by GERALD L. SMITH
The first large rainbow hit the Woolly Bugger about 11:00. I played it for a few seconds and then it was gone. "Oh, well," I thought, "another big fish lost." I stood there in the river musing on my luck. I didn't even curse. It seemed like I was always catching a half dozen or ten respectable, but small fish, fish in the 9-12" range, but then was losing the bigger ones. From time to time a 14 or 15" fish would come along, but lately these had been infrequent to rare. On a few occasions recently, I had hooked a larger fish only to lose it after a few seconds of play. There had been the brown trout at the end of the island, the rainbow under the snag in the Smith Riffle, a couple of hard strikes under snags along the edges of pools, but nothing lately that really boosted my confidence in playing large fish. There had been the good fish on the Tellico, but I wondered if that were a fluke. In fact, I had begun to think that I had a 10" style since that seemed to be the most consistent size in my log book. Now here was another one lost. Was I striking too soon? too late? using too large a hook? too small? Was my pursuit of large fish in deep pools and under snags a futile enterprise? Was the Woolly Bugger a fly that could not deliver like I thought it could? I fished for a while longer and caught a half dozen more 10 and 11" fish. Fun, yes, but not much for the 9' western action. I released them quickly and threw them upstream away from me.
I was not sure if the beginning of the morning had been auspicious. Just before dawn, I had been awakened by thunder, heavy rumbling thunder rolling in the east. I was not ready to be awake, but unplugged the electronics about the house anyway and fell back in bed. The alarm for 6:00 seemed to go off instantly. The critical ten seconds of conflict between will and warmth seemed like a cosmic war. One part of me, the old puritan self kept saying, "Daylight, get up;" the other, normal, self simply said, "Smith you're tired; just sleep until you wake up." Most days the puritan wins. Today the puritan was abetted by the angler. I love the river in the first couple of hours after dawn. In these hours I feel like the creation was made for me and was not yet touched by second thoughts. Sometimes in this part of the day I stand in or by the water and am very, very still as if to move or speak or cast will break the spell forever. I dare not even ripple the river's perfect mirror of the morning. Few people come to the river at this hour. Most are still stirring about their houses or looking at their boats through coffee steam at McDonalds. The middle of the day will be theirs. This part is the river's. I am a guest in a house not quite asleep, so I step slowly, lightly. In the early morning, it takes me a long time to move along. I try not to break the spider webs or to startle the squirrels. I watch for rises without casting. Some of those fish I will fish to on the way out. Some I will just see and remember.
Descending the mountain, I could see the valley open below me, but the high country was ringed in tall cumulus clouds. I did a quick review of the checklist for the vest. I did not want to get rained on in 50¡ water a mile from the truck. Were the chamois cloth shirt and the waterproof parka still in the vest? Yes. Never break never rules. I still say this to myself more than a year after I broke a whole string of my rules. The parka was there. I had worn it for a few minutes in the rain last Saturday, and then replaced it in the creel pocket. What was not there was the creel bag. Why carry the weight when I don't keep the fish? But the clouds were something to keep an eye on just the same. The darkness to the southwest was probably just early morning, not fresh thunder making up. I told my self to keep watching the sky and not to let my self get caught up in the fishing and forget everything like I did last spring at the Pig Hole. When the 50 mile an hour front passed, taking down trees, unloading hail, and dropping the temperature nearly twenty degrees in half and hour, I had not been paying attention. I had almost not made it up the mud bank and out into the field before the chinaberry tree came down. I was already cold and then I got wet. My hands were numb and shaking and I had trouble with every buckle and snap. That day I almost dropped my rod and ran. I did not want to do that today, particularly on the wrong side of the river again. Thunderstorms are not conditions for rappelling in and out of 12' and 15' drainage ditches to get back to the truck.
