Yesterday we presented the first half of Ted Kerasote's article about guide Paul Bruun and his float trips along the Snake River. Here is the rest of the story.
Paul lets the boat float down a small run where the river narrows, then rows hard, ferrying us back across a widening pool. To the east the mountains on the Idaho-Wyoming border are white with snow. The wheat fields of the Swan Valley shed golden light to the sky, and the cottonwoods along the river are bare and yellow. Three Vs of geese fly overhead, honking.
Quietly, Paul says, "Why don't you wade out there and cast."
The pool is more of a deepening of the big, rangy Snake than an actual pool--a place where the nervous current gets room to stretch left and right but still race.
The lure Paul has given me looks too gaudy to my conservative eye, so I put on a solid black Woolly Bugger long as my index finger. When wet it looks like a slimy leech. The wind freshens and blows straight down the river. Both Steve and I are right-handed and the wind, blowing from that side, causes our casts to catch the backs of our vests. Paul rests on the shore--a smooth beach of round dry stones--looking nonchalant.
Steve takes a whitefish, Prosopium williamsoni , or as Paul sarcastically calls him, "the prince of the river." Nonetheless, this fish with the sucker-shaped mouth is a scrappy fighter and a survivor. Long after the cutthroat and grayling have been wiped out of portions of this, their native range, by angling pressure and the introduction of foreign species, the "prince" lives on. I too catch a whitey, then take a few more steps toward the middle of the river and find myself close to belly button deep. I send a long cast over the tail of the flume, and when the line straightens I strip only once before a great sagging weight comes on to the rod. I plant the hook hard and an orange fish wallows on the surface and runs across the river. Several minutes go by before I can get him close to the shore, where I net him.
Paul bends over the net and says gently, "The small-spotted Snake River cutthroat trout." The fish is orange and pink and luminescent, all mixed with a tint of green, as if every color that has been September has seeped into the river and been captured by this October trout. The fish has also given me a new definition of trout proportions in the Snake.
Do you know those platters used for serving food at truck stops, those oblong ones on which a short-order cook can pile a rib eye and mashed potatoes and still have room for a couple of muffins? Well, this trout's head and tail would have drooped off the ends of such a number. He is "platter size," and thick.
I release him, stand up, and Paul says, "This hole's got some hogs." He looks at me from under his Stetson and adds, "That was a good fish. Robust."
Steve takes a cutt of about 16 inches. I take a similar-sized brown. We play in the hole for another hour and move on. Steve has been fishing nymphs, and Paul, using his I-don't-want-to-tell-you-what-to-do-but line, has been trying to get him to change to a leech pattern, which seems to be taking more fish. As we approach a confluence in the river where three branches join, Paul, hauling on the oars to get us in position, says, "I don't want to tell you..." This time Steve changes flies.
As we pass an undercut bank where the fast-flowing water swirls into a hole, Paul once again commands, "Drop a poke in there. Shit, don't mend! You don't need that here. Leave it!"
Steve's rod jerks down. He jerks back and a comfortable bow remains. A dark shape thrashes the surface."I foul-hooked a whitefish," Steve says, disappointed.
"If you did," says Paul, "you foul-hooked him in the mouth."
The fish takes line downstream. Paul maneuvers the boat to shore and steps out with the net. The trout--we can clearly see its reddish sides--lurches back and forth from the deep water to the shallows, unable to decide where to go. He wears himself out quickly. Steve pumps him closer; Paul nets him on the second try. When Steve holds the brown up for a photo, it's almost as long as Steve is wide--a big male.
Downstream, on a bar designed by MGM (dark cliffs, snow-covered mountains, puffy clouds giving proportion to the sky), we stop for lunch. From two coolers Paul takes out roast beef sandwiches, potato salad, salami and cheese, half a dozen jars of peppers and pickles, and beer and soft drinks. "Try the Maui sweet onions," he recommends. "Like 'em hot? Try these Cajun ones." After two I feel as if someone has flicked a Bic in my mouth. But it jazzes me up. I'm ready to run up and down the bank, tossing "pokes" and stripping "blasts" like mad. Maybe this is how Bruun gets his go.
After some stories about the 10- to 14-pounders he caught in Argentina last winter (it's almost as if he's giving us a coach's half-time pep talk), we head back to the river. "Left, right, rip, strip, troll." He directs our casts while pulling on the oars and spitting Red Man. For a while we don't score and Paul, scanning the river, says, "What's happened. Eyes. I want to see little faces and eyes. Where are they?"
Nothing does happen for quite a few minutes. We enter a long quiet stretch bordered by cottonwoods. The light has grown warm on the round farm hills, and Paul, staring across the Swan Valley, suddenly blurts out, "I should never teach women how to fish. They go and get married then send me their husbands so I can teach them how to cast. "'Here Paul,' they tell me. 'I can do nothing with him.'"
We float, we cast. Suddenly every other throw gets a strike. We work two "pigpens" and a "substructure" and land an ever increasing tally of 14- to 16-inch trout.
As we pass an eddy line, Paul yanks on the oars and nods. "There, Ted. Poke one in there."
I look at him. It hardly seems worth a cast. Just a darkening of the river's flow.
"Poke it in there." He motions again with his head.
"Christ! Don't false cast. You are such a wading fisherman. Just throw it."
I throw it.
"Did you see that fish flash?"
"No."
"He did. Poke him again."
Without hesitating, I poke the big gob of Woolly Bugger into the hole, rip it back, and SLAM! An explosion of cutthroat destroys the fly.
The reel handle whirls against my palm, and I hear Paul say, "Nothing like the sound of a $14.95 reel."
He coasts the boat to shore, and I walk along the beach, retrieving line and feeling the trout's strength in my upraised arm. I bring him to the net five times before he finally surrenders. Paul lifts him with a dramatic swoop, and I can hardly believe my eyes. He's more brightly colored than my other large cutt--deeper reds and yellows--and bigger. His shoulders are as thick as my palm.
Quietly, as if in the presence of river spirit itself, Paul murmurs, "Salmo clarki ."
I let Salmo go and listen to the October Snake for one moment before Paul says, "Hey, not bad. An okay fish. But just below here there's an awesome pool. Awesome. There are some hogs in there that'll rip you off your feet."
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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