Troutsmith (15 page)

Over the top of the moraine we go, and then as we clump down a switchback the shores of Trout Lake come into view between the trunks of lodgepole pines. It is absolutely calm, and the blue-green depths gleam like a twelve-acre sapphire in the morning sunshine. We are the first people here today, and we take some skinny-dipping natives by surprise. The family of river otters is unfazed by our presence. They swim toward us clicking, grunting, and snaking nose-to-tail across the lake to the inlet stream, looking for all the world like a many-humped Loch Ness monster. A flock of Barrow's goldeneye ducks, a rare sight in Wisconsin but common in Yellowstone, splash and paddle around near the center of the glassy-smooth expanse of water.

With a wave and a “good luck,” Teresa and I separate and begin stalking around Trout Lake in opposite directions. We go slowly, with lots of pauses to scan the water for trout. We soon find out that the unusually hot summer has heated the water to the point where very few trout are cruising the shallows in search of scuds, midges,
Callibaetis
, and damselflies. In a typical year it might take us several hours to work our way around Trout Lake, with many stops to stalk, cast, and tussle with the big cutthroat and rainbow trout that live and breed in its azure depths. This year we do it in forty-five minutes, and when we meet on the far side of the lake near the inlet stream, neither of us has even a tale of a trout to show for our efforts.

After our rendezvous Teresa continues on to a little point of black basalt that juts a few yards out into the lake from the north shore. It's a strategic place to wait for fish. The elevated platform gives her an excellent view over a wide, weedy flat illuminated by sunlight coming in from behind. I walk back to the little bay where the inlet stream pours in and scan the water patiently, forcing myself to concentrate on the task of
seeing
instead of looking. I breathe deeply and bore holes in the water with my eyes. Twenty/fifteen corrected vision is a blessing, but I still have to make an effort to see what is actually in front of me. If I relax, my brain simply takes the easier way and clones in a monotony of submerged weeds and woody debris.

For a long time nothing stirs, but suddenly I'm aware of two large rainbow trout swimming slowly along the edge of a weed bed in about six feet of water. Every now and then one of the fish tips down and roots around in the weeds on the bottom, and judging by the way both fish whirl around and snap their jaws from time to time, the trout are feeding on scuds (
Gammarus
). As I watch, the rainbows glide slowly off to my left and disappear into deeper water that is shot through with sunbeams. Ten minutes later they reappear off to my right. Like many still-water trout, the rainbows are following an elliptical orbit that will take them within casting range every ten to fifteen minutes.

My hands are shaking so much that I struggle to tie a #12 Olive Scud to the 4x tippet. In a few minutes the trout appear on their next pass. I cast the fly well ahead of the fish, allowing enough time for the fly to sink to the bottom when the trout are still fifteen feet away from it. No dice; the rainbows don't show a flicker of interest even when I twitch the scud off the bottom as they pass by. I try again the next time they come gliding around the circuit, but again the trout pay no attention to the fly at all. After they swim off I strip in line to change the fly.

My next trick is a #16 Pheasant Tail Nymph on a long 5x tippet. This time the trout are interested, and for a heart-pounding moment I think that the lead fish is going to inhale the little PTN. But the trout stops, takes a hard look, rejects the fly at the last minute, and turns away. Subsequent tries with the PTN generate no response at all from either trout. An hour goes by and the sun climbs higher above the mountains. I try a few other flies without success. Soon the rising midday breeze will ripple the surface of Trout Lake and sight-fishing will be over for today. Conscious of my limited time, I add a 6x tippet that extends the leader to eighteen feet and tie a #20 Brassie to the sharp end.

