A River Trilogy

by W. D. Wetherell

  When you watch Tom cast you end up watching his hands, particularly his left one. Many fly casters will tug and yank with their left hand, but never quite manage to seesaw it into synchronization with what their right hand is doing with the rod (someone who looks like they’re constantly tossing sticky stuff from off their fingertips is doing it too vigorously). Tom’s left hand seems linked to his right one by some telepathic and infallible sensing, so with the most economical, even negligent of downward motions it’s adding power, force, and speed while the right one handles direction. There’s a weaving kind of motion to it; once in Switzerland, watching local women demonstrate the particularly difficult kind of hand looming they were famous for, I saw in the rhythmic sweep, sweep, and pause of their hands much that reminded me of Tom.

  I don’t think I ever fully understood how intensely he loves fishing, not until last fall when we finished the season together—a slow, regretful kind of day, both in the heavy, Brueghel kind of grayness that had possession of the landscape and in our knowing it was goodbye to the river for another eight long months. Tom’s not a man to let his feelings show, and yet just once, as we got into his truck and started the long drive home, I heard him whisper, to himself and with more poignance than the words alone can convey, “Now I have nothing left to look forward to . . .”

  He’s a good man to fish with, Tom Ciardelli. I think if I were ever to look back on our friendship and try to pinpoint the moments that were best, I wouldn’t remember any day in particular, but something that happens in almost all our days together. Tom will be working hard on his favorite pool, and I will have roamed upstream, checking things out . . . and then an hour or two later I’ll be back again, or he will have moved upstream to meet me, and we have one of those fishing reunions that come in midstream, with the simple, even banal vocabulary that is familiar to anyone who ever divvied up a river with a friend.

  “Any luck?” “Nope. Anything up here?” “A couple of brookies. Nothing spectacular.” “I saw something. Down there by that log.” “Coming up to caddis?” “Brown ones. You give him a shot.” . . . Which, I suppose, are the kinds of things flyfishers say when they can’t say, “Hey, I missed you, pal! It’s good to be together again, eh?”

  There’s lots men say without saying it directly. Three years ago Tom and I were fishing a tailwater river up north. We had called ahead and gotten the tape-recorded message on when the dam would and wouldn’t be releasing water, and so felt reasonably safe in what was otherwise a dangerous enough position. We waded across a shallow channel to a sandbar where we could cast the rest of the way across the river; we had been fishing there not more than fifteen minutes when we both noticed something seemed different.

  “Hey, Tom,” I said, pointing to the rocks. “Am I imagining things, or is the water going back up again?”

  Tom stared toward the stick we’d planted in the sand to measure any such fluctuation. “It’s going up. Let’s go!”

  Instantly, without discussing it further, we started back across the shallow channel—the channel that was already full of rushing water as high as our waists. Tom, holding his vest high like a fussy old woman but moving powerfully for all that, made it across to shallower water, then looked back toward where I was struggling. My hat fell off—I grabbed for it too late—and then I realized I had a lot more to worry about than hats. The water was gaining vertically on my horizontal shoving—a second later and the current pushed my boots off the gravel and I began to be swept downstream. It was then I felt Tom’s hand reach out and fasten on my shoulder—so strong, so secure, it’s as if I can feel that same arm reach out and steady me now as I type these words, a tower of strength leaning out from that bank to bring me back to safety, to standing on the bank feeling relief and gratitude and admiration, and—because we’re men—trying to express these things without using any of those words.

  “Thanks,” I finally managed, gasping for breath, the river pouring off of me. Then, scowling: “Why the hell didn’t you save my hat!”

  I’ve always had the feeling, watching Tom on the river, that I can understand quite clearly the talents that make him such a good fisherman. It’s a different story with my other fishing partner, Ray Chapin. He’s a marvelous fisherman, every bit as good as Tom, yet study and analyze his talent all you want and there will always be an aspect that can’t be explained, at least not without sounding like a mystic.

  We met at a party at a mutual friend’s; I was sipping bourbon off to one side when a young man whose beard couldn’t quite disguise a boyish, handsome face came over and introduced himself. He had read one of my books, was himself just at the point where he was abandoning spinning for the fly rod, and was full of questions. Ray is the kind of person you feel you know instantly; struck by the soft earnestness of his manner, much against my usual habit, I asked if he would be interested in trying out his new fly rod on one of my favorite local streams.

  Ray is ten years younger than I am, so there was something of the master and apprentice in our relationship—at least that first time out. He was still clumsy with his casting, but after ten minutes of fishing I could see he had all the tools to be extraordinarily good. Athletic, sure-sighted, passionately interested, and a native Vermonter with a real affinity for the terrain, he immediately put me in mind of James’s definition of a writer: “He on whom nothing is lost.”

