Down by the River

         Rivers turn my head no matter what. I cannot help myself. When walking or driving or flying in a plane the sight or sound of a river grabs my attention to the point of distraction. In my car I rubberneck while crossing bridges to catch a glimpse of the water. The smooth curve of a road holding the bend of a river endlessly delights me. The murmur of an unseen stream has many times taken me off the trail through thick underbrush to get to the banks of that watery world. I want to peer under the surface, watch the currents flex and move, and walk around in the water. My heart still jumps when I see some wildlife in the water; anything from a water beetle to the splashy flip of a trout. My passion for rivers is not particular. I am drawn to rivers great and small from the mammoth Columbia to a quiet brook or the clear trickle of headwaters jumping down an alpine meadow.

         My passion for rivers began at a succinct moment in time for me. It happened when I was a little boy. My grandparents every summer traveled from Cleveland, Ohio to a little beach cottage in Maine for the end of the summer. On the way back to Ohio we took a detour off the New York Throughway down to where my uncle and aunt lived near Ithaca, New York. The details of their house remain foggy, but I remember two things--the amazing shish kebab they made for us on their hibachi and the little stream that ran through their backyard. Soon after we arrived my uncle took me down to the banks of this small stream and pointed out this little bright fish holding a position in the middle of a quiet pool. He and my aunt had named it and said that they visited it every day. This enchanted me; I had never been by a stream before and seen such a fish—especially one that seemed to really like my aunt and uncle whom I also liked very much. I spent the rest of the evening with the fish and the stream until I was called to bed. The next morning I went with my aunt to say hello to the fish and goodbye as we were continuing our trip back to Cleveland. The visit was short but profound--that little stop in New York magnetized me towards streams for ever after.

         My grandfather loved fishing. I used to go out with him in his boat to fish on Lake Catherine, a lake near his home in Antioch, Ill. His tackle box fascinated me with its trays full of colored spoons, spinners and plugs covered with hooks and painted to look like fish or frogs. He enjoyed casting over trolling or just sitting with bait and bobber. We would sit and talk while he smoked his pipe and cast his plugs. Catching fish became very important to me and I would concentrate very hard on my bobber and bait. One day I caught a sunfish, which the game warden traded several bigger fish for. They told me that it was important for him to know what kinds of fish were in the lake. In hind sight he probably needed evidence that the “wrong kind of fish” had gotten into Lake Catherine. However, my Midwest fishing days were numbered, while I was still quite young my family moved to the Northwest—the land of rain…and …rivers.

         As I got older, I would go fishing often with my grandfather in some of the rivers in western Washington. Being a Mid-western lake fisherman at heart, my grandfather did not adapt well to the fast cold rivers of Washington. We all lost a lot of tackle to the snags and fallen trees that filled the rivers and he would reminisce about real fishing for walleye and bass. I loved going to the rivers and I came to know more about the character of different rivers, their swiftness, depth, clarity, the pools and riffles. Not having an extensive tackle box I too felt the pinch of loosing a lot of hooks trying to catch rainbow trout and steelhead. Until one day my uncle showed me a new technique of fishing—fly fishing! Fly fishing changed my way of looking at rivers forever.

         My uncle showed me how to flycast in a parking lot by their house on the same day that the ash plume of Mount St. Helens erupting blackened our southern sky. Fly fishing often uses a weighted floating line and a long flexible pole to cast the featherweight fly over the water. The line floats to help keep the fly made out of feathers, chenille and lacquered thread to resemble a tasty insect floating where a fish might see it and bite. Presenting the fly so that it floats like a natural insect and not dragged across the surface by the currents offers the fun and the challenge that make fly fishing in streams unique. I came to know more about rivers figuring out where fish liked to rest from the current, what they liked to eat, and what behavior they expected from an insect replica. Nothing was more thrilling than casting a fly made to look like a grasshopper onto the golden, late August banks of a Montana river and giving the fly a tug so that it would plup into the water like the real thing, and if a fish would go for it, even better. I had found my favorite kind of fishing and fell even deeper in love with rivers in the process.

          Fortunately for me when as a high school student, my parents let me take the car and a few of my friends on fishing trips up into the mountains, even over state lines to Idaho and a Montana to fish and camp in some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. These longer excursions brought me to Yellowstone National Park, the Madison River, the remote Pintlers, the Sawtooth Mountains, the Snake River and more. Over this time just fishing was not enough, I wanted to catch bigger fish, which I pursued with great zeal, all along spending more time wading around in rivers of all types and driving the orange family Volvo on roads much better suited for Jeeps and Internationals. My pursuit of bigger fish made me chase the whiley steelhead and the salmon along the misty coast of Washington and the deep river valleys of the Cascade Mountains.

         Slowly, however, I began to change. One winter afternoon, while fishing for steelhead all alone as the snow slowly fell and blanketed the rocks and trees along the Stillaguamish River, I realized that I had not had a bite all afternoon and that this did not bother me in the least. I simply liked moving around in inky black water, feeling the constant pressure of the stream and looking around at the occasional raven or ghostly shape of an exhausted salmon as it cruised by. I remember once reading that a fisherman goes through stages of development from just wanting to catch a fish to wanting to catch as many fish as possible to only wanting to catch big fish to finally just enjoying fishing regardless of catching anything. I sort of went through this transition, but really realized that had not really fallen in love with fishing, but rather had developed a deep connection with rivers.