A River Never Sleeps

The air is dense and heavy and wanting the coolness of the evening breeze, and the insects are understandably too hesitant to make their move in its stifling haze. Their conspicuous absence could be discouraging to those who have given up too soon before. Not very long from now, as dusk approaches, mayflies, stoneflies and small sedges will suddenly become quite plentiful, and will tempt big brown trout to rise to the surface for them. But in June, July and August the river runs low—and the fish are difficult.

On one such summer evening, I walked at the edge of a gravel bar, sat on a white, twisted piece of driftwood, and waited. The river came rushing down from a long and turbid run of shallow rapids, curved sharply away from its straight course and funneled its water violently towards the far bank, exposing the gravel bar I lay on and crushing down into the deep, fast pool in front of me—the lair of a very large brown trout. About thirty yards downstream, the tailout of the pool filled the streambed from bank to bank again, with shallow broken water along the near bank, and fast, deep, and dark water, running under an awning of overhanging branches, all along the far side. From the tailout down, for fifty yards or so, one could comfortably wade knee-deep half way across the river, and with a short length of line and little concern for snagging on the backcast, could nicely squeeze a dry fly under these troublesome tree branches.

Below that, the river ran evenly and smoothly, waist-deep throughout, until it finally disappeared around a gradual turn of rapids. Here, with the support of a wadding stick, one could stay in the middle of the river and cover rising fish on either side.

On a good evening, four or five brown trout, from twelve to twenty inches, and perhaps sometimes even larger, would stir with caution through this stretch of water, and one by one set up their feeding posts at a polite distance from one another. On my best evening, I convinced three of these wary trout to take my flies for food, and three more I clumsily managed to put down. My approach had to be slow and calculating. It would be nearly impossible to move these fish before they decided to rise on their own, and if I were to rush out there and search for an impatient trout with wet or dry fly, I would certainly earn myself an empty pool and a fishless night.

Instead, until the trout showed themselves, I sat quietly on my piece of driftwood and merged with the stillness all around me. But things were soon to change.

First, the quiet was disrupted by a chirpy commotion from above. A cloud of spinners from an earlier mayfly hatch poured out into the clear air from the forest canopy and before long had a small group of red-breasted sapsuckers in a frenzy. The birds flew out of the trees, two and three of them at once, their heads accented a brilliant red by the glow of the receding sun, and hovered briefly high above the river, snatching as many insects as they could and then hurriedly gliding back into the forest.

Things were also changing below the surface of the water—less abruptly and perceptibly perhaps, but visibly all the same. All along the shallows, the caddisfly larvae were leisurely dragging their sandy homes on top of the algae-laden rocks en route to their evening grazing. Later on, every so often throughout the night, hundreds of them will mysteriously let go of their tenacious grip and tumble helplessly downstream along the bottom. The trout that intercept them eat them whole—this ought to give one ideas.

Over the caddisfly larvae, the little coho fry were also getting agitated, anxiously vying for position with tireless scuffles and playfully flicking water with their restless, preparatory jumps. A few small sedges were fluttering and bouncing on the water, and the spinners had now descended not far away from where I sat. In the distance, I could make out the frozen silhouette of a great blue heron, and across from me, a kingfisher was tensely poised for a dive.

The stage was set, and finally the nightly play begun—timely, abrupt and synchronized, like a harmonious awakening.

The sun descended to a point on the horizon from which it threw a blanket of golden, blinding light all along the bank behind me. I sat just within the shadow of the tall trees jutting up from across the river, and as though from the dark seats of an open theater, I could observe the play unfold on an illuminated stage.

Millions of minuscule biting midges, or no-see-ums, rapidly gathered out of nowhere and formed a nebulous, unbroken swarm all along the sunlit portion of the river. Their sudden appearance meant not only a feeding opportunity for creatures of some interest to me, but also a cruel and untimely death for many others. The females of these diptera are insidious assassins that devour the males of their own species during mating, and hunt down relentlessly other insects many times their size. They grab onto the abdomens of their defenseless victims and with incisive mouth parts they pierce the cuticle and make short work of blood and body fluids.

For the coho fry, the no-see-ums bring about different kinds of trouble. They become such a powerful temptation that the little fish soon grow dangerously bold and careless in the excitement of a feeding frenzy. During the day, the coho fry keep close to the bottom, almost invisible against the confusing backdrop of rocks, weeds and driftwood. They often dart towards the surface to intercept small floating objects—more often than not inedible and useless flotsam—and then quickly slide back down to the bottom before their posts are claimed by larger fry, or, even worse, before they themselves get eaten. But now the food is real and plentiful and well within their reach, and if they want to get to it, they must hover right under the surface of the water, away from any cover, and must focus and aim on their target, completely oblivious to impending danger. I could see them, up and down the river, shooting their bodies upwards like tiny silver arrows, at times several of them glimmering in the air at once. But most of their jumps will end up unrewarded, and one too many jumps may easily cost a life. I had already watched the great blue heron strike about a half dozen times, each time coming up with a silver creature wriggling in his beak. And the kingfisher had a few good dives of his own, but he was now gone, in the aftermath of a noisy territorial altercation.

As I was watching the bobbing of a dipper downstream, the big trout suddenly made his appearance. He exploded on a gathering of coho fry with the raw brutality afforded by his enormous size and appetite. To be sure, he startled me, but he had stopped impressing me since the night before, when he sent me home unhinged, well past midnight, mocking me all night long with his shameless rises and showy impudence. But then again, I had made the mistake to let him know I was there. Tonight, I had returned with the most clever fraud I could have put together.

I wasn’t about to take any chances. I moved quietly further away onto the gravel bar and slowly put the fly rod together. I passed the line through the guides, and tied on a Silver Brown. Roderick Haig-Brown’s famous streamer, a coho fry imitation, had to deceive this trout after a single decisive cast—a single pass over the nose of this brute, and, one way or another, the fishing would be over.

I moved above the fast water at the head of the pool and waited. So did the brown trout. He didn’t show himself for at least another hour. It was a test of patience and frail nerves. When eventually he rose again, at the tail corner of the pool, he delicately sipped an insect from the surface like a shy little juvenile. I barely saw the glimmer of the rise in the advancing darkness, but I knew his ways and marked him with my fly. The Silver Brown disappeared in the rapids and rolled stealthily into the pool with plenty of line behind it.

I mended and held the line for the drift. I felt it sweeping gently across and down the pool.