LaurenceHolden
05-24-00, 09:15 PM
Early in the day the Monday before last John McCann and I hiked down the Chattooga River Trail from Burrell’s Ford, the sky cloudless and washed out to a thin blue, the air cool, moist, and fragrant in the forest. Occasionally a gust of wind rustled the pine thickets above us above, predicting a hot day later on. The trail made its way down river by alternately climbing high above the river where the slope was steep then descending to its bank where it was gentle. On each downhill stretch I could feel a little more of the grind of the past week of work wear away. By the time we were two miles down river that was all behind me. The trail slipped down to the river and a sand bar, and there we pulled on our waders and boots, strung our rods, stowed our day packs beneath the laurel, and walked out to meet the river at the edge of the sandbar. In the forest we couldn’t hear the river, but here it was bright with water splashing, dancing, churning, The sun was now clearing the mountain ridge, and up river, to the East, it was incandescent in the places where the white water caught the light - the fast runs and riffles, and along the bottom edges of the pools.
Hemlock, poplar, and oaks towered along each side of the river, in full new green foliage now, and in open places where trees had died or fallen, thickets of laurel were beginning to turn pale pink into bloom. In the air around us, a variety of small caddis, maybe size 18, two lemon yellow stone flies heading for the bushes, and then one large #8 black stone fly lumbering with great effort for altitude and the top of the hemlocks across the river. Each time I saw an insect I thought of which fly in my box might match it. A dog barked up river at the bend and we caught the sour smell of a morning campfire recently doused by campers. You could hear the quick cadenced rattle of their gear as they filed down the trail and then see brief flashes of the bright color of their backpacks among the trees. But there were no other fishermen here, so we thought perhaps we had this stretch to ourselves - a small and welcomed blessing these days on almost any river in these parts.
John waded across to the Georgia side and we began to work our way upstream, working the water together, taking turns casting up and across, except when one of us had a better position from our side letting him go ahead. In a way the river tells you a lot about how it should be fished, and working up a river is a lot like singing one of those song lines of aboriginal Australia - a story told in the land which you read by following its trail, and so it is on a river like this - you read and follow the water - and the story of fishing it unfolds with the way the river flows. So when John and I fish a river together it’s often like playing a Mozart duet- we hand the main theme back and forth to each other across the river, sometimes creating variations which the other repeats or adds his own touch to and hands back - and so we play the river.
There are sections upriver near Ellicott’s Rock that we have fished together for the last 14 years. And there the melody is well remembered, along with many our variations - the sequence of each pool, each run, all the braided strands of currents, all the places, expected and unexpected, where we have seen fish. They are typically short sections that are like partitas or suites and, for us often begin with flashy boulder strewn runs, followed by pools, sometimes deep and ponderous, at other times shallow, intimate and delicate, and then finally conclude with a long riffle that disappears around a bend, or into another pool that that reprises an earlier pool.
But today this section was new to us. We both started out with #12 beaded prince nymphs, first with #14 wet hare’s ear droppers, and then, since the most prevalent fly in the air earlier were caddises, both of us with small caddises on the end. John got his first fish on then, in a riffle where he had let his flies tumble down well below him just as he lifted the rod to begin his retrieve. It was an 8” rainbow and he had taken the caddis. I watched him release the fish and in reply took off my prince nymph, tied on the elk hair caddis to fish dry, and added a small wet hare’s ear as a dropper (just to hedge my bet a little). John knew not to change when a good thing was working, but I wanted to test the parameters of this situation. If they would take a caddis dry, I was already wondering if they might later take a parachute Adams.
At the top end of the long run we came to a pool. John fished his side from below the rocks that held the pool back, but couldn’t reach very far upstream nor wade into the pool, because it was his side that held the current and all the lies. So I fished it from my side - a long reach for a 7 1/2 ft rod across several strands of current, and not being able to hold the rod and line high enough, it meant sometimes very short drifts. The pool looked empty, except for beneath a tree and a spot of shadow, and a trout rising there. Several casts and he took the #16 elk hair caddis - an 8” brown. He was barely caught and when he was at my feet a simple twist of the fly released him while he was still in the water and untouched. John waded across the rapids below to my side and tried his luck casting his brace of flies up and across where the fast water angled across the river and entered this pool at the top. - another rainbow running 9”. I tried and got another 8” rainbow, but on the wet hare’s ear.
