Just as some churchgoers sing hymns about salvation each and every Sunday morning, never noticing that the purpose of religion is to help us connect with the essential spirit of the universe, so some anglers learn about bivisibles and midges, double hauls and shooting heads, emergers and spent wings without ever getting down to the fact that standing in a river and waving a pole in the air is all about catching trout.
Every once in a while, though, it's refreshing to run into someone who gets to the heart of the matter, who has fish fire in his soul.
Early in the morning the phone rings, and I hear Paul Bruun's bray. A man of superlatives and many appointments, he says quickly, "I'm busy all day, but I got to tell you that I just read the first part of your book and the story about Argentina is stunning. It's the best fishing story ever written."
Thinking of a couple of fishing stories by Hemingway, a novel by Norm Maclean, and another by Herman Melville, I let the comment slide.
"We got to get together," says Paul, a professional fishing guide in Jackson Hole, a columnist for the local paper, and a walking Who's Who of the sport fishing world.
"How's tomorrow?" I suggest.
We make a date to meet in town, and as we're about to sign off, Paul adds, "Oh, I should tell you. I may have a client, so I might not show up."
He doesn't.
One night I come home to Paul's voice on my answering machine. "I'm all screwed up in a city council meeting. Call me tomorrow morning."
I do, about eight. "I was on the Babine and the..." He rattles off a number of rivers whose names would leave any angler envious, then says, "I got a client on the South Fork tomorrow. Why don't you come?" Before I can accept or beg off, he says, "It's a pigpen down there. Honest. Jaws. And besides I got some new peppers for lunch. You'll love 'em."
"I'll go," I throw in.
"I am sure," he says definitively, "that we can find some trout to entertain you."
Now what I like about Paul is that, unlike me, he not only thinks about catching trout, but most of the time he actually does. In fact, when it comes to the celestial ordering of trout anglers, I am in the middle-back ranks where the young, the dumb, the foolish, and glaucomic trout sometimes lose their way, while Paul is up on the gleaming altar of anglerhood. The thought of actually going out with him, that this archangel might tell me some secrets and anoint a fly or two with some of his Tru-Float Goop, leaves me aglow.
Sending a vile-looking stream of Red Man into the blue shore current of the Snake, not far from where we've launched the boat, he stares at the nine-foot leader I pull off my rod and says, "I won't tell you what to do, but I'd cut that back to three feet."
"How can I tie my tippet onto that fat butt?" says I.
"Get rid of the tippet," he says curtly. "Just tie that mother right here." He points to one of the midsections, which must test about 10 pounds.
I feel as if someone has slapped me in the face. The tapered leader is the foundation of fly fishing. It's above Paul Bruun. It's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It's indivisible.
"Look," says Bruun, pursing his mouth under his Stetson and Polaroids. "When a fish chomps this"--he holds up a rainbow streamer big as some of the trout I've caught this summer--"he's not going to concern himself with whether your tippet is 1X or 4X. It's a hog trough out there. And besides, you can fish these big flies better on a short leader."
Bruun wears a pair of neoprene waders and a blue pile jacket. A collapsible, sawband landing net is strapped tightly around his waist and sticks up from the small of his back like a dagger. He's a couple of inches over six feet tall, with a lean square jaw and an ample middle. He wears no fishing vest, but in his boat, spread around his command seat, are boxes of flies and, piled along one of the gunwales like ordnance, cased fly rods and reels. The Mackenzie boat, a dory-shaped river runner, has the slim, no-nonsense readiness of an assault craft, and Bruun, with his bandanna tied around his neck, and the stampede strings of his Stetson loosely coiled on its brim, has the tight, big, powerful look of a general.
"Try that short leader," he advises again.
Remembering something about God sending curve balls to Abraham, I cut it back, make a cast, and discover that indeed the big rainbow streamer sails out cleanly on the short piece of mono.
"Too much sidearm on your cast!" Paul yells to me, managing to add, "That double haul is just a way of throwing longer mistakes."
Shouting on the stream? Izaak Walton must be turning over in his grave.
Sending a sharp glance upriver, Paul hollers, "Come back," to Steve, the "client," and the manager of the food services at the ski area. Steve's wife has given him a gift certificate for a float with Paul. Built like a linebacker, Steve is waist-deep in the Snake and tossing his fly out into the fast-moving water that tails into the pool I'm fishing.
I've made only a half-dozen casts, but we get in the boat and set off. Keeping us in the current, Paul spits chew over the side, and advises, "Throw it in there." I do and let the fly drift, thinking clear-headed thoughts about some calmly finning trout who will shortly spy my streamer floating down the bankside current.
"Rip that mother out of there," commands Paul. "Strip, strip, strip! Too slow. STRIP! Don't let him see it too good. Poke one there. Quick. Other side of the boat. Blast it out of those riffles."
A 14-inch cutthroat slams the streamer as if he thought he were a bluefish. I am shocked at his behavior but don't dwell on it, enjoying his fight. Steve also takes one, but we have little time to relish the first fish of the day. Paul beaches the boat and orders us into battle. "Work that confluence, Steve. Ted, run up along the bar and blast a few casts through that pool."
I make two casts, and Paul, lounging on the gunwale of his boat, yells, "Let's go. Nothing here. One of the best holes in the river is just ahead."
Unconsciously, I trot to the boat--trout fishing as an aerobic sport.
The second half of "The Preacher of Trout Poking" will appear in tomorrow's edition of All Outdoors Today.
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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