Lines on the Water (11 page)

“Try ’er again, she’s there.” He whispered in the urgent way a guide does early in the morning. The sun warmed his old sweater and touched the peak of his cap. His face, looking at the water, was as captivated as a child’s.

I threw a better cast this time at forty-five degrees above the fish. The fly would come right over its nose, I felt. The line went out, and the fly floated down and touched the current. My fly began to arc. I watched it. There is a point when you know the fish must take—right NOW. I tried to jot it as Mr. Simms asked. But all I managed to do was make a ripple. The fly went past that point by a centimetre, then two, then a foot, then two.

“Must be me,” I said.

“Try ’er again,” he said. There was not a breeze in the air, no other fisherman in sight. Only the sound of the rapid above us and the occasional knock of the pole against the gunnel of the canoe.

I tried twice more. Both times we waited, watched the fly
skirt over the hidden rock, move away from the dark spot on the rock’s far side we were both watching in anticipation.

“Give ’er here,” he said.

I handed the rod to him. He braced the pole, took the rod in the other hand, holding the canoe fast in the water, and threw the line. It went towards the rock. He moved his wrist back and forth, the line trembled, the fly looked like it was jumping up and down on the water. The fly dotted along for a second, two seconds, three—
bang
. The rod bowed, the line began to zing from the pull of a young salmon.

“Here you go,” he said. “I’ll pole it in.”

I might say that sometimes that works and a lot of times it doesn’t. In fact, I watched him try it again a few times after this with no success at all. The truth remains, if a fish is going to take, it will take.

As we sat on the shore, he made up tea with seven bags in a two-cup pot, stirring it with a stick. And then later we poled back into the rapids and moved downriver.

He was growing old, and the world was changing. He was well over sixty that summer. He had an old camp, with an old flat-iron stove and three cots. He had a pin-up picture of a young woman selling lubricant from the late fifties, dressed in Levi’s shorts and a halter top. He had some rods on the walls, a trophy or two, his diary. If he was there when you went to
his camp, the door was always opened. No one bothered him. He would walk over the hill to his own little stretch and fish. It wasn’t a great pool, but like so many home pools, once a person became familiar with it, knew where the fish were and had some luck, it became a place to invest their time. And he knew his old pool very well.

The problem was, that year he was told by people from away that he no longer could fish it. They put up a sign near the water, and met him on the shore three times to tell him he wasn’t welcome. This happened quickly and without warning. And I still don’t know the full extent of it. But he did not happen to have riparian rights to the water. The camp that did—a mile or so below him—had decided that he was a bother to them and to their camp guests.

For a while he put up a fight, said he’d get proof and no one could fool him. Said he would rock the pool or fill it all in. But he could no more do that than hurt someone. Then there were lawyers and all the rest of it involved. He told me that everyone had decided it wasn’t him but a Mr. Jeffreys from Halifax who owned the water. He said he would build another camp somewhere—even though this one was forty years old. He looked about, saw others fishing on the water he once considered his, water which he never tried to regulate himself, and asked me to drive him to the south branch.

So I did. We got into the Jeep one morning and went around the Fraser Burchill Highway to the south branch of the Sevogle on a day in late July. He sat in the Jeep with his hands folded, looking out the window, looking like a child who has just been punished.

“I’ll show you a place to fish,” he said. “It’s where I’ll build me new camp. I’ll go over to Fred-ric-ten—that’s what I’ll do—I’ll go to Fred-ric-ten, and talk to the Forestry.”

I took a road beyond Clearwater Pool, came to the top of a hill. We both looked down, where far, far away the river turned into the sun.

For miles there wasn’t a tree. The ghostly remnants of trees stood in single file, blackened and desperate against the yellowish horizon. Like the rainforest, like all those things man had come to take for granted, to step upon, it had been clear-cut out. Old Mr. Simms had not been there in years. His lips trembled just slightly, the river in the distance glittered like a bayonet affixed against the sky.

“I’m a fool,” he said.

“NO, yer not,” I said.

“I got no place to fish now.” He smiled, shaking his head.

