Yesterday I rode my off-road bicycle a few miles along an abandoned railroad bed. I pedaled north, then back south, riding roughly parallel to one of western New York’s better-known trout streams. The stream meandered along the rail path, sometimes flowing close to it, other times wandering away.
Where the stream ran closest to my path, I noticed the water curving here, rippling there, deeper in some spots, shallower in others. I immediately started to “read” the water, looking for places where I would fish if I still fished for trout.
That’s the key phrase: “if I still fished for trout.” I used to love trout fishing. There is a stretch of water about a half-hour from my house that I know as well as I know the path from my bedroom to my backyard. In the 30 or so years I fished there, I ran into just one other angler. Because it’s so lightly fished, and because it is ideal habitat for trout, it holds some big fish. I have caught many of them—but I have not caught the biggest fish in that stream. I have seen the big ones, but that’s all. They always see me, too, and trout don’t get to be big by being stupid.
But I haven’t been on that stream for going on four years now. Four years ago, I gave all my fishing tackle away, just so I wouldn’t be tempted to fish again. You see, the last time I went trout fishing—I should say the final time—I caught a small trout that had swallowed my lure. When I took the fish out of the water, it was bleeding from the gills.
I always fished with lures. Live bait makes catching fish too easy. Besides, fish tend to swallow bait. When you catch trout with lures, the fish are usually hooked in the jaw. I would file the barbs off the lure’s hooks so that releasing the fish was merely a matter of giving the hook a quick twist, freeing the fish so it could dart away.
The little trout, though, hadn’t been hooked in the jaw. It was gut-hooked. I carried a hemostat with me for the occasional fish that would be hooked just inside the mouth, so I was able to get the lure out of the trout. But when I put it back in the water, it went belly up.
I cupped it in my hands and put it back in the water, facing upstream, so the water could flow through its gills. It was touch and go for a few minutes. Eventually, the trout righted itself and drifted downstream. A few minutes later, I walked downstream to see if the fish had died, but I spotted it in a little riffle about a foot deep, pointing upstream and holding its own against the current.
That was the last time I caught a trout. In fact, I never made another cast. Instead, I said “that’s all for me” to the guy I was fishing with.
One of my recurring dreams is that I’m fishing. Dreams being surreal, what goes on in them is bizarre. The fish are weird colors. In fact, many of them don’t look like fish. The places where I fish in my dreams are unrecognizable visions of places to fish in the waking world. In fact, my dreams repeatedly take me back to an imaginary stream whose location I can pinpoint in the real world: It is such and such a distance from my house, it is on the south side of a particular stretch of highway, and it flows through shaded woods. There’s no such stream there today. But I believe that sometime, maybe 200 years ago, there was.
Although it used to be fun to catch fish, the part I really used to like about fishing was putting on hip boots and meandering along a given stretch of water. I have seen all kinds of wildlife while doing so. One time I was fishing a deep hole that I was certain contained fish. The water was up to my thigh, and I was being careful: No movements of the feet, no unnecessary movements with my arms. Then, from out of nowhere, I spotted a beaver swimming downstream toward me. I stood stock-still in the smooth-surfaced water and the beaver swam right by me, its head out of the water, so close that I could have leaned over to touch it. Another time I was waiting out a shower and a beaver clambered out of the water and almost up to my feet, where it would grab some twigs and slide back into the water to go work on a beaver dam in progress.
Another time I was quietly working a section of stream with banks a few feet higher than the streambed. All of a sudden I heard a snort. I looked up to see a couple of big deer about 100 feet away. They looked at me. I looked at them, their breath steaming in the still-chilly morning air. They decided to be nonchalant about the encounter and mosey back into the woods.
I have seen muskrats sleek-swimming along the bank. I once saw a mink sliding down a muddy slope into the water, getting out of the water, climbing to the top of the slope and then sliding again. I have seen a great horned owl about the size of a fire hydrant (OK, I exaggerate—a little) on a tree limb about 30 feet above the water, looking at me with a “who gave you permission to be here? look on its face. I have seen blue heron, the more elusive green heron, and wild turkeys. I have seen mergansers swimming in the water, sometimes coming around an upstream bend and into full view, not seeing me because I stood motionless, their coppery windswept heads one of the more memorable sights for an amateur birder.
It sounds like a different world, and it is. It is a place for the mind to forget the work-a-day world and its worries. But standing in knee-deep water, watching a lure that I’m reeling in, and then suddenly seeing a brown trout charge at it reminds me of yet another world, one that thrills me every time I glimpse into it: the world beneath the surface of the water. Minnows, crayfish, chubs, the occasional turtle—all residents of a world that I rarely glimpse because I rarely look beneath its surface.
This is what I miss: the beauty of a brown trout, its bronze body dappled with black spots the size of peas and with BB-sized red dots; the stunning sheen of a brook trout, its green body splashed with red and orange, as if its blood were neon; and the silvery-sided rainbow trout with a slash of pink along its side, a fish that looks as if it’s moving even when it isn’t.
