A River Never Sleeps

Fishing for Dreams – Notes from the Water’s Edge. By D.C. Reid. TouchWood Editions. www.touchwoodeditions.com

$16.95 CDN or $14.95 US in paperback.

Dennis Reid is a poet and a fly fisherman. He is other things too of course, novelist, father, dreamer, magazine writer and ocean salmon fisherman among them. I included explorer in that list at first then took it out, not because it doesn’t fit but because when you use that word people tend to think of people like Alexander Mackenzie or Scott of Antarctica. But Mr. Reid is an explorer of a very different sort. The terrain he explores involves searching for new boundaries in his writing and in his fishing. And in Fishing for Dreams, his recently published collection of short stories, you will see just how far out on the map he has gone.

Don’t let the title of this book put you off. Fishing for Dreams to me sounds like one of those sentimental collections of anecdotes by an old gentleman who is writing his first and only book, looking back on a lifetime of fishing. This book is not that. It’s a collection of stories, some of which appear to have grown out of magazine articles, in which he explores some of British Columbia’s most legendary waters. But when you go with D.C. Reid on these outings, they seem like wholly new places, places that emerge and disappear in the mist, that glow with light and are drenched with rain. You can sense the vibrations of the float planes he flies in, smell the gas fumes from the outboard motors that idle on the deep Pacific swells, and feel the chill of the ocean as he plunges shoulder deep to grab a big Chinook.

It contains some of the most evocative writing you’ll ever read about fishing and much of it has the dream-like quality of his poetry. Sometimes he drifts too far unchecked, and you find yourself wishing he would just cut the bait and go fishing. Not every floatplane trip has to be a metaphor for life. Sometimes it’s just a plane, banging through the weather and landing on the water. In fact, that’s what it is most the time.

But you don’t get great writing without taking risks, and when you take risks there are bound to be stumbles. D.C. Reid wades deep in Fishing for Dreams, and although there are some pages you will find yourself skipping over, there are others that you will want to read over, just to savor the moment. And always you will feel that he’s put you there, in the scene, as he searches for big fish, and for himself, across B.C.’s dramatic landscape.

“On the edge,” he writes of a trip to the Nass River country. “As far north as you can go. Riding the border. All phrases that describe the glacier palace of the Nisga’a First Nation – Wilp Syoon. The lodge lies in the lee between two islands, afternoon sun hot on the deck. Below us, the sweet fluidity that is Spey casting in the hands of a skilled practitioner. Mark’s orange line extends through the sun.”

Or how about this description about fishing at night in a river full of spawning salmon:

“Casting my gaze up and down after night’s darkest hour, I do not see any chum, coho or Chinook salmon. My eyes come to rest on the riffle beneath my feet and after a few moments it becomes clear that the small sticks in the tumbling water are actually dorsal fins. Now the adrenaline that keeps me awake each night before my date with a fishing rod moves my left arm to cast the fly. And in stepping forward in calf-deep water, I almost fall into the dark over a Chinook as long and thick as a log.

“In the small glow arriving, I toe the wavering fish, but it does not react. On a whim, I tuck my rod under my arm and reach down. My hands close around the wrist of its tail and it serpentines into the dark.”

Most of us lucky enough to fish on Canada’s West Coast will know what he’s talking about there, will know the feeling of bumping into a big Chinook resting in the shallows, of reaching to touch it in the darkness. But few fishing writers would ever think to describe that moment, and few still would capture it as beautifully as D.C. Reid does.

There will be places in this book where you will stop and wonder what he’s on about. But then fly fishing wouldn’t be any fun if you knew exactly what you were going to get with every cast. Reading this book is interesting because you are never sure exactly where a writer is going to take you. Get ready for some new territory, because D.C. Reid is out there exploring, and it’s a journey that’s definitely worth taking.

- Reviewed by Mark Hume

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