Friday, January 12, 2007

The New

“Are you snagged?”

It looked that way to Cary, standing in the next pool downstream and waiting for me to fish the proverbial “one last spot” before calling it a day. He had decided to rest his sore wrist (too much wrist and not enough forearm in his fly rod casting motion) and just watch me for the last few minutes.

My rod was bent nearly in half and the line appeared to be snagged on something next to a fallen log, or perhaps on the log itself. In fact, he was witnessing a momentary stalemate between me and a rather large smallmouth bass that had just swallowed my fly and was trying its best to swim under that log to break off my leader. Maybe he had gotten word from the only bass I had hooked the day before that had successfully broken off my tippet at the fly knot and had disappeared downstream, jumping two more times on the way in attempts to dislodge my now untethered fly. I was trying to horse this latest fish into open water without repeating yesterday's broken tippet heartbreak, but for a moment the tug-of-war was a draw and I suppose it did appear that I was simply snagged on something.

Another minute and I worked him away from the log and then landed him by grabbing his lower jaw firmly with my thumb and forefinger and lifting him out of the water. After two days of fishing, I had finally landed a nice fish minutes before giving up. One’s perception of a fishing trip can improve dramatically with the landing of a single, nice fish, as Cary had also learned about fifteen minutes earlier when he caught his only fish of the day. I had been fishing the pool downstream from where Cary now stood (we leap-frog pools when we fish together) when I glanced upstream to check on my son and found him grinning broadly and holding a large smallmouth by the lower jaw.

Wading a river to fly fish is physically demanding. Fishing upstream to avoid spooking the fish in clear, low water, every step is against the current. You fight to maintain your balance while stepping on underwater rocks that you can barely see and you sometimes guess wrong and fall. In fast-moving water, just looking down at your feet is disorienting. You can stand perfectly still and yet sense that you are being swept downstream. I am more exhausted by a day of wading than by weight lifting or mountain biking.

We left the river early the night before to set up our camp and to get dinner started and as it turned out we needed the extra time. Cary is an excellent cook so I offered to set up the tent and build a fire while he grilled a couple of filets on the disposable grill I had brought along. The charcoal that came with the grill wouldn’t light so he decided to cook them on the Coleman. A critical piece of the stove had been left at home, though, so we considered cooking them over the fire.

You need hot coals to cook over a campfire and it can take hours for logs to burn down that far. Finally, I decided to drive to a nearby country store for better charcoal and ice and in no time at all Cary was grilling the filets.
If anything tastes better than an ice-cold beer out of the cooler, ice water dripping from its sides, with a grilled filet after a day of fishing I am yet to find it. It brought out the Iron Chef in Cary. He cooked some sliced onions in a frying pan over the remaining coals with a beer reduction and drizzled the onions over the steaks. We are talking some serious campfire eating here.

The entire trip had gotten off to a dubious start before we even left Greensboro. I picked Cary up at his apartment near campus and as we started to leave for the river, I noticed a screw in the outer edge of the Jeep’s tire tread and the depressing bulge of the sidewalls that tells you the tire is going flat. The tire store found another screw in the center of the tread, remnants from our recent home roofing job. I find that when you have that kind of work done you need to plan on about six months worth of flat tires until you find all of the stray nails. The first screw appeared to be too close to the sidewall to permit a repair and I began to think about where I might find a matching tire to purchase. The repair looked workable once the mechanic saw the inside of the tire, though, and he had us back on the road in half an hour.

Now, you might think that getting a flat, losing a fish to a broken leader and encountering multiple difficulties with our cooking apparatus were signs of a fishing trip gone awry, but you would be mistaken. In fact we were having a blast. It takes a lot more than that, a hurricane perhaps, to spoil two days of fly fishing and camping with your son or daughter. We still hadn’t landed any fish at that point, but the fishing was fun, the river was beautiful and we’d had a great meal and couple of cold ones. We sat around the campfire and talked about everything and nothing until ten o'clock, then decided to pack it in and get an early start.

The temperatures had been cool during the day for August and a slight but constant breeze on the river made it even sweeter. The evening low was in the mid sixties, ideal for sleeping, a bit warm for the sleeping bags at times. I kept rotating into the bag when I got cool, out when I felt hot. We could hear geese honking and flying over the nearby river all night. The sound was pleasant until a flight flew right over our tent about 3:00 a.m. Those suckers are loud up close enough to hear their wings flapping. I asked Cary if they had awakened him the night before and he said yes, and that during those first confusing moments of honking after he awoke he feared that he was driving the wrong way on the Goose Expressway.

After a quick breakfast of pecan rolls, plums and orange juice (my coffee maker was useless without the Coleman), we briefly debated whether to bike part of the New River Park Bike Trail that ran right through our camp or to wade back into the river for round two with the smallmouth. The bikes seemed like a better use of the cool, early part of the morning, so we pulled them off the back of the Jeep and headed out on a trail that follows the river with great views around every turn. We passed two older ladies walking the trail and I asked them to take our picture with my point-and-shoot camera. It would have been a great picture, too, if she had pushed the shutter release instead of the power on button.

We struck camp and got back on the road to Greensboro and Chapel Hill, exhausted and exhilarated. We talked a little, but mostly we both just watched the center line of the interstate zip by. As a friend told me years ago, sitting around after an hour of full court basketball, you're damned near at peace with the world when you're exhausted. I could nap for a week. Then it hit me.

“Want to shoot a round of sporting clays?” I asked.

He stared intently at the road ahead and thought for a few seconds. “I don’t have any classes next Friday”.