We waded across the river together at the upper end of this run to fish the next pool, a deep long one that hugged the South Carolina bank. The water came into it at an angle and a steep slope over a rock shelf, plunging and piling up below in standing waves, then slipped right along a very long rock. John switched to a beaded woolly bugger, flopping it right down at the bottom lip of the rock shelf, letting it suck down deep into the pool, taking his 9’ leader and several feet of fly line with it. Then I tried with a #8 black stone fly nymph, catching it on a rock and losing it. John tried again, but from a little farther down, pitching his woolly bugger up and across, letting it go deep, drift 3/4 of the pool, and when it was well below him and he began his lift, getting a strong pull and a fish on. The fish was deep and wanted to stay there, but John methodically moved him toward the side of the pool and the quieter water, his rod held high and bowed double, both hands on the rod now, working his way down toward the fish, carefully planting each foot and waiting to make sure he had sure footing. When he got to the fish I watched him crouch and slide his hand beneath its body in the shallows and lift it glistening from the stream, its caramel colored belly marking it as a fine brown. John measured it against his rod and yelled 14”, and smiled in that broad way you often see in fishing pictures. It took a hemostat to retrieve his fly, and when he let the brown down into the water it moved out slowly and suddenly disappeared.
The sun was high now, the runs above us flat in the light and sterile looking. We found a place above the pool to cross to the South Carolina side. I scrambled up through the laurel to find the trail and walked down to retrieve the day packs. John scraped a small area on the ground clear of pine needles with his boot and started a small twig fire . I dug out a large tin cup, filled it with river water, and set it on the fire. John found his packet of tea, we laid out our sandwiches on the ground, and I filled my pipe, leaned back against a tree, smoked, and waited for the water to boil. And we said nothing, like old friends often don’t. We both knew, and each knew the other knew, that everything was exactly right with the world - and for the past four hours we had just been in perfect sync with it, or as near as you could expect to come. Hot tea was all that was still needed, and when the water was rolling to a brisk boil, I poured a generous handful of tea into the cup, picked up the handle with a kerchief, and set it beside the fire to steep, stirring it twice with a stick. We ate our sandwiches and passed the hot cup back and forth, the tea dark and rich and flavored with wood smoke. And then we talked a little.
“that was a nice brown you pulled out of the last pool”
“did you see that huge black stone fly earlier making for the hemlocks?”
“that was sweet the way you took that small rainbow on the dry - you made it look so easy”
“well it was, really, once I got the fly in the right channel of the current”
And then John said, “It’s strange how sometimes you can be in sync with what you’re doing, and sometimes you’re not and all thumbs. And you can never figure out how to make that synchronicity happen on purpose”.
With a wry smile I replied,“Yeah, it comes like grace doesn’t it - wholly undeserved to two bastards like us.”
And to that John smiled back in mock grimness.
John’s a writer, and our talk often turns to talk of work, usually about process. He’s always looking for the bones of story beneath what ever happens to be going on and I’m a painter, and always looking for a rhythm and pattern that holds beneath everything. For us everything must come back to our work. It’s the real test of substance for both of us I think- it’s the thing we test life against. And probably why we like each other. So I suspect we both believed, sitting there drinking the last of the tea, that there were secrets to be mined in the morning we’d just had on the river. But we didn’t speak of that. John finished the last of the tea, handed me the cup, and I went to the riverto wash out the cup, swirling the water into it and the clot of soggy tea leaves swirling out into the current, filled it once more with clean water and walked back to douse the fire and stir it with a stick until the ground was sodden. We pulled on our day packs, grabbed our rods and walked to the river edge. And we both looked at each other.
“I think I’m finished fishing for the day.” I said. “You go on, and I’ll sketch.”
