Mud in Your Eye

 

I disapprove of drinking. But not saloons, oddly enough. Coming off the water on a 90-degree day there’s nothing like a cold one. Even if it’s just Coca-Cola. That first gulp, poured into an ice-filled pint glass, has the same effect as a shot of whiskey. You shiver all over.

Every small town has a bar. Sometimes two. In Wisconsin’s Plum City you find one on each side of the creek. Fly fishing to the bridge brings two choices. Turn left or turn right. Or keep fishing. But let’s be honest. It’s left or right.

Small town bars don’t really compete with each other, unless it’s who has the best onion rings. They know leaving one door the average citizen is just as likely to walk through another.

There are rules in back-country bars. The first one to remember is you are not in New York City. Wait your turn. Don’t eyeball the waitress or over-tip the bartender. And don’t make a lot of demands. The menu is limited, the standard being a half-pound hamburger with a slab of cheddar. Don’t tell them how to cook it, either. They know what they’re doing.

If you’re going to drink avoid ordering a vodka Gibson, shaken, in a martini glass. The last guy who tried that was a tax assessor from Madison, a dude in designer jeans and sport coat, stopping by after hassling some farmer over a fallow land credit. They told him they were out of vodka. When he asked for gin they were out of gin. He stomped out. Those guys never learn.

He should have ordered tap beer. You can’t beat a pint of Old Style, brewed just down the road in La Crosse. The price? Two bucks. A buck during Happy Hour. Go ahead and tip 100 percent. A 100 percent tip on a dollar beer is not over-tipping.

Speaking of New York City, last summer I took a friend from Brooklyn, a video tech who worked on commercials, fly fishing. It was Brant’s first time in Wisconsin’s dingle and dell, creek and bluff country. He had never held a fly rod. I set him up with waders and boots, a vest and olive bandana. Like a lot of fly anglers I have two of everything. Actually I have four or five of everything. Don’t tell my wife.

We practiced behind the house with my easy-casting, seven foot fiberglass four-weight. After three tries Brant threw a pretty good twenty-footer. Enough practice. We jumped in the truck and headed for Plum Creek.

At the top of Three Mile Bluff the sky opens up. You feel like you can see clear to Chicago. Bluffs and pastures stretch to the horizon, speckled with the black dots of grazing cows.

“My God,” Brant said. “You live here?”

“Yep.”

We dropped into Plum Valley under cliffs of limestone. Springwater trickled from rock walls. Glens of balsam fir and aspen appeared, products of a chilled microclimate more resembling the far north. High above bald eagles and turkey vultures cruised on thermals. I parked at the gravel-covered bridge off County Road M and grabbed rods.

We wouldn’t have to walk far. The creek cascades through a series of chutes and pools, and I knew where a pod of rainbows lived, right next to the bridge. I tied both our tippets with big fluffy Royal Wulffs. Rainbows are a good introductory fish. Like some people, they will fall for anything.

We stepped into the creek. I let Brant wade ahead, casting under the bridge and letting the fly float back through upwelling pools. I’ll never forget his first fish, the squeal he let out at the splash of trout to fly.

“I got one I got one!” he yelled, tripping on rocks. “Whaddo I do?”

“Bring him in,” I called.

Brant hauled in line. The rainbow jumped. Then jumped again, head shaking, the fly showing in his mouth. The rod pulsed slower and slower as the fish tired. I waded ahead and netted him, a plump sixteen-incher. Brant held the fish close to his face and I took a picture of trout and man, both with eyes agoggle.

We released the rainbow and he shot back to his brothers. Brant couldn’t wait for the next fish, but the next ten casts brought nothing. “Where are they?” he asked.

“Don’t worry. They’re in here.”

“Why aren’t they biting?”

“They’re thinking about it.”

Five minutes later Brant had another take. This was a bigger fish, and it broke him off, bulling deep and wrapping him around a submerged log. “What could I do?” he asked, despairing. I knotted another fly for him.

“Keep fishing,” I said. I didn’t tell him hooking a big trout in a branch-tangled pool is always going to be tough.

We got lucky. The bite “turned on”. Every third cast brought a strike. In no time Brant had caught and released six or seven more.

I carried my rod, but let him do the fishing. A great pleasure in fly angling is watching others catch trout. The same cannot be said for other kinds of fishing. Say, trolling for walleyes. When your buddy catches all the fish you want to break his rod in half.

Laughing and sweating, Brant released another fish. Time for a break. We climbed out and walked up to the roadhouse on the right. Leaning our rods against a split rail fence we walked in. After all that sun the darkness was blinding.

We sat at a long mahogany-colored bar. A pool table clicked as billiard balls fell into pockets. Someone played a little Merle on the jukebox, that slow and lonesome tune about quitting the city and landing in Montana.

The waitress, carrying a tray of empties, bumped against Brant. “Excuse me, honey,” she said, squeezing his arm. Brant’s a single guy. I could see his mind working. “Is she flirting?” he asked.

“Nah. That’s how they are around here.”

“All of them?”

“Pretty much.”

We sipped and relaxed. The day came to a sort of pause. Dust floated in tiny rays as sunlight poked through the door. A barstool scraped on worn maple. Then silence. Midway through his second beer Brant exhaled, long and slow.

“I have never,” he said. “Been happier in my life.”

I knew what happened. The trout streams and little towns had got to him. The church steeples, the diners and hardware stores, the pastures, the rolled hay bales, the ancient barns, the gravel roads leading nowhere except to more bluffs and deep valleys, to creeks with their gin-clear water.

My friend had been captured. It would wear off.

It has to. Otherwise, you buy an old truck, fool your wife into moving into a peeling Victorian, take up life in a small town in the heart of trout country, and spend all your time fly fishing.

I mean, who would do that?