The sun had just cleared the top of the plateau behind me to the east as I approached Broadview. No cars on the road. One fisherman with an old boat taking on gas at the pumps. When I had seen the trailer as I rounded the bend to the grocery, I knew it had to be an old boat to be out so early. The sparkle-paint boats and matching trailers and trucks don't come out until later. I drove on. Dark green tree line at Harmony. Behind the trees, to the west, there were darker clouds, black at the base, topping out at 25,000 feet in the orange pink of the morning. The long straight, the copse of trees, the bend, another straight. Check the cow pond for geese. One there. Maybe they did nest. No goslings yet, though. Eyes back on the road. Then, in front of me, a rainbow, arcing the sky from the dam on my right to at least Kelso down river on the left. Where did the arc complete itself I wondered? I tried to estimate the curve, but the curves of the road kept surprising me and after a couple of swerves I gave up trying to watch two things at once. I tried to think of the last time I had seen a morning rainbow. Hawaii? Malaysia? I couldn't remember, didn't need to remember. The rainbow was enough.
An early river fog was rising below the side creek when I waded in. There has not been much fog the last year since the generator flow has kept the thermocline from forming. Last year the water stayed warm, up in the 60's all summer, not the 45¡ of the year before. Now the thermometer was showing 52 to 55¡; just the edge of fog for some mornings. I keep hoping for cold, clear water. At least that hope was filled. Most of the milkiness was out of the water from last week's rain. I could see the bottom in three feet of water. In full sun, I would be able to see into the deeper pools. I released the fly from the keeper and began to flick the leader about. I had never fished a Caddis Hopper. I had tied it on to see if it would work like the Joe's Hopper had last week. It was a #12, about the size of the gray-brown mayflies I have been seeing. Here, down the river, the invertebrates seem to be in much better condition than at the dam. The scouring here has been severe, but, at the same time, the feeder streams seem to have revitalized the river more quickly than at the dam. The midge flights are heavier, and I have been seeing many mayflies, and I could see in front of me the other sure sign of improving health in the river--the jagged-track swallows cutting above the water and then pulling out in a steep climb that would hurl them above the trees before they banked and made another run across the river. Last year there were no swallows. This morning I can see them all the way down to the bend.
The Caddis Hopper began to work. I did a sloppy roll cast into the crossover current as I worked more line from the reel. I was still looking at the reel face as the line tightened in my fingers and a fish began to run for the grass beds on the far side. A nice stocker, 11" fish. Pungent oil on my fingers in the morning air. Now, jiggling the line tip to straighten ten feet of line. Another fish, a little smaller. I reeled in quickly, secured the hook and crossed below the snag, working my way up the fragmented chert that makes so much of the smaller river rock here. I wanted to get on downstream. I had half a mind to go a couple of miles and make it to a bend I had only explored by map, a long reach colliding in a near-perfect right angle with a cliff face. For the flow and force of this river, there had to be a good hole and gravel bar there. Before leaving the truck, I had folded the topo map of this area and sealed it in the jumbo sandwich bag with the shirt. Getting back is usually simple if you can walk back along the river, but now and then things aren't always simple. The map was just in case, and I didn't want it to get wet. The fold showed this section through the plastic bag. I would not have to take it out to look at it.
One fish came to the net below the Good Riffle, then another in the grassy trough. There had to be more fish in this section, but I was fishing quickly as I walked. Cast the fly about four feet above the limb in the water, sink it, let it drift. Pause just a second as it sweeps past the end of the limb and starts straight-away downstream. Good fish. A second one on the repeat cast. Both a little better than 12". Why were they sharing this lie? They were big enough for one to have driven the other off. Freshly stocked and not yet knowing the rules of territoriality in the river? Probably. That's what got them caught with the fly just four inches under in the first place. Seasoned fish that size don't feed on nymphs so near the surface. I moved on. I was not trying to be thorough in this section. There were good snags ahead of me over deep troughs that I was more interested in. Same technique, three or four more fish. Then the slow pool. It is wadable but filled with snags. I don't like to do snag pools when I am alone; if you stumble or get tangled, it is sometimes hard to get out. I took to the bank and by-passed this fifty yards.