Despite my wishes to see them again, though, I cannot in good conscience do so. That little trout from four years ago told me I had seen enough, that my time was up. When nature speaks to us that way, we are compelled to listen.
Where the stream ran closest to my path, I noticed the water curving here, rippling there, deeper in some spots, shallower in others. I immediately started to “read” the water, looking for places where I would fish if I still fished for trout.
That’s the key phrase: “if I still fished for trout.” I used to love trout fishing. There is a stretch of water about a half-hour from my house that I know as well as I know the path from my bedroom to my backyard. In the 30 or so years I fished there, I ran into just one other angler. Because it’s so lightly fished, and because it is ideal habitat for trout, it holds some big fish. I have caught many of them—but I have not caught the biggest fish in that stream. I have seen the big ones, but that’s all. They always see me, too, and trout don’t get to be big by being stupid.
But I haven’t been on that stream for going on four years now. Four years ago, I gave all my fishing tackle away, just so I wouldn’t be tempted to fish again. You see, the last time I went trout fishing—I should say the final time—I caught a small trout that had swallowed my lure. When I took the fish out of the water, it was bleeding from the gills.
I always fished with lures. Live bait makes catching fish too easy. Besides, fish tend to swallow bait. When you catch trout with lures, the fish are usually hooked in the jaw. I would file the barbs off the lure’s hooks so that releasing the fish was merely a matter of giving the hook a quick twist, freeing the fish so it could dart away.
The little trout, though, hadn’t been hooked in the jaw. It was gut-hooked. I carried a hemostat with me for the occasional fish that would be hooked just inside the mouth, so I was able to get the lure out of the trout. But when I put it back in the water, it went belly up.
I cupped it in my hands and put it back in the water, facing upstream, so the water could flow through its gills. It was touch and go for a few minutes. Eventually, the trout righted itself and drifted downstream. A few minutes later, I walked downstream to see if the fish had died, but I spotted it in a little riffle about a foot deep, pointing upstream and holding its own against the current.
That was the last time I caught a trout. In fact, I never made another cast. Instead, I said “that’s all for me” to the guy I was fishing with.
One of my recurring dreams is that I’m fishing. Dreams being surreal, what goes on in them is bizarre. The fish are weird colors. In fact, many of them don’t look like fish. The places where I fish in my dreams are unrecognizable visions of places to fish in the waking world. In fact, my dreams repeatedly take me back to an imaginary stream whose location I can pinpoint in the real world: It is such and such a distance from my house, it is on the south side of a particular stretch of highway, and it flows through shaded woods. There’s no such stream there today. But I believe that sometime, maybe 200 years ago, there was.
Although it used to be fun to catch fish, the part I really used to like about fishing was putting on hip boots and meandering along a given stretch of water. I have seen all kinds of wildlife while doing so. One time I was fishing a deep hole that I was certain contained fish. The water was up to my thigh, and I was being careful: No movements of the feet, no unnecessary movements with my arms. Then, from out of nowhere, I spotted a beaver swimming downstream toward me. I stood stock-still in the smooth-surfaced water and the beaver swam right by me, its head out of the water, so close that I could have leaned over to touch it. Another time I was waiting out a shower and a beaver clambered out of the water and almost up to my feet, where it would grab some twigs and slide back into the water to go work on a beaver dam in progress.
Another time I was quietly working a section of stream with banks a few feet higher than the streambed. All of a sudden I heard a snort. I looked up to see a couple of big deer about 100 feet away. They looked at me. I looked at them, their breath steaming in the still-chilly morning air. They decided to be nonchalant about the encounter and mosey back into the woods.
I have seen muskrats sleek-swimming along the bank. I once saw a mink sliding down a muddy slope into the water, getting out of the water, climbing to the top of the slope and then sliding again. I have seen a great horned owl about the size of a fire hydrant (OK, I exaggerate—a little) on a tree limb about 30 feet above the water, looking at me with a “who gave you permission to be here? look on its face. I have seen blue heron, the more elusive green heron, and wild turkeys. I have seen mergansers swimming in the water, sometimes coming around an upstream bend and into full view, not seeing me because I stood motionless, their coppery windswept heads one of the more memorable sights for an amateur birder.
It sounds like a different world, and it is. It is a place for the mind to forget the work-a-day world and its worries. But standing in knee-deep water, watching a lure that I’m reeling in, and then suddenly seeing a brown trout charge at it reminds me of yet another world, one that thrills me every time I glimpse into it: the world beneath the surface of the water. Minnows, crayfish, chubs, the occasional turtle—all residents of a world that I rarely glimpse because I rarely look beneath its surface.
This is what I miss: the beauty of a brown trout, its bronze body dappled with black spots the size of peas and with BB-sized red dots; the stunning sheen of a brook trout, its green body splashed with red and orange, as if its blood were neon; and the silvery-sided rainbow trout with a slash of pink along its side, a fish that looks as if it’s moving even when it isn’t.
Despite my wishes to see them again, though, I cannot in good conscience do so. That little trout from four years ago told me I had seen enough, that my time was up. When nature speaks to us that way, we are compelled to listen.
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