And no trout touches my fly. I abandon the pool and walk down river, hoping to leave the princes of the river behind. Purple asters sprinkle the banks, while that prettiest of all gilias, the red Gilia aggregata, shares the grass with harebell as pale and innocent as an arctic sky and some lavender clover. The path through the flowers has been made by deer. After a short walk, I descend to the ankle-deep water and scout the rapids and pools ahead, where the river falls in an S-shaped bend.
Taking another step, I start and jump back. At my feet is a snake, two feet long and writhing. Its ugly, misshapen head sprouts four green eyes and two pectoral fins.
Leaning forward gingerly, I see that I haven't discovered a new four-eyed monster, but a copper-colored garter snake, jaws agape around the nearly swallowed torso of a mottled sculpin.
The sculpin, which resembles a catfish, has thick rubbery lips, and a wide, flattened head with eyes on top. Its ventral fins stick from the corners of the snake's jaws, and the snake's eyes, distorted backward as it tries to swallow the fish, peer at me with a cold, malignant light. It thinks I'm going to steal its dinner, which it probably caught with some stalking and stealth, for sculpins live under stones and logs, and are fairly spry little fish. Or perhaps the sculpin was snoozing.
In any case, "snake eats sculpin" isn't an uncommon riverside event, yet this one-inch-wide snake attempting to eat a two-inch-wide fish--both bug-eyed, straining, gagging, and gulping--turns this ordinary act of survival into a scene so voracious, gluttonous and disgusting as to be almost pornographic.
I am unable to avert my eyes. I want to see more and follow the snake downstream, where, trying to elude me, it wedges itself between two rocks. I reach down, grasp it behind its head, and in three heaving belches it vomits up the intact sculpin, its dorsal fin somewhat frayed.
The fish falls on a flat rock, takes a spasmodic gasp, and lies still. Feeling that I've interfered with an event in which I had no business, I place the snake back in the river and innocently expect it to return to its prey. But it swims off five cautious feet and watches me. In the meantime, red ants have begun to march from the willows next to the rock. A few walk over the sculpin and, within seconds, communicate by their hurried motions that dinner has arrived. Hordes come from the shore and swarm over the limp fish.
I retire to the bank and watch. The garter, a smart fellow when all is said and done, keeps its beady little eye directly on mine and won't move. After 15 minutes, I decide that I want to fish for cutthroats more than see who wins the sculpin. I walk on, downstream, where the cumulus clouds have built and blackened.
Lightning flickers on the far hillsides, but I reckon that the hits are still far enough away for safety. I drop casts into the pools and catch whitefish in every one. Soon my standing in the river with an eight-foot rod waving in the air while lightning draws closer seems like a truly poor idea, so I walk down river on the bank until a deep and slowly moving pool appears around the next bend. A rock juts into its depths, and still hoping that the lightning will pass to the north, I clamber onto the rock and cast. The wind has picked up, rain smites the water, and a loop of my fly line catches around the butt of my rod. As I untangle it--in this moment totally devoid of skill--a fish strikes. Releasing the line from the butt, I set the hook and feel a vehemence that I haven't felt in any of the strikes I've received during the afternoon. The fish runs off 50 feet of line into the center of the river, broaches, and by its pink sides and flash of orange I know that, at last, I've hooked a cutthroat.
I follow downstream as it angrily takes line from the reel, leaps, cartwheels, and slugs it out for all its worth. Of course, it doesn't know I'm going to release it.
And perhaps I won't even get it to the net. The two-weight rod isn't a winch, and the 5X tippet is closer to sewing thread than fishing line, which is why if you land a big fish on this ultralight tackle you get to wear an imaginary campaign ribbon on your chest for the next few weeks.
Frankly, the campaign ribbons grow with every minute that the fight continues. Each run indicates that this isn't a 12-incher, or even a 15-incher. Once, as I get the trout close and see its olive back glimmer two yards from me, it appears husky and perhaps 20 inches long. It could weigh three pounds. Then it dashes from sight, taking another 40 feet of line.
Wind spits aspen leaves across the current. Thunder rolls down the valley. The surface of the stream is alive with pelting drops. Amidst the storm, for just a second or two, I suddenly imagine keeping the trout, and broiling it with all the pomp it deserves. I could serve it on tray, for some friends to whom I've promised a fish dinner, along with the Chardonnay that lies on the cool bottom shelf of one of the kitchen cabinets. And I suddenly hear my internal voice say, "Please ...let me land this fish."
It takes another few minutes to work the tiring trout to the net where, its broad tail over the rim, it lunges mightily and the fly--that tiny black imitation of Limnephilus--flies freely into the rain. No line breakage, no poor technique, only a quirk of fate--and fishing with a barbless hook--lets the fish escape.
As the rain tapers to a close and the thunder disappears to the east, I continue to cast, but I can't raise a strike, not even from a whitefish. Hooking the fly into the rod butt, I begin walking upstream on the game trail that I descended. When I break into a clearing I spy a tawny shoulder on its farther edge and two tiny fawns leaping in the wet grass. No more than a few days old, they take springing leaps as their little white flags dart like the wings of swifts. The mother whitetail, sensing that a still form has appeared in the clearing, raises her head and watches me while her twins jump about her and even nuzzle her belly for milk. Then with the solemnity of a queen, she walks into the forest.
Angling back to the river, I aim for the spot where the garter snake vomited its prey upon a rock. Recollecting the start with which I first witnessed the four-eyed monster, I also can't help but wonder if a fishing vest full of carefully tied flies, a one-and-a-half ounce graphite rod, and a funeral of dill and Chardonnay can make the end any better for a trout than a sculpin.
The stone where the fish lay lies perfectly bare--no sign of prey, or snake, or ants. Could those Lilliputian hordes have dragged the sculpin off? Did the snake return for its rightful catch? Or, by some miracle, could the sculpin have resuscitated itself and flopped back into the river?
No answer presents itself except the silent pool, rose petals on its surface and shivering in the wind.
This story appears in Ted Kerasote's forthcoming book, Heart of Home: Essays of People and Nature available in the fall from Random House. Copyright (c) 1996 Ted Kerasote. All rights reserved.
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