On Memory and the New Season

I come from a family of demented fly-fishermen. Not persons, men. The women (who think the activity is ridiculous) in the family look on at the obsession in an If You Ignore It, It Won't Matter sort of way. My mom has never been interested in it, and probably was disgusted by it when she say my dad tying his own flies from various dead birds and mamals--their wings, hides, and tails spread out on the kitchen table on a Friday before fishing, the bits of loose fur and feathers finding their way into the corners of the house...the smell of tanning fluid.

We have all seen A River Runs Through It a million times. We read Hemingway, The River Why, Jim Harrison... Every relative has a giant stack of old fly shop catalogs somewhere in the house, a library of old copies of Fly Fisherman, Fly Rod and Reel, American Angler, Fly Fishing, and Trout. We head out for SE MN when the winter seasons opens on January 1st--provided it's warmer than ten below. One year it was twenty below and my dad and I went anyway. We got to the South Branch of the Whitewater River, put on our gear, caught one fish after about five minutes, got back in the car, and drove the two hours home along the river on Highway 61--the highway, to me, of classic vinyl and trout streams.

But our traditional beats are the Kinnikinnic River and the Rush River in Wisconsin. They are closer and better--plus a few nameless brook trout streams that only get fished by herons and us. There have been many trips to the West. Yellowstone in particular, miles of wilderness and remote streams. But, we don't go there anymore. Strange fish diseases and the prolonged drought have made the area not what it used to be. Besides Montana has about 1200 miles of trout water. Wisconsin has like over 13,000 miles.

Some of the best trout water in the world is around here and few people know about it. The one native stream trout is not a trout but a char (lake trout, too), the brook trout. They are very colorful and stupid and are caught very easily. They require very clean, cold water and when settlers plowed the soil and logged the hills their habitat suffered and they disapeared from most of their range. The brown trout is the only true trout in the midwest. The varieties we have here are natives of Scotland and Germany. They are difficult to catch and tolerate warmer, more polluted water. Rainbow trout are native to the west coast, are a species of Pacific salmon and don't do well in our streams. The migratory variety, steelhead, were introduced into Lake Superior and do fairly well there. Fishing for them on the Brule River in norther Wisconsin in the fall is absolutely magical. The Brule is classic, boulder-strewn northwoods river surrounded by old growth forest. Though the farther away streams are the less likely I am to go there anymore. I like being able to get up, work out, get a coffee, scan the paper, and then leave for the stream--no more of the fall out of bed at 3am and get back at midnight from a distant northern river.

So here we are...another year of angling.

There is a certain planty, veggie smell that the limestone spring creeks have during the high summer. Coming into contact with what makes that planty smell makes me itch. There is the memory of leaping into the 48 degree spring water in mid-July to wash off that feeling. There is the smell of worms being impaled on hooks. There is the smell of impaled worms and little brook trout on my hands after a full day of spring fishing on some nameless stream. The fly line makes a certain sound when cast correctly--there's a memory for that too. Fireflies take on strange forms in the fog. I remember being freaked out by that. I remember catching a bat on my back cast. I remember an osprey stealing my fish on a high like in Colorado. I remember a loon trying to do the same thing on a little lake near Grand Marais.

There was one time while fishing a remote beaver pond in northern Minnesota I heard a crash in the alders. I turned and was face to face with a very confused moose cow. Moose are large, unpredictable and not particularly bright. This animal likely strolled into this pond to feed on lillies every evening and I broke the routine. Swampiness and muck prevented me from going anywhere and the moose found herself in an unsolvable situation so we stood face to face for over an hour before it occured to the animal the back up and try another route.

There was another time I lay awake in my tent along the Little Isabella river as two enormous bull moose argued (not fought, argued) just a few feet away over a beaver pond filled with water lilies. The only other sound were the millions of mosquitoes dying to get into my tent and suck the life from me. This took place in an area known as the Kawishiwi (Ka-Wiss-A-Way), the Ojibway's Land of the Dead, an area where millions of fireflies take on the shapes of the almost human in the low-lying fog.

I think of this because when everything is in prime condition the lilacs are in bloom and to pass them at night reminds me of every funeral I have attended. A little over ten years ago my Uncle Bob died--the best fly fisherman among us. The guy that taught me everything. Uncle Bob was a career Army man. Fishing with him meant getting up at four to head into the mountains of Colorado, his beat, by sunrise. He taught me how to cast, fishing dry and wet flies, and all that. But, I do not adhere to his early morning routine. I do well if I get on the river by noon, but usually later and fish the low light and the hatches, placing the fly along the opposite bank they way he would.