Streamer Junkie

Spruce traps are young Spruce trees bunched together tighter than a full dance floor in a Miami night club on a Saturday night, growing in the shadows of old spruce trees and on top of the fallen and tangled generation before them. The old generations of tree trunks and fallen branches lay in piles and crossed like natures own booby traps, covered with moss and rotting, and are so hard to navigate that even the deer and bears avoid them. The chances of broken ankles and legs are probably greater in a spruce trap than they are in a game of Twister with an MMA fighter. When you can, you go around at all costs.

When you worked hard for a fish all day on the previous day and came up empty and then had reserved yourself to the idea that today would be more of the same, suddenly that fish, that moment, becomes the most genuine high five with a friend that’s ever happened.

I really do remember all the details to my fishing trips. I remember catching walleye on chunks of hot dogs on Fish Creek at my great aunt and uncle’s camp on family weekends. I remember drives to the Judge’s camp, a good friend of my Grandfather. Collecting worms by a stream that passed by a barn. Bull frogs in the weeds along the bank and a goat that couldn’t be trusted once you sat on the end of the dock.

Paul looked at me and said something about it seeming like it would be a shame not to give it a shot, and he was right. Too good to be true or not, I tied on the smallest streamer I had, crouched, and made a bow and arrow cast sending the streamer back in deep at the top of the ledge and let it drift through.

Now I hopped from rock to rock, my felt soles giving me the confidence to take longer leaps than I should’ve been taking, moving upstream on what was listed as a creek on the map. Creek, stream, whatever you considered it, I was bound to make a mistake in a step sooner or later the way I was arrogantly dismissing any idea of caution with each leap. I was in too good of a mood.

As we walked the dirt road in the rain, felt soles beneath wading boots hushed our steps. We remarked about all the worms lying about on the road, joking about all the flies fly fisherman tried to force feed to trout. Someone said it and we all laughed. “Trout like worms. They like worms you know.” I laughed and we carried on comically about it, but I was thinking of something else in my mind.

Now I know I’m a fisherman. I’m very aware that the word of a fisherman is to be taken lightly, or to be taken with a grain of salt, or to be completely disregarded in some instances, say, when hands are held out and the statement “It was this big” is uttered. But...

We hiked an eleven mile round trip. I’ve gone farther, but I’ve also gone only a fraction of that, many times, to catch dozens of brookies. We followed this lazy, colorless and featureless stream for an hour after finding it. It filled us full of doubt. There was no reason for a brook trout, or any fish really to be in such water. There was no place to hide, not only was it gin clear but the forest stood back from it, kept its distance. Small unkempt patches of wild lawn flanked it along most of its length. The trees did nothing to give it cover or shade. A fish would be completely exposed and vulnerable. The King Fisher that swooped and rocketed away never touched the water, as if just passing through.