The next Saturday I went to his camp. However, this time, the door was closed.

BY THE END OF THE
sixth summer I had managed to learn to fish. And I fished mostly alone, leaving the cottage where Peg and I lived in the summer at dawn and trying to get back by mid-afternoon. I always carried with me, besides my dog, two rods, two reels weighted with weight-forward lines for those rods, three boxes of flies—bugs and butterflies being my favourite—a flashlight, a spare pair of jeans, and waders, two jugs of water (for the radiator), a thermos of tea, and a lunch bucket of sandwiches.

I love travelling the rivers alone, and now spend much more
time by myself than with other people, even though I’ll never forget them for teaching me what they could.

By then, my line was touching the water where I wanted it to and I was able to cover the water I wanted to as well. (But I still got knots and flubbed casts and had days when nothing went right.) I no longer used a blood knot, but went with nine or ten feet of leader. I was using both hands, without having to think about it, and felt comfortable whenever I went fishing.

Often I did not make it back by afternoon. It would be dark when I left in the morning and dark when I got back out at nightfall. I stood in pools in the pouring rain, too stupid to come out of them, and I wallowed about the shore in the desperate fly-soaked heat too stupid to go home. And more than once I had to rely on luck to get my old truck started, miles away from anyone.

Some days I would start into Little River Pool just above the Miner’s Bridge on the Norwest, but go on the long rough road into B&L.

The year before, Peter had seen a grilse jump in the swift little run, directly off from where the path came out unto the shore—on the other side of the river, and he left B&L Pool one day and went down and hooked two grilse. Although most people bypassed this run, which ran tight to the other shore
between two rocks, grilse always rested there on their journey before moving into the pool proper. Or they would rest there and move right through the pool. So we usually stopped to throw a line over it. It was easy to reach. One just walked out up to their knees and threw a short tight cast into the top of the run, defined by an eddy swirling over a submerged rock. From there to another rock half-submerged about thirty yards downriver, it was a run alive with possibilities.

This run below B&L didn’t look like much but it was often as not productive—until about eleven-thirty in the morning, when the action would taper off. It fished better in the morning than in the evening, and you could take fish on a variety of flies. I fished bug on the Norwest. But I’ve taken grilse on butterfly and Black Ghost, and Blue Charm, there as well.

One day that year I took my younger brother John and another man into B&L. My brother just came along for the ride, which was so bumpy the other man said he would never travel with me again—and so I’ve not invited him.

It was a nice day in early July and we walked down the long sun-drenched path to the water. Our acquaintance turned to his right and headed for the pool, about a quarter of a mile away.

“I’m fishing here,” I said to my brother.

John looked at the water as I waded out up to my knees.

“The pool’s up that way,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“Well, why are you fishing here? There’s no water here.”

“Oh, there is fish here,” I said, although I was unsure of it at that moment.

“Where?” John said, craning his neck and looking at me in a kind of embarrassment.

“Right here,” I said. My little brown hackled bug landed on the far side of the flat rock and the line tightened. It was the first and probably only time I was able to predict a fish would take at the very instant it did.

In July we moved on to the Little Souwest—which is perhaps my favourite of all rivers and fishes well all July. The fish on the Little Souwest seemed to be always slightly brighter and more active to me than those on the Norwest. It is a bigger and in some ways grander river with less pressure on it than the Norwest. But the fish came in spurts because of the nets from the reserve just below.

It was on the Little Souwest where I decided one day that year to give up waders as soon as it got warm. It is a larger river with many tricky spots, and I was there one afternoon with David Savage. We were crossing in high water to Clellend Pool, and I was almost halfway across when I realized I had no left leg under me whatsoever. I let out my fishing line for balance,
but knew that I could not go back or forth. There I was. The water swelled about me in the middle of the river. I tried to take one more step, and started to go, on the slippery boulders beneath me. Just below me the pool gleamed in the morning sunshine. But I wouldn’t be able to stop from being swept into the rapids beyond them.

I hated to call out to anyone but I knew I would have to. And back Savage came and helped me across. It was a great day to fish, so I’m happy I didn’t miss it. After that day, as soon as it got warm at all, my waders were relegated to the back of the truck.

