Such an obscure
and chronologically imperfect notion is winter. It can begin early or late, but
rarely, if ever, on time. Personally,
I mark its appearance by the date I stop wearing one layer and move to two or three
or more. Snow does clarify things, however.
I once fished a lake with a buddy and his lab in the
San Juan Mountains
. We were at over eight thousand feet
in pouring rain. It was bitter cold
and fog had settled in. The mountains
were cloaked and the sun was long gone. We
were the only ones out.
Time to launch, all loaded up, all but
Rio
, who was squeamish about jumping into a boat.
‘Rio! Load up!
Rio
!
Rio
!’ Brian called. Something was holding
her back.
‘Rio! Now! Load up!’
The lab launched into the boat and directly onto Brian’s rod.
The tip cracked and flew into the water. Nothing was said.
Rio
and master walked back up the ramp in silence.
I stayed with the empty dory searching for the tip to reclaim the guides.
They returned an hour later with a new rod. That was how it went
with Brian. Every time we fish together
something happens. I am used to it.
So is he.
On the water, the motor was too big or the needle valve off; we had to move at a
good pace to keep it going. As our
streamers skipped in our wake behind us, we cursed the motor, tended the dog, sipped
coffee and watched violent trout come up to play.
After three hours
of speed trolling in the wet, the sun came out, just to let us know what we were
missing. Were it a perfect day, though,
the lake would have been filled with anglers. Good
trade. The clouds thinned, as did the
fog. We were surrounded by snow a hundred
feet above us along the bowl that held Electra lake.
That day I landed
a sizable bow. The zonker had gone
through the trout’s lip. It bucked
while I held the streamer. I finally
got the forceps and released it. At
some point the hook had found its way to my skin, dug in and wreaked havoc. I had not noticed; my fingers were too
cold to feel much of anything. Dripping
blood on boat, rod, line and streamer. People
in town were wearing shorts while we were freezing our keisters of twenty miles
north. In the mountains, it was winter
that day. August 20th.
The seams of winter
are blurred, but there are a handful of certainties once it arrives: it will never
be 80 degrees in trout country, though it may be 60. You will never wet wade, nor
will you not mind falling in. The long horned caddis will never be around. Nor will
the drake. A trout will never jump completely out of the water for an insect, nor
will it jump more than three times when hooked. But... never say never.
The blessings
of Winter: For any given stream, there will be less pressure.
You can get away with (usually) lighter tippets and there is less
chance of losing a big fish. Water
that is untouchable in summer may be approached in winter.
You may get 50 degree days that are warmer than the 80 degree days
of summer. You have a good excuse to
build a fire and drink next to it while you read. Winter
is also a time to catch up on tying flies, building rods, fixing leaders and looking
forward to the 80 degree days of summer. The
grass is always greener, but you still gotta mow the lawn.
There is a great
deal of ice on the home stream now. It
had extended nearly a rod length in a week. There
is something about walking on ice above running water that just feels foolish. I avoid it at all times.
Mostly. Sometimes
there is no other way to enter a river. The
edge frozen, ten feet out; you walk until it no longer supports your weight and
hope that you land on a sandy bottom. I’m
at about fifty-fifty with this, but I still have balance and that helps a lot. A friend of mine did this last year.
He fell through and was carried under.
He came out in three feet of water
and had to break through ice from below.
Last year, I was on the river one evening under the high bridge,
feeling rather troll-like and alone. It
was the end of a decent day. I had
been out for three hours and had four fish on a gray ghost.
It began to snow, big, wet flakes. I
was almost back to my rig and took the ceremonial last cast to the best water I
could find. It was now dark, headlights
zooming overhead. A city plow launched
fifty pounds of brown snow over the rails, a good portion finding its way on my
hat, shirt and other places...
I sent the weighted
ghost to slack water, let it sink and drew it back slowly.
A rainbow that was about a month off from spawning took it.
Its colors broke through the water even in night.
I released it and hovered under the bridge.
The snow fell silently, the river inhaling it and exhaling
beauty. Sometimes anglers get things
just because they earn them. It is
their time for that moment, to witness perfection.
Later that season,
mid-February, the same water. The same
gray ghost. A cold front had slipped
in overnight and it was really too cold to go fishing, but the day fell on a weekend
so I had no choice. When you work weekdays
and get off after dark, you go because you promised yourself you would the whole
week. Kind of a carrot and stick thing.
