape from Holly while he watched the heavy fish suck an insect down. The fish held just beneath the surface, both the dorsal and tip of his tail out of the water; his gills flared crimson and a faint turbulence spread to the surface from either side of his head.

“Try again while he’s still up,” Frank said, and an instant later Holly’s fly fluttered down from above, right in the feeding lane of the trout. He could see the fly rock around on the bright hackles Holly had wound on the hook last night, slowly closing on the fish. The trout elevated slowly and the fly disappeared down a tiny whirlpool in the water. “There,” said Frank, not too loud, and the thin leader tightened into the air, a pale cool spray the length of it. “You’ve got him!”

Frank stood straight up out of the brush as the trout surged across the pool. Holly held her rod high with both hands and said, “Oh, God God God God God.”

“Let him go.”

“I am letting him go.”

“Don’t touch that reel.”

“I’m not touching the reel!”

Frank got back below the pool and waded out to Holly. The reel was screeching. She was looking straight ahead where the line pointed. There was a deep bow in the rod. She moved her face slightly in Frank’s direction. “I’m dying,” she said. The fish started to run and the click of the reel set up a steady howl. “I am going to die.”