It’s late August, about noon on a bright, sunny day. I’m gathering my fly rod, waders, vest, my elegant wading staff – a spruce stick with a hunk of clothesline tied to it – and packing them into the back of the car for an afternoon and evening’s fishing with my niece’s husband, Jon.
The prospect gladdens the heart for many reasons. For one, I like Jon. Because Kathy is not my daughter, I suppose I’m not entitled to the paternal pleasure a father must feel at seeing his daughter marry a smart, able, good-hearted, big-hearted man. But Kathy’s choice of a husband has allowed me the perhaps lesser but nonetheless real pleasure of avuncular approval. Jon is a chemist who cleans up some of the toxic messes our industries have visited upon the world. He is also a skilled handyman who has renovated the family’s New Jersey home from top to bottom. His values are impeccable: when Kathy and Jon and their son, Little Jon, who is now no longer little, turn up in our neighborhood for a couple of weeks’ summer vacation, Jon may bring us a bottle of his superb applejack or a packet of smoked trout. He understands that, in the thick of life’s duties and obligations, there is always time for really important things like food and fishing.
Several years back, Jon and I drove the hour or so from Temple to Fairfield and fished the stretch of the Kennebec just below Shawmut Dam. Jon took a special liking to the place – the broad sweep of the Kennebec there, the handsome farm on the hill across the river, the shaded trails on the west bank. And then, if the trout proved as uncooperative as they often do in late summer, he could always forget about them, pick up his spinning rod, and catch some smallmouth bass in the quick water right below the dam.
On this particular afternoon, we stop in Fairfield at the tackle shop appropriately called “Fly Fishing Only” and spend 15 or 20 minutes ogling and caressing the classy, expensive fly rods lined up on one wall and consulting with the owner on what, if any, flies might induce a trout to strike. He allows as things are slow on the river. Heavy rains have brought the water up. Fishing, we are given to understand, is not tiptop.
This news does not discourage us. We are here for whatever the day and evening will bring.We drive the few miles north to the access road to the dam site, head on down to the river, set up our rods.
The river is ridiculously high. Water is boiling down the tailrace at the dam, and as I wade in a few hundred yards farther downstream, I’m soon in above my middle and all too aware that just one misstep will let the force of the water knock me off my feet and send me tumbling head over heels. And with this heavy, racing water extending from bank to bank, how, if a fish ever should rise, will I ever manage to put a fly in front of that fish’s nose?
Jon, with only hip boots, can’t do much more than get in a few feet from shore where he has no room for a backcast and no access to any fishable water anyway. I soon see him climb out of the river and head back to the car,where he’ll trade in for his spinning rod and head out after smallmouths.
I pick my way carefully to shore and walk farther downstream than I have fished before. There, around a gentle bend, I find some marshy little islands and slower water where wading is not life-threatening,where no fish are rising, and where I fish nymphs until dusk, all to no avail.
It’s always nice to catch fish; but luckily for the likes of me, catching is not absolutely essential to fishing. Puddling around in the water with a fly rod in my hand is its own reward.
Then there’s the occasional last-minute surprise. While a big beaver swims a long loop around me on his way home, I tie on a bucktail and toss it out into some slack water. I get a solid hit, and after a few minutes, I’ve brought a chunky smallmouth bass to hand and released it. A few more casts and I have another and another.
Well, okay. No trout today, but catching these scrappy smallmouths has been an unexpected treat, and I’m betting Jon must have caught several up at the dam, too.
I head back upstream and find Jon still casting into the water just below the tailrace.
“What luck?” I ask.
“Zero,” he says.
“The river’s got everything backwards today,” I say. “You’re skunked, and I caught your smallmouths about a mile downstream.” “No problem,” he says. “I’m happy just being out here.”
A man after my own heart. So we head for home, two equally contented fishermen driving through the summer night.