“No,” he said, “it was a good morning. I think I’m finished too. Let’s call it a day. It will be better to remember it this way, the way it was. It was perfect wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think it was.”
So we turned from the river, peeled off our waders and boots, packed them away in our day packs, and scrambled up the slope to the trail, walkimg back up river to Burrell’s Ford, the mid afternoon bright light making clear shadows on the trail, the forest dried out now, the leaves on the trail dry and crispy under foot, the air in the trees warm and dry. It was a good morning.
Hemlock, poplar, and oaks towered along each side of the river, in full new green foliage now, and in open places where trees had died or fallen, thickets of laurel were beginning to turn pale pink into bloom. In the air around us, a variety of small caddis, maybe size 18, two lemon yellow stone flies heading for the bushes, and then one large #8 black stone fly lumbering with great effort for altitude and the top of the hemlocks across the river. Each time I saw an insect I thought of which fly in my box might match it. A dog barked up river at the bend and we caught the sour smell of a morning campfire recently doused by campers. You could hear the quick cadenced rattle of their gear as they filed down the trail and then see brief flashes of the bright color of their backpacks among the trees. But there were no other fishermen here, so we thought perhaps we had this stretch to ourselves - a small and welcomed blessing these days on almost any river in these parts.
John waded across to the Georgia side and we began to work our way upstream, working the water together, taking turns casting up and across, except when one of us had a better position from our side letting him go ahead. In a way the river tells you a lot about how it should be fished, and working up a river is a lot like singing one of those song lines of aboriginal Australia - a story told in the land which you read by following its trail, and so it is on a river like this - you read and follow the water - and the story of fishing it unfolds with the way the river flows. So when John and I fish a river together it’s often like playing a Mozart duet- we hand the main theme back and forth to each other across the river, sometimes creating variations which the other repeats or adds his own touch to and hands back - and so we play the river.
There are sections upriver near Ellicott’s Rock that we have fished together for the last 14 years. And there the melody is well remembered, along with many our variations - the sequence of each pool, each run, all the braided strands of currents, all the places, expected and unexpected, where we have seen fish. They are typically short sections that are like partitas or suites and, for us often begin with flashy boulder strewn runs, followed by pools, sometimes deep and ponderous, at other times shallow, intimate and delicate, and then finally conclude with a long riffle that disappears around a bend, or into another pool that that reprises an earlier pool.
But today this section was new to us. We both started out with #12 beaded prince nymphs, first with #14 wet hare’s ear droppers, and then, since the most prevalent fly in the air earlier were caddises, both of us with small caddises on the end. John got his first fish on then, in a riffle where he had let his flies tumble down well below him just as he lifted the rod to begin his retrieve. It was an 8” rainbow and he had taken the caddis. I watched him release the fish and in reply took off my prince nymph, tied on the elk hair caddis to fish dry, and added a small wet hare’s ear as a dropper (just to hedge my bet a little). John knew not to change when a good thing was working, but I wanted to test the parameters of this situation. If they would take a caddis dry, I was already wondering if they might later take a parachute Adams.
At the top end of the long run we came to a pool. John fished his side from below the rocks that held the pool back, but couldn’t reach very far upstream nor wade into the pool, because it was his side that held the current and all the lies. So I fished it from my side - a long reach for a 7 1/2 ft rod across several strands of current, and not being able to hold the rod and line high enough, it meant sometimes very short drifts. The pool looked empty, except for beneath a tree and a spot of shadow, and a trout rising there. Several casts and he took the #16 elk hair caddis - an 8” brown. He was barely caught and when he was at my feet a simple twist of the fly released him while he was still in the water and untouched. John waded across the rapids below to my side and tried his luck casting his brace of flies up and across where the fast water angled across the river and entered this pool at the top. - another rainbow running 9”. I tried and got another 8” rainbow, but on the wet hare’s ear.