The bank beside this snag pool is steep, and the path skirts the edge to within inches. This is where the spin and bait men come. They can cast into the middle of the pool. Already in this early light I can see the quick flash of siding rainbows. If you are not paying attention, this short flash of silver can look exactly like the broken reflection of light on water rippled by the wind. It was not rippled water but several large rainbows feeding on the bottom on drifting nymphs of some sort. I made a mental note of their location in relation to a prominent snag. This would call for a different kind of fishing, and I wanted my partner Benson around when I tried long, mid-stream casts into this pool. Immediately past the pool, the bank breaks where it is cut by a small stream, and the path descends to river level again. From here to the corner is good wading water: a foot or so of water over gravel on one side, a fast trough with snags down the other side. I began to fish again, slowly working each of the snags, synching the rhythm of my breathing to the beat of the rod. This was now completely new river to me. I was alone, unhurried, and I wanted to savor the place, the fishing, the morning. This was the time to fish carefully, to watch the water as the river teaches the pattern of the flow. A fast U-bow in the line indicating slack water in the middle; and eddy I had not detected by the reflected light in this deep shade. I shorten line by four feet and cast to the middle of the eddy. A fish hits the hopper dry.
Each of the snags held one or two, sometimes three, fish. The technique never varied. I waded slowly in the shallow water, quietly approaching the snag diagonally from upstream. This diagonal allowed me the room behind me for a good backcast and I was carrying about forty feet of line. Wading slowly with this much line out, I did not disturb the snags as I approached them. I dropped the Hopper into the snag as close to the log or limb as I could get it, usually within six inches, and then let it drift along the face of the snag into the hurry-up water where the flow makes it past the snag and then pools behind it. Just into the hurry-up water the fish would usually strike. Their lies would be in the elongated slow pool, sometimes only a foot or two across, at the edge of the faster flow. The snag trough concentrated the food into a funneled flow; the accelerated water was aerated and offered better oxygen than the slow, flat water of the gravel bed; and the snag itself offered shade and shelter. The number of fish on feeding stations in this stretch amazed me. I quickly lost sense of my more distant surroundings and was caught up in the narrow linear world defined by my fly line. Across the face of one log, a good fish made a rush on the Hopper, raced with it for a second then retreated to its feeding station behind a grass bed in front of the log. Another mental note.
I began to be vaguely self-conscious. The fishing was good. Why wasn't I covered up in other fishermen? Where were the dozens of canoeists? I suppose I had the puritan consciousness that when things are good, it can't last and something will come along to spoil it. But today nothing came along. The only sounds I heard were the squawking blue heron and the squeaky Uzi sound of the working kingfisher. Overhead the sky was clear but in the distance there was a perimeter of high cumulus, some dark enough at their bottoms to make me look back once or twice to see if the darkness had consolidated itself into a making storm. That would be later, I thought. Here it is warm, sunny, clear. Take the day while it is given, I thought. Don't make trouble out of the sky. Still, the total absence of other fishermen was almost eerie. I often fish in near solitude, but usually someone comes or goes while I fish, a canoe may drift by or a bait man walks the bank going to a favorite hole. Once or twice, I remember, I looked around just to see if anyone were watching me. I kept feeling that something was different, odd; that something was happening that ought to be witnessed, that was being witnessed, but that I couldn't see who was watching. It was a strange feeling of unease, and I looked around at least twice.
Beyond this section of snags, the river widens a bit, the bottom is gravel from side to side, and as the gravel tapers off into a deep pool, the river turns east. At the head of the turn the curving of the bank is shielded by trees that hang over the water. Under the shadows of the trees is cool, still water, just outside the flow of the main current. On the downstream right side the water at the edge of the gravel bed is slack enough for a good grass bed to grow and the large clumps of grass are located just at the edge of the faster water flowing into the turn pool. Immediately beyond the grass beds under the trees is the long line in about three feet of water of a shelf or crack in the bottom rock. In the shadows of the trees it is hard to tell whether this dark line is a log or rock. On the inside of the curve across from the grass beds there is a deep pool that is an offshoot of the main turn pool. Trees hang over this side pool and at the end of it there are several stumps and other snags. From these stumps, projecting across the middle of the river is another rock shelf, not very prominent, and not enough to ripple the surface, but offering shelter on the bottom immediately in front of it. It is a nicely complex, difficult hole offering a variety of cover, feeding stations, and a good flow of rich water. As I fished, mayflies were hatching from both the grass bed and the slow pool at the side. Where the gravel bed shelved and ended in midstream, I could see the flashes of siding rainbows as they fed.
