By the time I reach the stream it is near dark, the mayfly spinners descending like a low storm cloud toward the surface of the river, and soon now the trout will start swallowing them where they land, near death, spent in the surface film—a nightly, late-June ritual. Looking up from the solid black space of the river to the still-bright sky, I can see them only because they are so many, their bodies elongated, wings grown larger than when they hatched as duns, subimagos probably not even twenty-four hours ago, then flew who knows how far up into the sky, joining tails in mid air in that crazy, awkward mating flight. “Imagos,” they are called now—a word I love.
These are gray drake spinners. I have never seen them hatch. I wonder if they even hatch in the river or someplace else, in tiny unnamed creeks or backwaters—and they only come here to die. I wonder what makes them descend all together like that, or how the trout know for those fifteen or twenty minutes before they touch down that they are coming—and so they refuse every imitation and probably every natural while they wait, eyes turned upward, expectant, knowing that soon those nearly imperceptible imprints will appear on the roof of their world.
I have already tied on my imitation, a simple fly I have made, deer hair wrapped half the thickness of a pencil in a crisscrossing pattern along the shank, three splayed strands of hair left uncut at the end to imitate the tails, a few hackle feathers wrapped at the abdomen and trimmed top and bottom so it will lay flat in the surface film—if the cast is right, if the candy-cane of my line unfurls all the way as I lower the rod, so the line lands perfectly straight, as delicately as if it weighed nothing, and if I can do all this without using the sense of sight. I have tied six other flies onto twelve-inch sections of tippet, so if one breaks off or gets tangled in the now-invisible branches behind me, I only have to tie a double surgeons knot, which I can do with my eyes closed, and I don’t have to turn on my headlamp and startle the trout, blinding myself in the process.
I have not been here, on the Pere Marquette, since late last fall when I managed to get away and try for the last of the Chinooks with my seven weight, but there were hardly any left, those who remained nearly dead, their skin mottled and falling off. To come and find the spinners about to touch down, the trout on the verge of abandon, is more than I deserve, I think, too much to have hoped for, given that I didn’t even call the local fly shop first, just got in my truck two hours away and headed north through Grand Rapids—and then the landscape started to change, cornfields giving way to forests and hills, and just north of Grand Rapids, as I crossed the Rogue River, a mayfly exploded yellow and blood-red against my window, so I knew I was far enough north now for the real trout water to begin. There are no real trout streams where I live, just the occasionally cool enough drainage creek, the spring fed-tributary that holds a few small trout, and all those waters are nearly impossible to fly fish. Here the river is wide enough to cast easily. The wading is not difficult, and soon the trout will be feeding.
I have missed the brown drakes, all the early hatches. I even missed the spring steelhead run this year. When I move into the water, my neoprene waders cling tighter to my legs, as if the water were holding onto me, trying to push me over; the current here is swift, much faster than it looks when you step down into it. I’m hoping the contours of the bottom haven’t changed much from last year, that I will remember where the deep holes are, the drop-offs. Sometimes, fishing at night, you feel the gravel bottom starting to roll away beneath you, feel the river urging you into its deepness where you cannot touch down, and the water comes cold sinking in over the tops of your waders.
Right in front of me I hear the first big-fish gulp, then another one down stream. I can feel the fluttering of a million wings all about me, tickling my neck, the butterfly kisses of their wings on the backs of my hands. I have stripped off fifteen feet of line. I know to keep my casts short, since I can see so little; to try for a long cast will be impossible, though no matter how much I have told myself this over the years, I know there will come a point when I hear the biggest gulp of all and no other gulps nearby, and I will cast off into the darkness, trying, impossibly trying, to measure off the distance with only sound to guide me. I grease the line and fly well and light a cigar to keep the mosquitos off my face and to make myself wait until there are more gulps, so they are worked up and ready to grab nearly anything that touches down. I don’t want to start too soon, to turn them off while they are still tentative, still waiting. I want the waiting to be thoroughly over and done with, for them to be into it thick and strong, unthinking.
I begin to cast, letting out line a few inches at a time, imagining the shape of the line, the mirror images of back-cast and front-cast, the fly pulled along behind.
Then I am into one, the first time I have felt the living rush coming through the bamboo of my little Granger rod in too long. He’s not the one I heard, not the one I was after. It’s these smaller ones who are willing to move to the fly, even into a bigger trout’s feeding lane. They’re opportunists, but if they dally, if they are small enough, some of the big browns will simply suck the smaller ones down rather than that less than an ounce of mayfly protein. I feel towards his splashing when he is close enough, trace the invisible strand of line down to his mouth, slip my hand under his soft belly. He’ll go eight, ten inches. He is a rainbow judging from the way he fought, rushing from side to side, not just hunkering down and heading for the bottom. I back the hook out and feel him slide from my hands and away.
I’m into a big one finally; I could tell the minute I set the line down, and then right at 3 o’clock the splash came, and I lifted and felt the heavy weight, not even pulling back at first, still trying to figure out what this meant, this sudden biting back, the cold steel. I’m glad when he goes upstream first. That way he’s fighting both me and the current at the same time. Still, he’s taking off a lot of line, and I’m using my four-weight Granger with a tiny Hardy reel and very little backing. I should be using graphite, the nine-footer, a five or six weight at least, especially at night when the big browns are on the prowl, but I love small rods, the way they make even the smallest fish seem significant, the challenge of landing big ones, like this one, who on this rush up and across stream seems remarkably big, bigger than any brown I’ve seen in this river. When it comes up out of the water, just visible against the upstream slick night surface of the river, I realize this is no brown but an early summer steelhead, and with this rod, with this line, I will never land it.
When he falls back in, he is off already and the rod goes straight dead in my hand. I reel in, and the hook is still there, straightened out. I clip it off and tuck it into a vest pocket—a memento. I land two browns, each a little bigger than the one before, and then I realize everything has stopped. There is only the occasional, far-off gulp, the splashy rises of fingerlings in the shallows. I tie on a small sculpin, using my light to get the knot right and cast off toward shore, mend the line upstream, then give three, four, five good tugs before letting the current take it around and straight downstream. It’s over, now. I can wait until it gets darker still. I could sit in the ferns and look up at the stars and listen for animals to come down for a drink, then use a deer-hair mouse fly or a bigger sculpin fly and cast off into the perfect darkness for the big night browns.
Fred, the owner of our local fly shop will tell me a summer steelhead would never take a spinner off the surface like that. He will say it must have been a big brown, maybe even a lake-run come up early for the hex hatch which should start sometime soon. But I know, however unlikely, what it was.
I am heading back to my truck in the darkest center of this pine and deciduous forest, walking slowly, feeling where the trail must be with a part of my senses I rarely use. I stop and look up, and there are the stars, a cool breeze taking hold of the leaves. I am almost back now, the pine needles quieting my footsteps, my legs and feet too warm in my neoprene waders. I can hear a car now, still far away, rolling across the gravel road. I can’t hear the murmurings of the river any longer.
Upgrading to a paid subscription will help me greatly in the creation of this newsletter (and in paying my bills). You can make a one-time contribution HERE.
You can listen to my podcast on the works of Ernest Hemingway HERE
You can watch my introduction to my YouTube series on Film Noir HERE