Predators and Prey
Early-season flies for trout. Photo by Bob Romano
The file remains open, my ankles crossed on my desk, while I stare out the window, watching a cumulus cloud morph into a leaping trout. Closing the file, I rise to my feet and grab the car keys from the credenza. I call to Catherine and tell her to cancel my last appointment. Before she can protest, I’m walking down the hall and out the door of my law office.
Last weekend, I fished Bonnie Brook in a cold drizzle while the fish sulked, unable to shake off their winter doldrums. Throughout this week, the temperature has risen steadily. After months of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, I can think of nothing sweeter than casting a fly to a rising trout on a warm afternoon during this last week of April, except perhaps, playing hooky from work to do so.
A Standoff
Forty minutes later, I turn down a country lane where a murder of crows has encircled a red-tailed hawk in a field. Black heads bob up and down. As I lower the window, the sound of their caws reverberates through the late-afternoon stillness. Standing in the center, the seemingly stoic hawk reminds me of a samurai swordsman in a Kurosawa movie. As I slow the car, this perfect moment dissipates, as the crows shift their attention toward my direction, the hawk taking the opportunity to fly off.
An eastern red-tailed hawk. Photo by Andrew Cannizzaro (CC BY 2.0)
I’ve always thought that hawks, like trout, are the cowboys of the natural world. Growing up in the northeast during the nineteen fifties, my idea of cowboys was Alan Ladd in Shane, John Wayne in The Searchers, Gary Cooper in High Noon —western samurais, loners distrusted by the mainstream, their independence admired, but also feared by a society which values the status quo over all else. As a kid, I wanted to be a hawk.
Bursts of Spring
Leaving the crows behind, I continue toward the stream and, ten minutes later, pull beside a large maple tree. Goldfinches chatter from its upper branches as I toss my tie in the back seat and change out of my office attire into a canvas shirt and pair of jeans. The tips of the maple’s outstretched limbs are bursting with new growth. Around its trunk, juncos and sparrows scratch among last season’s brittle leaves. After snapping my hippers to the loops of the jeans, I cross through an abandoned orchard, startling three deer. The color of their mottled fur matches that of the withered strands of last year’s tall grass. The doe and two yearlings raise their white tails in alarm and bolt toward the edge of the field.
The sound of the current rises up from a hemlock forest as I step onto a narrow trail that leads from the field through the second-growth conifers. The stream is high, as it often is this time of year, but running clear. Stoneflies hover above its surface looking very much like a fleet of miniature Black Hawk helicopters. Some flutter toward the bushes along the brook’s edge while others skitter along the surface as they deposit their eggs. Now and then, a phoebe sweeps down from an overhanging branch to catch one of the flying insects, while from a tangled mass of barberries a white-throated sparrow sings out a familiar song—”Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.”
Boulders along the sides of the brooklet are covered with blotches of pink, yellow, and blue lichen surrounding mounds of moss in varying shades of green. The mottled leaves of skunk cabbage are wrapped tight as their tips break through the soil. Around a bend, coltsfoot sweeps down onto a gravel bar, its yellow flowers providing a surprise of unexpected color.
Triggered Response
I cast my fly into sparkling riffles, but the brook trout care little for an angler’s expectations, and they show no interest in my bits of fur and feather. Disappointed, I switch to a pattern with a few strands of white deer hair tied backward over a body of black sparkle yarn. The trout ignore this as well until I work the fly across the current. Only then do I feel the pull of my first fish.
After taking a moment to gaze down at the six inches of wonder in my dampened palm, I cast again. Flipping the rod tip, I twitch the line, try a slow retrieve, and then a fast one. It’s this last maneuver that triggers the reaction of a second fish, a wild brown trout, a bit larger than the first.
On the way home, I pass by the field where earlier, the crows had encircled the hawk. To my surprise I find the large bird, (I assume it’s the same hawk) furiously swinging its beak from side to side. A blur of dun-colored feathers swirl around the raptor’s head. When I stop the car, a cold yellow eye glares in my direction. Unfurling its broad wings, the avian ronin sweeps upward, rufous tail-feathers flashing, a tiny titmouse hanging limply from its talons.
Bob Romano’s latest book, River Flowers, is a collection of short stories about wild fish, the places they’re found, and the men and women who seek them out. For more information about his writing, visit his website, Forgotten Trout. This article first appeared in The Drake.