I waded carefully. I could see the end of the gravel; I could see the scoured bottom beyond it; and I was already as far up on my waders as I like to get. I was probably a bit further in than I should have been given the slope of the bottom and the push of the main current. I backed up a bit. I was glad the water had not yet cooled to 42¡. Still, this was not the place to lose footing doing a step cast reaching for distance. I can make fairly long casts, but not if I keep both feet together on the bottom; I have to rock back on my right foot and step with my left as I roll into my forward cast. It is essentially a dynamic casting style, and it is good for distance, but it is not very stable on loose, sloping gravel or where the bottom is strewn with large, round rocks. It is also a style that has to be used with some care when the current is pushing from behind. I wasn't afraid here, but my risky position was a constant awareness that along with everything else heightened the intensity of the experience. Nonetheless, it was a good hole. Any number of features that I could see but not quite list or point to gave the site a good feel. It looked trouty. It looked big trouty.
I still had on the Caddis Hopper. I cast to the far end of the grass beds on my right, let the fly drift along the ledge under the tree, then swing out into the middle of the pool directly downstream from me and just over the rock ledge at the back of the pool. The fish that hit appeared to be in the 16-18", two pound range. That was the eleven o'clock fish. It was gone almost as quickly as it appeared. I came back on the same pattern. Nothing. Again, nothing. Then on a shorter line. A fish. About 12 inches. Then three or four more. A couple of 14 inches. Then it occurred to me, "Smith, why don't you try some other pattern. You know the hopper works." By now I had, since the first snags earlier in the morning, caught more than fifteen fish on this hopper. It had really taken a beating. In my kit I had a new olive and black woolly bugger that Benson has given me. Basically it is a standard OBWB but tied on a Zonker body with eyes and its flashing is tied in from the head instead of from the tail. It is called a Gierach Wooly Bugger. "What the hell," I thought, "I'll see if this thing works."
The first cast took a two-pounder. The fish hit the fly so hard I did not have to set the hook. It was a strong fish and it drove the #8 hook out through the roof of its mouth. This fish was hooked no matter what I did. It danced and ran. It plumbed and zagged, but it was caught. I finally worked it onto its side and netted it. The hook was a bit of a problem and kept getting snagged in the net fabric as I struggled to steady the fish. I wished I had my open mesh wooden net Benson had given me. I freed the hook of the net and then of the fish, and then carefully lowered the fish to the water to swim it in the fresh flow. In a couple of minutes it darted from my hand and made for deep water. While I revived the fish, I looked at the olive-black spots on the back of the fish and the deep olive surrounding the spots. I think these are more interesting colors on the rainbow than the rainbow stripe itself. How quickly these spots disappear into algae and shadows when the fish drops into the rocks on the bottom. It is a camouflage so complete I often locate fish more by their shadow than by form or color.
One cast and I was a believer in the Gierach Woolly Bugger, "This fly is ok," I thought. Another cast. Another fish. And another and another. It was now about 11:30. I could see mayflies coming off beside me at the edge. In the foreground of the pool I could see siding flashes as nearer fish continued to feed. I ignored these fish and kept at my long line. I was working about 25 meters between the cast and the drift. Stripping slack on so much line gave me problems in netting if the fish were not tired out completely and once or twice I had fish foul the slack line and the net as I reached for them. I learned to tire them to the side out of the slack and then net them. Then came the release--as quickly as I could manage it with the small mesh of the net that kept fouling the hooks. The more open mesh of my regular trout net would have been better, but I did not have a cord for it so I had left it in the truck. So many of the smaller fish hit the Gierach with the same intensity as the first two-pounder, that I had several times to use the forceps for deeply gorged hooks. A couple of these fish took a while to revive, but each finally swam and made for the bottom.