Every few minutes
I had to get out and pace to warm up and de-ice the guides.
After a ten minute mill I moved up to deep slack water.
The best angle to get at it resulted in a wade deeper than
places you don’t want to get cold. The
water was slow... seams and slack. Let it sink and slow retrieve.
Keep your wits
about you man, cause it is coming. Occasionally
there is a boil, a warning, but most of the time it is a stealth attack.
You would expect the take would yield some sort of clamor.
Such a release of energy in nature usually does.
Nothing. It
still scares the hell out of me some times. I
was a largemouth fisherman in the beginning and am no stranger to aggressive fish,
but Christ, trout take the cake.
So there it was,
a good take, right where it should have been. A
brown. Then another; brown, -- brown,
brown, brown. A total of eight fish.
7 Browns and 1 Bow.
All from where I stood. After
the last fish, I took that pause, we all do, when times like this unfold.
I breathed it in.
I had no idea
how long I had been out there, but I figured 8 fish, nearly every other cast - about
40 minutes. Strange, I thought I don’t
feel cold. Actually, I felt rather
good, warm even.
I thought on it.
I should be freezing.
I was to my waist in 35 degree water and happy to be there.
Then I started to move around. I
was a slug; couldn’t feel anything below my knees, in four feet of water, littered
with cobble and I was walking on stilts. I
had to get out. I made my way to the
bank and pulled myself up it. Ten minutes
later, wobbled upright. The jeep was
on the other bank. I had to cross.
Shit. I
did not want to leave, I had to. No
choice, something was up. I felt dizzy,
I could feel my concern wane. I began
not to care. It was all right, I was
comfortable, maybe I would just sit under this tree and take a nap.
No No No, get your dumb ass up and
over to the jeep. It was warm in there,
warmth is gooood.
I made it back with out incident, though
all the while, I kept thinking of how far away it was.
I seemed to be moving very slowly. Everything
seemed to be moving very slowly. I
got in, started it up cranked the heat until I felt semi-lucid.
It was not until I got back to the house before I pieced it together:
the adrenaline rush from the fish made me unaware of the cold.
There I was merrily catching fish after fish as my core temperature
slowly dropped. As long as my arms
were working, I had no idea. I had
slipped into the later stages of moderate hypothermia.
I had all the signs. All
but one: shivering. I did not shiver
at all. Perhaps this was the counter-effect
of adrenaline. Not sure.
My strong suit is not biochemistry.
After I got home, it took a full three hours
to feel like myself again. The thing
was --- I was not afraid. I had to
keep telling myself that this was an important situation and to pay attention. Luckily, the waning rational part in
me won and I cared enough to get home. But
it kind of crept up on me. So it would
appear that good fishing can in fact kill you.
Angling has a
way of creating an endurance or vigilance that normally one may not or should not
have. Sure, Brad Pitt looked really
cool riding down that river with a mammoth bow on the end.
But if the movie cameras were absent he would have been a dead
man. As Ernest Schweibert said, the
best fishing is done in books. Reality
however, is a different matter. That
day I learned about reality. Also,
it may not have been 8 fish. I can’t
remember.
Winter has its
own personality, when the time is right. Each
season, each change brings with it an intangible mystery that has to be experienced
to comprehend. It is impossible to
duplicate with words. Life may be better
found in experience and bad ones at that. Fear,
danger, scaring the hell out of yourself, these are all good things.
These are the extremes of our existence.
These are the necessities of our proliferation.
Winter provides such a place, where we can exist and remember as were not so long
ago; living a bit closer to things and touched more by the elements as we are today.
Ice on the guides, frozen reels and
lost fish because of it. Size 26 emergers
and tossing meat to the slack waiting for a bump. Suck it up, runoff
is only four months away.
EJ was born in Chicago, IL, moved to northwest Illinois at age 6 where I fished the farm ponds for bass. Moved over to poppers and deer hair flies for bass on the flyrod at ten. Fished the driftless area of Wisconsin until 20. Moved to Steamboat Springs, CO. in 1993 to get residency and fish the Yampa. Moved to Durango, CO to attend Fort Lewis College for degrees in Biology and Chemistry and fish the Animas. Graduated. Never left. I get a solid 200 hundred days on the water. Finished my first novel and am editing it now. It should be ready for submission in a few months.
EJ can be conatacted at:
ephemera@mydurango.net