Anadromous Adoration
“He’s going to lose it,” Paul said.
I spun around to face him, and stared. Those were blasphemous words. How could he—or anyone, for that matter—possibly utter such a thing while our comrade was tight to a fish that usually exists only in dreams? To say something like that was more than sabotage—it was nothing short of sacrilege.
“His mind, I mean!” Paul blurted. “He’s going to lose his mind. Not, you know…” He referred here to the fish, of course, but wouldn’t let himself say it out loud.
Alex, meanwhile, was holding his ground. The long Spey rod was bent all the way to the handle, which he held tightly with both hands. Thirty feet away in the aquamarine river, a large winter steelhead rolled and broke the surface, giving all of us our first look. The fish was so bright that it looked like an oval vanity mirror tumbling amidst the emerald currents.
A minute later, and it was all over—in the net. Alex fell to his knees in front of it, staring at the incredible fish. We watched as he drank deep from the cocktail of emotions that had been brewing since his last steelhead three years prior. Three years of casts, schemes, hopes, dreams, early-morning and late-night conversations, studies, almosts, and so many heartbreaks. It all culminated and now concluded.
When you love something, it’s impossible to predict how you will react in the moment that you are directly exposed to that thing and your cup runs over. Some are speechless, some scream, some laugh hysterically, some blather incoherently. Alex’s moment came and quietly, he wept.
***
When it comes to landing an anadromous fish like a steelhead, Atlantic salmon, Chinook salmon, or sea-run trout, it’s the most devoted who get rewarded. There is no better tactic than time spent in pursuit. But even if devotion is the singular, most effective strategy, that only gets us so far. Assuming that we can’t (or don’t) fish every day of the season, we have to be very smart about it, too—using all the available tools in a logical manner.
Is that it, then? Be devoted and well-informed? Certain tackle evolutions are undeniably more effective than others, so why not also arm ourselves with as many of the most sophisticated tools that we can? We’ll certainly make some friends at the local fly shop in the process (and it probably doesn’t hurt), but bear in mind that it’s foolhardy to have faith that the next best thing will directly correlate to more fish being caught.
Still, when you’re standing in the river, the tackle does not cast or fish itself. I once asked a lifetime steelhead angler and guide if he thought that there was a specific fly pattern or style or other piece of tackle—existing or not—that offered an advantage over other anglers. I swear, I wasn’t asking for a silver bullet, but I realize now that’s probably how it came out. His answer, honest, thorough, and detailed, essentially translated to: “Just fish better.”
What about the less-scientific, more mystical elements? My good fishing friend Patrick told me that in preparation for a winter steelhead season, he once took a dozen recently-tied flies and drove them as far upstream in one particular drainage as he could. Then, he soaked the flies in a known spawning tributary. The experiment was inconclusive—which is to say, he didn’t hook any on those flies—but it still might be the best idea ever.
Choice of fly can be critical or irrelevant, depending on the day and, more so, the fish. To keep things simple, I suggest picking what has worked before, what you like the looks of, or what a more experienced angler suggests—conveniently, there’s usually overlap. On the banks of the Miramichi River, an older local salmon angler told me that over the course of a fishing season several decades ago, he’d caught a hundred salmon in the pool I’d just been fishing, and he did it all on two patterns. “Any fly so long as it’s an Undertaker or a Green Machine,” he said. I’d just landed a fish on a Silver Rat, and when my guide informed him of this fact, the local looked at me like I was the luckiest fisherman that he’d ever seen.
For several years in a row, I fished for winter steelhead with my good friend James, and his father, Ed. Ed’s a less experienced angler but loves being on the water. For the first few years, whenever we got to the river, I’d proudly offer him the choice of a half-dozen intricate, freshly-tied patterns that I had confidence in. Unfortunately, none of them ever worked. So, at the start of our trip the following year, when I again offered him a choice of fly to use, Ed pushed back.
“You never give me any flies that work!” he said, chuckling.
Ed was mostly kidding, but I realized that giving him the option to choose what looked or felt best—what, to my mind, would give him more confidence—was having the opposite effect. So, I pulled out an unsophisticated, beat-up leech pattern that I’d caught a fish on several weeks prior.
“This one has been in a steelhead’s mouth,” I offered. “Is that good enough?”
He took it without hesitation.
When describing the potential productivity of an anadromous fishery or relaying appropriate expectations for a day fishing for anadromous species, “encounter” is often the preferred term (as opposed to “catches.”) As in, “one encounter per day.” What I love about this phrase is that it all but suggests you won’t land one, but, with luck, you’ll come to know that one was there. An encounter could be a grab that immediately sticks, a hard-fought battle taking you downstream over boulders and around logs, and an incredible fish in the net. The encounter could also be a pluck of your fly, just enough to pull four inches of line off your reel, and then… nothing. Or an encounter may come after you’ve fished through a gorgeous tailout when, on your hike back up the bank, you see one roll where you were just casting. Or maybe you just stepped into the run, and roll casted your leader and a couple feet of line downstream, straightening it out before making your first cast; you begin to pick it up to cast, and one is on. In all instances, there it was.
***
The steelhead Alex caught that day wasn’t our only encounter. Twenty minutes earlier, I’d landed a nearly-identical fish in the same run. It was the first steelhead that I’d landed in some time as well, and my first after migrating back to the Pacific Northwest a few months prior. I was still having some mixed emotions about the move, but was slowly getting settled. A day on the water with old friends and a first-hand encounter with a wild, winter steelhead was just the house-warming gift I needed. A few days after we returned home from that trip, I got a phone call from Alex.
“Hey buddy,” he said. “Remember when we both caught steelhead?”
“Sure do,” I laughed.
“I loved that.”
***
The preceding is an excerpt from The Best Fly Fishing is Everywhere, a new collection of fly fishing essays, stories, moments, and meditations written by Oregon-based writer and angler Jesse Lance Robbins. The book’s chapters takes place along misty rivers of the Pacific Northwest, in the urban waters of Tokyo, on the windswept flats of Key West, in the trout-laced rivers of New Zealand, and elsewhere. Signed copies are available now in MidCurrent’s bookshop. For more on Jesse, see: www.jesselancerobbins.com. Photos by Nick Kelley. Reprinted with permission. Published by Hatherleigh Press.
