I haven’t landed a fish since November.
I remember it well: a lanky, hatchery hen that unleashed the fury (Mitch!!!!) on my slowly probing winter-run swinger. It was hastily constructed in a moving vehicle saturated with liquor but the angry inland steelfaces didn’t seem to mind.
Since then, there have been a few nips at the tail of slowly undulating streamers, a thrown hook or two, one monster head shake that I’m sure was the brown trout I missed all fall, a foot long chrome propeller twirling in the current as I hauled him upstream pinned to a five inch fly; he didn’t make it to hand. But really, there have been no fish caught since early November.
I went home for a couple tropical weeks to visit the family and the warmth of sun. It’s taken about three years of recon and connections to people much more knowledgable than myself, but I’ve finally figured out where to chase giant tailing bonefish on flats not five miles from the house where I grew up. So I spent quite a few sunrises here:
Trying to lead neurotic eight pounders far enough not to spook while they knife, spectre-like, through the pond-still surface. In retrospect, I probably should have worn different shorts. Murphy was hanging out watching the whole thing unfold and laughing his ass off. At one point, I had a fish in the ten pound class working his way right to left about 50 feet away, perfectly on line with my lightly dropped shrimp pattern. I led him by 20 feet and waited, he stayed the course. When he was at ten feet, my knees literally began to shake a little. An eagle ray appeared at my feet, gliding majestically accross the flat and I thought: “how picturesque and perfect”. He saw my pale, hairy legs and had a legitimate response: he immediately bailed in disgust. He made a beeline directly toward my unaware, tailing trophy and spooked the shit out of it. Stupid majestic sea creature, I hear ray skin makes great wallets. I spooked fish with my tippit knots, I spooked them with what I thought were perfectly legitimate light casts, I even damn near peed on one while depostiting rented coffee on a spindly mangrove. What I did not do, in two weeks of trying, was catch one. I lightly pricked two but never got the singing reel adrenaline shot.
I returned to Montana and found spring-like weather, so I figured: “What the hell, I can at least nymph the shit out of helpless pods of Madison trout piled into low-water buckets”. After I blanked on the third hole, my confidence began to waver. I went to one final go-to spot on the way home, certain that I would cleanse myself of the thick metaphorical funk that had followed me for so long. After many dozen casts, and several fly changes, I felt it, the throbbing buck of a frightened trout, he rolled on the surface and I saw a perfectly respectable 18 inch rainbow. I thought: “Even if I did have to resort to bobber fishing, it was worth it, my skunk is finally…oh son of a bitch!”. The line was limp, the fish hugging the bottom and telling his buddies: “don’t eat that shit man, it’s totally NOT worth it”. I turned around to make a sarcastic comment to the dog, just in time to discover her rolling her neck and shoulders against a particular spot at the edge of the shelf-ice.
“No, no , no, Lehua get out of there!”
She actually found a dead, half-rotten, half-frozen skunk protruding slightly from the muck on the bank of the river and covered herself in it.
She was pretty proud of the symbolic statement she managed to make
The ride home necessitated all windows down despite the falling temperatures and the residual wetness from my leaky waders. The air was permeated, not with metaphor but the actual essence of dead, rotting, skunk.
