Mystery Fish

I should be walking up the side of a mountain just about now, the frosty leaves and the air crackling in the stillness amid the frost. It would have been my first day deer hunting for the season. The joy these days comes from spending time with a good friend, each of us telling of what we saw, or didn’t see, when we gather in the cabin for an extended lunch break. Solo jaunts in the cold no longer measure up.

My best hunting takes place upon bright waters, curling around the bases of these mountains, falling like diamonds from rocky outcrops. It is easy to lose myself in endless hours with tempered bamboo in hand and a feathered hook fresh from the bench before me.

There are many photos like the one above, testimony to the rewards of those hunts, those put forth in waders instead of blaze orange and boot leather. Perhaps the best keepsakes though are the memories of the mystery fish, those never brought before either the camera’s eye or my own. It is one of those fish which haunts me this morning.

It was that time in April, a few years ago now. The long days of fruitless searching for my friends the Hendricksons had ended. The hatch had finally appeared, the water covered with the big tannish duns and the smaller Red Quills, so many that fooling a ravenous trout with feathered hook proved heartbreakingly difficult that day.

Humbled, I had arrived early that next day, with freshly tied patterns and a favorite shaft of bamboo. The hatch was lessened in intensity, though still quite fine, and I had set my mind that the result would be different.

There is an area at the head of the pool where a long run empties. The bottom has been scoured by eons of high flows, leaving great shards of the mountain standing in the depths of the river. One long spire lies lengthwise with the current, and it was there that my gaze was directed. The trout that fed there pushed a lot of water when he chose to rise, though the display was lessened by the currents accelerating around that great fallen spire of stone. I had to have him!

The hatch had progressed before our game began, and the little Red Quills predominated. I had run through my usual battery of flies, teasing line and leader with the rod tip to offer each with a delicate drift, when I reached for one of the special Red Quills with a lively natural dun CDC wing.

I cannot recall how many casts I made, just that, when it seemed that fish’s defenses were impenetrable, the magic take finally occurred. I raised the rod into a terrible arc, the water boiled and the reel screamed as my foe charged downriver nearly emptying my reel of line and backing in that first orgasmic run!

Failing to free himself of the fly, that trout began a series of head shakes, darting left then right, intent upon slugging it out at distance. I stripped line when I could, a foot at a time, afraid that the vibration of reeling might set him to flight once more and strip the last few turns of backing that remained.

We sparred like that, me taking two strips of line and reeling up the slack, once, twice, then giving back more than I had gained before stripping once more. Slowly, I eased the battling trout upstream, gaining back most of the backing, even a turn or two of fly line on the spool. I thought the battle had turned in my favor. Fool!

Suddenly he accelerated, running upstream and across toward the place this had all begun. Reeling feverishly, I somehow kept pace. He sought that great spire, that familiar lie where he had fed with all the energy he had left; more than I could bring to bear with bowed rod and a light tippet.

When he was gone, victory abruptly ripped from my shaking hands, the line simply trailed in the current. Once I had recovered my senses, I ran the end of the tippet through my fingers, feeling the rough texture where that spire had cut my hold on him, and cut out my heart.

I never saw that great fish, not a flash or a leap to reveal the nature of the bolt of lightning I was tethered to. Mystery fish, they grow in the mind to impossible dimensions, and they live forever!