Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time doesn’t seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for. Older anglers set foot on streams the location of whose pools is as yet unknown with a trace of inertia. Like sentimental drunks, they are interested in what they already know. Yet soon enough, any river reminds us of others, and the logic of a new one is a revelation. The pools and runs we’ve already seen help us decode the holding water: the shallow riffle is a buildup for the cobbled channel where thick trout nymph with mirror flashes; the slack back channel with the leafy bottom is not just frog water but a faithful reservoir for the joyous brook beyond. An undisturbed river is as perfect a thing as we will ever know, every refractive slide of cold water a glimpse of eternity.
The first evening I fished the river, I walked through a meadow that lay at the bottom of a curved red cliff, a swerving curve with a close-grained mantle of sage and prairie grasses. It could be that the river cut that curve, then wandered a quarter-mile south, but there you have it: the narrow shining band, the red curve, and the prairie. As I sauntered along with my fly rod, hope began to build in the perceived glamour of my condition: a deep breath.
On the edge of meadow and next to the water, there was a stand of mature aspens with hard white trunks. The grass was knee deep. White summer clouds towered without motion. Once I’d crossed to that spot, I could make out the progress of small animals fanning away from my approach. I hurried forward in an attempt to see what they were, and a young raccoon shot up one of the slick aspens, then, losing traction, made a slow, baffled descent back into the grass. By shuffling around I managed to have four of them either going up or sliding down at once. They were about a foot tall, and something about their matching size and identical bandit masks, coupled with their misjudgment of aspens as an escape route, gave me a sense of real glee at the originality of things. The new river gurgled in the bank.
I walked in and felt its pull against my legs. Current is a mysterious thing. It is the motion of the river leaving us, and it is as curious and thrilling as a distant train at night. These waters, pouring from high in a Montana wilderness, are bound for the Gulf of Mexico. The idea that so much as a single molecule of the rushing chute before me was headed for Tampico was as eerie as the moon throwing a salty flood over the tidelands and then retrieving it. Things that pass us, go somewhere else, and don’t come back seem to communicate directly with the soul. That the fisherman plies his craft on the surface of such an element possibly accounts for his contemplative nature.
I once thought this was somehow not true of aircraft, that they were too new and lacked mystery. But I lived for a time in the mountainous path of B-52 nighttime traffic. The faraway thunder that rose and fell to the west had the same quality of distance and departure one loves in trains and rivers. On a pale summer night, I made out the darkened shape of one of these death ships against the stars, casting its shadow against the prairie.
Today I stopped fishing to watch a little water dipper, one of those ouzel-like nervous wrecks that seem not to differentiate between air and water, and stroll through both with aplomb. I associate them with some half-serious elfin twilight, a creature that, like the raccoons, suggests a playful element in creation. I began to feel the focus that a river brings as you unravel the current in search of holding water.
The learning of this river corresponded with the waning of runoff. My casting arm was still cold from winter, and I waded like a spavined donkey. I am always careful to go as light as possible early on, knowing that mishaps are likely, and the matter of getting over round, slick rocks, judging the depth and speed of current don’t come back immediately. You feel timid. Later in the year, you make long, downstream pirouettes in deep fast water that you’d never chance when you’re rusty.
Getting rid of stuff is a matter of ceremony. The winter has usually made me yield to dubious gadgets, and I’m at war with these if the main idea of fishing is to be preserved. For example, the net can go; it snags in brush and catches fly line and if it’s properly out of the way, you can’t get at it when you need to. Landing fish without a net adds to the trick and makes the whole business better. Make it one box of flies. I tried to stick to this and ended up buying the king of Wheatlies, a double-sided brute that allows me to cheat on the single-box system. No monofilament clippers. Teeth work great. Trifles like leader sink, flyline cleaner, and geegaws that help you tie knots must go. You may bring the hemostat, because to pinch down barbs and make quick, clean releases of the fabled trout help everything else make sense. Bring a normal rod, with a five- or six-weight line, because in early season the handle you have on hatches is not yet sufficient and you must be prepared to range through maybe eight fly sizes. Weird rod weights reflect armchair fantasies and often produce chagrin on the water.
By now, I had begun to have a look at the river. Cutting deep through hard ground, it was like a scribe line at the base of sine and cosine curves of bank banded at the top with a thin layer of topsoil. The river bottom was entirely rocks, small rounded ones, and on either side were plateaus of similar stones, representing the water levels of thousands of previous years. A few mayflies drifted past in insignificant numbers. I understand that mayflies bear a rather antique genetic code themselves, expressed in size and color, and my hope is that if things pick up, I have the right imitations in my box.
As I face new water, I always ask myself if I ought to fish with a nymph or not. Presumably you don’t walk directly into rising trout. Camus said that the only serious question is whether or not to commit suicide. This is rather like the nymph question. It takes weight, a weighted fly, split shot. Casting becomes a matter of spitting this mess out and being orderly about it. This requires a higher order of streamcraft than any other kind of fishing, because it truly calls upon the angler to see the river in all its dimensions. Gone are the joys of casting, the steady meter and adjustment of loop that compare well to walking or rowing. The joys of casting are gone because this ignoble outfit has ruined the action of your fly rod.
Still, you must show purpose. American shame about leisure has produced the latest no-nonsense stance in sport, the “streamside entomologist” and the “headhunter” being the most appalling instances that come readily to mind. No longer content to contemplate the relationship of life to eternity, the glandular modern sport girds himself against the waste of time. Small towns used to have a mock-notorious character who didn’t feel this way, the mythical individual who hung the GONE FISHIN’ sign in the window of his establishment. We often styled him a barber or someone equally remote from life-and-death matters. Sometimes we let him be a country doctor, and it was very rakish indeed to drift grubs in a farm pond against the possible background of breech birth or peritonitis.
In the shock and delight of new water, my thoughts were entirely ineffective. What is the relationship of the bottom to the surface, to the landscape through which it flows, to the life of the air around it all and the vegetation that alters the wind and interferes with the light? In other words, should one fish that deep outer bank — shaded by a hedge of wild junipers — with a nymph, or would it be better to imitate the few pale morning duns that are drifting around but not yet inspiring any surface feeding? In the latter case, that glassy run below the pool is the spot. For a moment, I avoid the conundrum by turning into another river object, a manlike thing with the unmoving fly rod. Because time has stopped, I really don’t concern myself with an eager companion who has already put three on the beach.