This time I cast the fly when the fish are nowhere in sight. I pick a place where I think the two rainbows will swim past if and when they show up on their next orbit. I let the little brassie sink to the bottom. I can't see the fly, but I concentrate on the square meter of bottom where I think it is. Long minutes pass. My back is sore, the surface of Trout Lake is a giant mirror, and my head aches from peering through the glare of the morning sun reflected in it. I'm tired. It's hard to wait until the trout return. Will they return? Am I wasting my time? Then the thick, green-backed rainbows appear magically out of the sunbeams, swimming along in a slow, stately fashion befitting their royal proportions. When they're within a yard of the fly I give the line one good strip. The lead trout suddenly changes direction, swims another couple of feet, and stops. Time stops too, but my heart is pounding hard in my chest. A little flash of white blinks in the depths. I strike, and the big rainbow writhes up to the surface, gills flared in anger, pain, fright, surprise, or maybe all of those things. Then with a sharp, muscular contraction that begins at its head and wrenches its body all the way to its tail the big trout bolts for deeper water. I feel rather than see what happens next: a thump on the rod, which can only have been the trout crashing through a tangle of weeds, then a second, then a third time, and suddenly the line stops moving. I reel in most of a soggy fly line encumbered with weeds and algae. The 6x tippet has sheared off from the drag of all that weight.

I'm boiling with adrenaline. My whole body shakes so hard that it takes an age to rebuild the leader and tie on another brassie. When it's finally done I look out over Trout Lake again. The sunlight sparkles on the surface in a million diamonds, and from her rocky perch Teresa signals me with a friendly wave. I don't really expect another chance at a fish like that, but when I look again there is the second trout cruising along its patrol route as if the first episode had never happened. The rainbow turns and tails away to the more remote part of its beat. Once more I cast the fly and let it sink to the bottom.

In the minutes that follow I rehearse a new game plan in my mind. Minutes later the trout reappears. Again I twitch the fly when the fish is close, and suddenly I'm connected to the trout of a lifetime, a giant green fish with a crimson stripe that must be three or four inches wide. For a few seconds after the strike I have the big trout off balance. This time I keep the line tight, applying maximum side pressure with the rod and refusing to let the trout right itself and recover its bearings. It works. I keep the pressure on and the fish's head off line, slowly walking it farther along the bank and away from the weed beds near the inlet. But just when I think I might be able to win this one, the trout wrenches its head down angrily and bolts off at near light-speed. Beads of water shoot off the line as it hisses through guides. The reel handle spins so fast it's a blur of shiny silver. The Peerless is screeching higher and louder than I've ever heard a fly reel shriek in fresh water. I close my eyes and wince, because I know what is going to happen.

This time it takes only one clump of weeds and the trout is gone, and I am gone, and a sinking feeling hits my chest like a hammer. My knees are weak and wobbly as I reel up and stagger out of the shallows into the sagebrush on the bank. Far out in the lake a giant rainbow trout leaps several times. I can't be sure from this distance, but I think it's trying to shake a #20 brassie and a hunk of 6x tippet from the corner of its jaw. Teresa walks over, exclaiming “Wow! Did you see that fish jumping? It must have gone ten pounds!” “Yes,” I answer, softly and absently, “I saw it.” Then I find a grassy spot and daydream for a while beneath that wide Wyoming sky, watching clouds built like haystacks, forming and evaporating, rank upon rank marching across the blue vault of heaven from west to east.

That night around the campfire we visit with our neighbor, a professor of English literature from Idaho State University. Every summer he camps at Pebble Creek for a few weeks, reveling in the peace of camp life and catching up on his reading. He's also a veteran fly fisher. The professor's home river is Idaho's tumbling Lochsa, and its fat German brown trout are his teachers and confessors. As sparks crackle in the starlit night I tell the story of the two trophy rainbows, and in a gentle, indirect way he helps me to put things in perspective. We talk about the wolf pups at play on the wide sagebrush flats of the Lamar valley. We talk about bears, about the ever-changing waters of Yellowstone, and about the ephemeral nature of the things that we love. Finally he says, “You know, in a place like Yellowstone, fly fishing for trout is merely a bonus.” I know he was right, but even now those two big rainbows sometimes swim into my thoughts, huge and stately as they cruise the emerald deeps of Trout Lake, only to vanish in the sunbeams of my mind.