The next day I was again fishing with David Savage. We both caught grilse very early in the morning. By afternoon the river seemed dead. But hour after hour David kept at it. He would sit on the log on the beach, stare at the water like a man investigating a certain painting for the tell-tale signature stroke of the painter, take a chew of plug, stare at the beach, and look through his box, swatting flies away with his hand. And then he would go out into the pool again and fish. It was a long pool, and had three different sections to it. The pool far at the top of the island we were on was deep and had two swift-running rips, which joined in a
Y
. And where that
Y
joined was the best spot on this part of the river. Down below the water got quite
deep again and slow moving. In any of these three places fish would take. But normally if they took in one place, you would not find them in another. You would never be certain where they were lying, and try to switch fly patterns accordingly.

At the end of the day I was more than a little perturbed.

“We each got a fish. Let’s go.”

“I’ll try it again,” David said, fishing now through the middle stretch of the pool for about the fifteenth time.

I don’t know what I bet him, but it was something—that he would not get another fish. I prayed that he would not get another fish. I put a hex on the water and on all his flies.

“No, I’ll get another fish,” he said calmly.

The morning crowd had left, the afternoon crowd had left, and the evening crowd was getting pretty tired. Still Savage fished through the long pool, cast after cast without comment, came out, sat down, spat his plug, and looked through his fly box again.

There had not been a fish taken since an hour after I had taken my grilse at the top of the pool earlier that day. I looked at my pocket watch, then I would sigh. I would sigh just so Savage would know I was sighing and looking at my pocket watch, perturbed.

But again he would look through his fly box, scratch his head, and put on another fly.

Finally he took out a small bug, about a number 8 or 10, half-brown and half-green, with a bare body.

“I’m going to give this a try,” he said, smiling. “Just one more try.”

“That’s about the worst godforsaken fly I’ve ever seen,” I said.

And out he went into the pool again. Then he got down to his last few casts.

“Come on,” I said.

“I’ll cast twice more,” he said. He threw his line out, the fly gracefully touched the water and moved across the pool in the twilight. The sun was almost gone, the sky red and white, and nighthawks and swallows skimmed the surface of the water, while the trees in the background were solid and dark. He stripped in his line and brought it back.

“Last cast, Mr. Savage,” I said.

His fly hit the water. The tip of his rod began to bend and butt. The fish took a run, jumped high in the night air. He turned and smiled, a chew of Red Man plug in his cheek.

Now and then, when I was fishing, I would hit some trout. And on certain lone summer nights I go fishing them myself. The flies we are using for trout are tiny, number 12s or 14s on those occasions. They are called, aptly enough, mosquitoes,
mayflies, etc. Some tied are a variation of small flies and have no proper name. Nymphs—you can hardly see them in the water, but in a black pool near an old wood bank on the Bartibog or Bay du Vin these little flies cause the trout to stick their mouths out of the water and suck them in. You fish early or late because of this. A trout is finicky about dinner. Ravenous, yes—finicky as well. But at a point in the evening with that tiny little fly skirting above them, they will suck them down the same way we might accidentally suck a mosquito down. We are looking for three- or four-pound trout.

I like fishing for trout because even more than salmon it provides me with a link to my youth—to my father and brothers, my aunt who fished for trout instead of salmon, because fishing salmon was not considered ladylike when she was a girl. A link to that little eight-inch trout I caught at Beaverbrook Stream when I was four. It is perhaps the most pristine of fishing, the most poetic. You are able to think of fishing stories from the
Saturday Evening Post
, of Norman Rockwell, of long dusty roads, and cool streams, and children. You are able to reflect upon all of this as an essential part of rural life, like sleigh bells and Christmas, or your favourite writers like the catfish-seeking Mark Twain, or the brilliant rural observer, Ernest Buckler. And if that is all sentimental and nostalgic, so be it. Trout fishing can do this for you just at twilight with a
tiny nymph fly, a smell of fly dope, and an old warm fishing basket strung over your shoulder.