We waded across the river together at the upper end of this run to fish the next pool, a deep long one that hugged the South Carolina bank. The water came into it at an angle and a steep slope over a rock shelf, plunging and piling up below in standing waves, then slipped right along a very long rock. John switched to a beaded woolly bugger, flopping it right down at the bottom lip of the rock shelf, letting it suck down deep into the pool, taking his 9’ leader and several feet of fly line with it. Then I tried with a #8 black stone fly nymph, catching it on a rock and losing it. John tried again, but from a little farther down, pitching his woolly bugger up and across, letting it go deep, drift 3/4 of the pool, and when it was well below him and he began his lift, getting a strong pull and a fish on. The fish was deep and wanted to stay there, but John methodically moved him toward the side of the pool and the quieter water, his rod held high and bowed double, both hands on the rod now, working his way down toward the fish, carefully planting each foot and waiting to make sure he had sure footing. When he got to the fish I watched him crouch and slide his hand beneath its body in the shallows and lift it glistening from the stream, its caramel colored belly marking it as a fine brown. John measured it against his rod and yelled 14”, and smiled in that broad way you often see in fishing pictures. It took a hemostat to retrieve his fly, and when he let the brown down into the water it moved out slowly and suddenly disappeared.
The sun was high now, the runs above us flat in the light and sterile looking. We found a place above the pool to cross to the South Carolina side. I scrambled up through the laurel to find the trail and walked down to retrieve the day packs. John scraped a small area on the ground clear of pine needles with his boot and started a small twig fire . I dug out a large tin cup, filled it with river water, and set it on the fire. John found his packet of tea, we laid out our sandwiches on the ground, and I filled my pipe, leaned back against a tree, smoked, and waited for the water to boil. And we said nothing, like old friends often don’t. We both knew, and each knew the other knew, that everything was exactly right with the world - and for the past four hours we had just been in perfect sync with it, or as near as you could expect to come. Hot tea was all that was still needed, and when the water was rolling to a brisk boil, I poured a generous handful of tea into the cup, picked up the handle with a kerchief, and set it beside the fire to steep, stirring it twice with a stick. We ate our sandwiches and passed the hot cup back and forth, the tea dark and rich and flavored with wood smoke. And then we talked a little.
“that was a nice brown you pulled out of the last pool”
“did you see that huge black stone fly earlier making for the hemlocks?”
“that was sweet the way you took that small rainbow on the dry - you made it look so easy”
“well it was, really, once I got the fly in the right channel of the current”
And then John said, “It’s strange how sometimes you can be in sync with what you’re doing, and sometimes you’re not and all thumbs. And you can never figure out how to make that synchronicity happen on purpose”.
With a wry smile I replied,“Yeah, it comes like grace doesn’t it - wholly undeserved to two bastards like us.”
And to that John smiled back in mock grimness.
John’s a writer, and our talk often turns to talk of work, usually about process. He’s always looking for the bones of story beneath what ever happens to be going on and I’m a painter, and always looking for a rhythm and pattern that holds beneath everything. For us everything must come back to our work. It’s the real test of substance for both of us I think- it’s the thing we test life against. And probably why we like each other. So I suspect we both believed, sitting there drinking the last of the tea, that there were secrets to be mined in the morning we’d just had on the river. But we didn’t speak of that. John finished the last of the tea, handed me the cup, and I went to the riverto wash out the cup, swirling the water into it and the clot of soggy tea leaves swirling out into the current, filled it once more with clean water and walked back to douse the fire and stir it with a stick until the ground was sodden. We pulled on our day packs, grabbed our rods and walked to the river edge. And we both looked at each other.
“I think I’m finished fishing for the day.” I said. “You go on, and I’ll sketch.”
“No,” he said, “it was a good morning. I think I’m finished too. Let’s call it a day. It will be better to remember it this way, the way it was. It was perfect wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think it was.”
So we turned from the river, peeled off our waders and boots, packed them away in our day packs, and scrambled up the slope to the trail, walkimg back up river to Burrell’s Ford, the mid afternoon bright light making clear shadows on the trail, the forest dried out now, the leaves on the trail dry and crispy under foot, the air in the trees warm and dry. It was a good morning.