Editor’s note: Walt Amses is a special educator who lives in North Calais.
Note: In the spirit of today being the opening day of Vermont’s fishing season and — based on the one of the weirdest winters in memory – probably the best conditions in several decades …
* * *
The big trout tailed in the gentle current, just below the surface, in the shade of an undercut bank, waiting for the next floundering insect to drift past during a midmorning hatch in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. I’m fly-fishing just outside Norman Maclean’s hometown of Missoula and a river indeed runs through it; several in fact.
* * *
Largely I’m here as a result of Vermont’s rivers being blown out for so long last spring that I wondered if it might be the year there was no fishing to be had. When I finally booked my flight I hadn’t been out on the water in well over a month, an unprecedented beginning to the trout season.
Little did I know at the time that our May storms would be inconsequential compared to the devastation of Tropical Storm Irene a short time after my return in August. Although streams, trout populations and even the state fish hatchery in Roxbury had been all but destroyed, the rightful focus quickly became an amazing and heartening effort to get Vermonters back on their feet.
I realize — on the scale of importance — being unable to fish pales in comparison to the havoc many Vermonters endured in the aftermath of both Memorial Day weekend and Irene, but for a few of us, angling is far more than a simple hobby. Although after years of practice, I’m not a particularly good fly fisherman, it is my single most diverting activity in a world that increasingly needs a good deal of diversion.
* * *
I false cast over a brown trout that most anglers will only see in magazines, realizing there’s a gentle buzz running through my body and I feel distinctly like I’m observing someone else doing this from the bank. The next three seconds are as permanently etched on my memory as calligraphy on granite. I can see it every time I close my eyes.
My fly settles gently on the surface and the big guy takes it immediately, in an almost delicate slurp that hardly breaks the surface until I lift my rod tip and set the hook — there’s initially a very perceptible moment where everything seems to stop for a nano second — right before all the meditative aspects of fly fishing come to a simultaneous and screeching halt. Bronze belly glistening in the Big Sky sunshine, the fish explodes out of the water in a gill rattling tailwalk that covers half the river.
His downstream run is like the express passing your station by, his escape punctuated by an eye-level, acrobatic leap that emphatically screams who he is while seriously questioning any pretension that we belong in the same river. He gets incredible air. He registers serious hang time. And finally hits the water headed for Wyoming, leaving a bubble trail just below the surface He rips off 30 feet of line and is suddenly, stunningly … gone … leaving me breathlessly wondering if the entire episode was a jet-lag hallucination.
I stand limply in the current, as the world around me begins to reboot. The birdsong comes back first, joined by the steady sound of water swiftly flowing over the mats of aquatic grasses that make a spring creek so uniquely spectacular; the breeze gently moving the aspen leaves along the bank, carrying the distinct smell of high plains sage and honeysuckle; and finally my son’s hand on my shoulder, wordlessly offering condolences and encouragement: there will be more fish in more places. This is Montana after all, and we’ve only been fishing for 15 minutes.
* * *
There is something about the rhythmic motion, coupled with the level of focus it requires … that places fly-fishing somewhere between an art and a science, not necessarily a spectator sport but — when practiced with expertise (not me) – quite beautiful to watch. Having the good fortune to either live in a beautiful place or have the wherewithal to get to one – since, generally speaking, that’s where the trout are — is a fringe benefit of a pastime that hardly needs one.
The Vermont fishing season is short in the best of times, all too frequently beginning with snow on the ground and ending six weeks after the first frost beats the growing season into submission. In between, too little rain (hard to imagine last year) excessive heat, and any number of issues can short-circuit our connection with the trout population.
Hopefully, this Vermont summer will be dramatically different than last, which began grudgingly and ended catastrophically. And as good as the conditions seem to be, nature in northern New England is hardly predictable. Five days before Irene, we felt the rumbling of a rare East Coast earthquake and joked about it over dinner.
What frequently keeps us exploring new rivers is the mystery they offer around the next bend; their potential to inspire with revelations of shimmering beauty and – in Vermont particularly – an opportunity to lay out your line in complete solitude. But these same waters – even familiar hometown creeks — as last summer brutally illustrated, are sleeping giants that can present life-altering challenge as well as the peace and comfort some of us rely on so heavily.
