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By Mark Hume, with Photography by Nick Didlick Bill Twining was three-quarters of the way to the Queen Charlotte Islands when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser pulled him over, on a desolate stretch of highway west of Prince George. Bill saw the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror and couldn't believe there was a police car all the way out there, in the middle of nowhere and that it was apparently pursuing him. He took his foot off the gas suddenly, put the right turn signal on and checked his air speed. Ooops. He was coasting down from 70 mph, which was over the posted speed limit of 100 kmh. He supposed he might have been going even faster when the police radar picked him up.
He'd driven all the way from southern California to northern British Columbia without a ticket, and now this, which would, he thought, just be more proof to his wife that he acted wildly when he was away by himself. He wondered if all his papers were in order and leaned across the wide seat in his Cadillac to pull his passport, drivers license, and fishing and hunting licenses from the glove compartment. The policeman got out of his cruiser, stopped to look at the rear licence plate and then walked up to the driver’s window. Bill powered the window open and shuffled his papers into order. "Afternoon," he said. "I'm awfully sorry about that. I seem to have been speeding a bit." The policeman removed his sunglasses and leaned forward. He took the passport and handful of licenses offered him, surprised to have so much paper work thrust at him. "Well I'll be damned!" he said, looking at the passport. "You are a four star general!" "US Marine Corp, retired," said Bill. "I saw those four gold stars on your license plate when you went by and I just had to stop you to see if it was true. We don't see many four star generals in these parts you know. Wait'll I tell the boys." A few days later, Bill was at his summer cabin in Sandspit, a tiny logging village on a bar jutting out into the ocean on the east coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands. "This is a pretty good country," he said with a smile, after telling me how the RCMP had guided him to a river that was full of beautiful rainbows. Bill's luck was running strong in his 83rd summer and he was making the most of it. I'd met him at his cabin shortly after 6 am for a trip to the nearby Copper River. We knew it was too early for coho to be in, but thought we might find some searun cutthroat trout, a fish we both loved. I'd met him in Sandspit's only bar the evening before and we'd exchanged fishing stories. He promise to show me a lake where big trout came out from underneath a granite ledge to take Muddler Minnows, if I could find him a searun cutthroat. So off we went to the Copper, riding in his Cadillac, which he said was made for the Charlotte's rough logging roads. It certainly smoothed out the bumps.
Standing together on the shore I pointed with my rod to where the slow current pushed beneath the roots of an overhanging tree. Of course he figured it out right away. His first cast led to a jolt and the rod bent and vibrated as he tried to pull the trout out from its lair. For a moment the fish tried to burrow behind the mass of roots, and Bill struggled gamely against it, stretching the line to near its breaking point. It was a question of who was most stubborn. Then the fish came surging out, ran down to the pool's end, turned back and flashed past our feet going into the pool above. Bill was laughing and saying "Oh, boy! That's a nice fish," long before he'd actually seen it. After a time the trout came to net, a bright, 18-inch searun cutthroat splattered with spots as dark as India ink. We cooed over the fish for a minute and Bill held it by the wrist, stroking its back gently before releasing it. He was reverant with the fish. He took two more from that dogleg, and I got one in the pool above on a dry fly. They were all 16 -18 inches. Cold, hard trout. We fished into early afternoon, and then the river seemed to go dead. "Well, that's it for the Copper today," said Bill, and I thought at 83, he probably wanted to go home for a nap. But as we broke down our rods, he said now he'd live up to his promise - and show me the trout lake. We ate our sandwiches as we drove about 15 miles to the lake. He had a pram on top of the car. I unloaded it and lifted a small outboard from the Cadillac's spacious trunk. We motored to the far end of the lake then turned off the engine. Bill sat amidship and rowed. Next to a small island he moved this way and that, dipping the oars with the care an artist would touch brush to paint, always looking over the side, until he saw the brown ledge of granite below the keel. He feathered the oars until my line sank, then he pulled forward, alternating the speed.
I knew the Muddler, far below us, would be pulsing with life. The first strike came after only a few minutes; a sudden, jarring strike that rattled the rod off the gunwale. The fish was about 16 inches - a cutthroat, but surprisingly different from its sea-run cousins. It was bright silver with a dark blue back; the river fish were mossy green with yellow flanks. Both had the beautiful red slashes under the chin that unmistakably mark a cutthroat. Back and forth along that ledge we went all afternoon, as I caught trout after trout. Bill was disappointed. He wanted to catch me a 5 lber. We got several that pushed 2 lbs., but the big fish couldn't be found. I didn't mind. The fishing was good and I kept thinking, ‘Man, I can still be fishing when I’m 83,’ which was a revelation. As we paddled he talked about war and about America, about presidents he’d met and about all the soldiers that had died in World War II in the South Pacific, where he’d played a commanding role. But mostly we talked about fish he'd caught over the years. He could remember a lot of them perfectly, where he'd found them, how they'd come to his fly, how they'd fought and how they'd flashed away when he released them. There were steelhead in California and Oregon, big rainbows in the B.C. Interior, salmon in Washington. Bill didn't like killing fish much anymore. . .he just loved them too much. A fish or two would be taken, now and again, but the rest would go free. It was touching to hear a veteran Marine talk about the sanctity of life, after what he’d seen in war. That fall Bill was a fixture on the Copper River. He waded the estuary, casting for coho, and his white Cadillac could often been seen parked along the logging road near the trails that led down to the cutthroat pools. That was 15 years ago, and I doubt that he's still alive. The last time I saw him was in my rearview mirror, as I drove off towards the Sandspit airport, to return to the fast lane of life in the city. He was standing next to his car, pulling on his hip waders, with plans to get in as much fishing as he could before he had to go home to California. It is a pretty good country, I thought as Copper Bay came into sight through the trees and a pretty good life if you can still be fishing in your 80’s.
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We fished the estuary without success, then drove deeper into the forest. Stopping at a bridge we found a path through the timber to a series of pools. The river was low, with gravel bars sticking out like the bones of a bleached skeleton. The water lay breathlessly still where it pooled between gentle riffles. It was hot and dusty on the road, but cool in the woods. Bill started fishing below me, while I went up, scoping the water until I found a place where the current dog legged, undercutting the far bank. I drifted my fly into the dark water. There was a sharp tug. I didn't set the hook, but let the fly drift free. There was a flash of silver as the trout pursued it, but I flicked the fly away. I went down to call Bill. It took awhile to walk back up, because he was slow , creeping over fallen logs, and always looking like he might fall. I was afraid that if he did go down something would break. But he never stumbled once. 