Still the fish came. Another two-pounder. A long play and then the release. A couple more twelve and fourteen inchers. Then wham! This fish was different. The whole rod bent, and the leader plunged into the water at a steep angle. It immediately made for deep water and I had trouble turning it back upstream. I was in no position to pursue on foot and I was already into my backing. Fortunately, the hook and the 3x held and I was able to turn it into the left side pool and then into the depths of the center pool before it could find a place in the bottom of the snags and foul the line. Then there was a series of runs back and forth across the pool, and a couple of passages of tail dancing above the rock ledge. Several times I worked the fish near and could see its size, but each time it took off on another run and consumed much of the slack I had worked in as it had come toward me. I was beginning to be antsy. My back was hurting. My fingers were aching, and I was worried that after this much of a fight the hook would tear out and I would lose the fish at the end.
I did not lose it. Like the first two-pounder on the Gierach, this fish was well-hooked through the upper lip and my only risk would have been to have snapped the tippet by forcing the fight too quickly. It fell into the net as I lowered the rod tip. The other fish I had released where I stood, but the size of this fish forced me to retreat to the shallows to handle it. I did not want it to rake it teeth through my thumb and make me lose my footing in trying to control it. I also did not want to have it jerk and drive the open barb into my thumb while I was trying to release it. That would have been real cute--hooked by the fish I had hooked. A tabloid headline flashed in my mind, "Man Hooked by Fish." So I gathered the neck of the net and made for the shallows of the gravel bed. There I worked the hook free. This fish had a lot of fight left in it. It behaved more like a large eel than a trout. Finally I held it with two hands, two fingers of one hand in its mouth and the other hand steadying the fish along my arm. Its tail curled up onto my biceps. Later I measured the distance at about twenty-two inches. The fish probably weighed about four pounds. The way it squirmed, I did not try to lay it alongside my rod. Then I carefully lowered it back into the water, cradling it in both my hands. It was gone quickly. I looked around again to see who was watching.
For nearly two hours I caught and released a fish about every four or five minutes. I was beginning to be tired. Hell, I was exhausted. My fingers had water shrivel from reviving fish. My thumb was sore from using it as my power leverage point in the forward cast, and my shoulders had begun to ache along with my back. I had been casting almost continuously since nine o'clock and it was now 12:30. The fish continued to bite. They were making rings as far as I could see downstream. The fish in front of me were still siding on the bottom, and at the far end of the pool, an occasional fish cleared the water as it jumped for an insect. I began to have a strange feeling that I was the one watching instead of someone watching me. It was a feeling of numb detachment--either that I was not really the one fishing, but was watching someone else, or that my mind was far removed from my body and that the inside of me was watching the outside of me fish at a great distance away. What it came down to is that I was tired as shit, I had not eaten since 6:30, and I was probably in the early stages of hypothermic burn-out. No calorie intake combined with the temperature of the water and the exertion and the excitement took their toll. I was beginning to shake and I needed to pee real bad. Finally, I took a couple of steps backward up the gravel fan, looked out over the pool and said, "Hey, guys, I'm tired. I'm going home."
I had never had a day of trout fishing like this. Although I logged twenty-six fish that I could remember or could calculate by the flies I had used and the section fished, the actual number was much higher, probably nearer to forty, but counting just made no sense. There was no way to count, nor any need to. I forgot everything else but the cast, the drift, and the fish. Big fish, small fish, in-between fish. Shallow water, over grass, deep water, over snags. Some took the fly dry just as it hit the water; some followed it, racing beside it and finally hit it as it stopped at the end of its drift. Some rose up out of the pool and hit hard. There was no pattern except the constancy of the hits. Strike after strike. I don't know what it was. For days afterward, I have thought about it and I still can't figure it out. Was it the change in the weather? The mayfly hatch? The full moon the night before? Was it the combination of all three in a never-to-be-repeated conjunction? Or was it one of those days when the red gods leave the door ajar and allow mortals to slip through for a while? Or was it all the spell of the rainbow? Something that can't be figured out and belongs in the realm of magic? The experience was so singular in its fullness and intensity and yet so spooky that I was inclined to the rainbow interpretation. Just for a couple of hours, the red gods had made a special place of the rainbow under the rainbow. I was there. I was witness. I saw the rainbow. Today.
Copyright 1992 Gerald L. Smith, Sewanee, TN 37375