In the summer of 2004 Teresa and I flew to England, rented a car, and spent a month poking around the United Kingdom from Land's End north to Cape Wrath. As a fishing excursion this needs a bit of explanation if not outright defense. We could have taken a trip to New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Alaska, Labrador, or even Mongolia, all of which measure up to the twenty-first-century ideal of the angler's Eldorado. What led us to choose, in the words of the Bard, “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”? We chose England for the same reasons that a wild brook trout ten inches long has a higher value than a ten-pound carp in the minds of many anglers, the same reasons people will gladly take extreme risks trekking the Rockies in search of rare cutthroat and golden trout. In fishing as in life, the quality and richness of the experience are worth a great deal more than the quantitative outcome in inches or pounds. Our trip was a fly-fishing pilgrimage in the truest sense, a long journey taken as an act of religious devotion.

The adventure began when we left Minneapolis on an overnight Icelandair flight to Reykjavik. Iceland itself is a legendary fishing destination for Atlantic salmon and large brown trout. After a few hours' layover we boarded another jet and flew to London's Heathrow. It was a beautiful day for flying. Nothing but smooth air and fair-weather cumulus clouds hung over the long blue miles of north Atlantic between Iceland and the United Kingdom. I dozed in the bright sunshine, six miles high.

Then Teresa was prodding me; we had crossed the English coast. I looked out of the window and was immediately struck by the mosaic of greens and yellows on the medieval fields and meadows laid out below us. The same distinctive patterns can be seen in gun-camera films taken by spitfires and mustangs during World War II. Thankfully there were no black-crossed Me-109s off our wingtips this day, but I scanned the sky anyway. I looked again at the green carpet unrolling beneath us. In my mind the words of William Blake and the music of C. Hubert Parry began to echo.

This happened often during our trip. I'd be strolling along a footpath beside a river or walking up a cobbled village high street, and from somewhere words and music that I'd studied years before would form spontaneously in my mind, triggered by the surroundings.

Heathrow was a typical airport. The sleepy customs official's greatest concern seemed to be confirming that we did indeed have a hotel reservation for the evening, and soon we were on our way. Thankfully all of our checked baggage arrived safely, even the long rod case that housed our two-piece, nine-foot fly rods. I learned later that very few rods are actually stolen during air travel. More commonly the round rod tubes simply roll off the luggage conveyor belts and are lost in transit. Rod cases that are square or rectangular in cross-section don't roll easily and almost always reach their destination.

With our baggage in tow we boarded a bus that would take us from Heathrow to a train station in the suburb of Woking. Initially the bus ride was routine and unremarkable, but suddenly it was as if somebody had turned off a light switch. The sky was blotted out as the bus barreled along through a deep green tunnel. London was behind us and we were getting our first sight of English boundary hedges.

If good fences make good neighbors, the British may be the most neighborly folks in the world. Many hedges were fifteen to twenty feet high and sometimes, as in Woking, they stretched right over the highway from one side to the other. No one trims the interior square where the road goes through; the lorries (trucks) do that automatically and the effect is striking.

We left the bus in front of the railway station and trundled our luggage to the platform where we could catch a train southwest to Axminster in Dorset. Lots of signs warned us not to stand too close to the edge of the platform, and when the first express whistled through the station at eighty-five miles per hour we took the warning to heart. The draft from the passing train could have lifted a child or small adult right off their feet. We found that buses and trains in the UK ran exactly on schedule, speeding up or slowing down as needed so they would arrive at their destination
precisely
on time.

Jet lag began to catch up with me as our train rolled along, but I stayed awake and took in every detail of the landscape passing by. No student of fishing history could sleep through his or her first sight of the counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset. This is limestone country, a geology that raises the blood pressure of fossil hunters and trout fishers alike. The “matching the hatch” style of dry fly fishing was pioneered by fly fishers in the south and west of England during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Legendary anglers Frederic M. Halford and George Selwyn Marryat codified the theory and practice of dry fly fishing on the Rivers Test and Wylye near Winchester. Halford was the writer. Marryat was widely regarded as the most skillful fly fisher of his generation.