  He was working two jobs at the time, as a draftsman designing houses and, on weekends, as an orderly in our local hospital so his family would be covered by health insurance. I admired him for this, his hard and continuing effort to reinvent himself—an effort that a few years later had him going to college with kids half his age, taking the opportunity he never had as a youngster to grab the learning he craved and deserved.

  It’s been one of the most rewarding things in my fishing life, watching Ray develop as a flyfisher, come into his own as a man who loves the sport and does it honor. I remember that first year fishing together up north, Ray rushing downstream to where I stood casting, a bow wave cresting out ahead of his waders, so excited he could hardly talk.

  “There’s something happening up there. You’ve got to come see!”

  “Happening? Like fish happening?”

  “I think it’s a ha-ha-ha . . . a hatch).”

  And that’s what it was, the first Ray had ever seen, and he did just fine with it, though not without some coaching; when he turned his back on the river and started to wade toward shore, I yelled “There’s one!”, whereupon Ray hooked the trout backwards over his shoulder, spun like a matador, and brought him in.

  He’s a superb caster, with a good ten feet of distance on me, more if he wants to reach (he’s a basketball player, and basketball players, spending long hours coordinating hands and eyes to work at distance, often make the best fly casters). He’s tireless, often wins on the river from sheer endurance. Unlike a lot of fishermen, he’s comfortable talking aesthetics, or sitting back and just drinking in the views (I remember once lying on the grass along the bank, the two of us watching spellbound as the crests of the birch trees high across the river became aglow with swarming caddis, so it was as if each tree were lit by a lambent flame of spontaneous generation). He’s an efficient, businesslike fly tyer, especially with the patterns he’s devoted to: the olive Hare’s Ear, a little black nymph with a wisp of sparkle, a ratty brown caddis. I’ve seldom seen him fish streamers, though now and then, not without grumbling, he can be persuaded to chuck and duck with a Woolly Bugger. He can wade a river with a risky kind of prudence—there’s no machismo in him, but he enjoys pushing the envelope of what can be crossed. And he’s a fast learner; I’ve seen him make mistakes over the years, but never the same mistake twice.

  As I suggested earlier, all these only partly explain Ray’s success. He brings to fishing another quality, one I’d be tempted to call pure luck, were it not for the fact that the quality is much more reliable than luck alone. After thinking about it for a long time now, having seen Ray in
action on all kinds of water from Maine to Montana, I’ve become absolutely convinced that in some subtle and yet compelling way fish like Ray, enjoy being caught by him, will seek him out in a river full of anglers, as if they can sense that this is the one whose heart they should gladden first.

  For Ray not only always takes the first fish, but always takes the last—fish like saying goodbye to him just like they like saying hello—and almost always finds the biggest one as well. We’ve fished Slough Creek together several times, have covered the same pool with the same flies, alternating casts, and—the polls are definite on this—the cutthroat prefer Chapin three to one. The same is true on the Yellowstone or the Connecticut or wherever we fish. Ray would blush if he heard me say this, and people will probably think I’m nuts, but again it’s the absolute truth: fish like Ray and are forever coming over just to revel in his presence.

  And perhaps because I’ve seen him do it so many times, my enduring memory of Ray Chapin will be of him hooking still another good trout. That quick upward glance that always manages to seem surprised; the instant switch to total, heron-like concentration; the rod going up as far as he can reach; the smooth and furious cranking to get the fish on the reel; that instinctive first step backward into shallower water . . . and then, without ever taking his eyes off the fish, the slow dance over to the spot where he’ll bring him in; the smooth reach back over his shoulder for the net; the prayerful stoop to land him; the grateful little shove of release; the long, half-wistful glance as the fish swims off . . . and then the happy, embarrassed smile as he looks up and finds me staring in absolute wonder once again.

  The only regretful part of my friendship with Ray and Tom is that so seldom do I get to fish with both of them at the same time. Last September we managed to pull this off, all three of us on Maine’s Rapid River going after landlocks on dry flies. We had spent most of the day on different parts of the river, but now, after lunch, we converged on that lovely slow pool where the river slackens into Pond-in-the-River. For a change I figured out the salmon first, called over to the other two what they were taking, but then the fish switched over to something smaller, and this time Tom was the one who picked up on it, and then a half hour later when they went back to something medium-sized and a different color it was Ray calling out the pattern, so between the three of us, communicating instantly, positioned in an arc, it was like we were holding a net between us and those salmon never had a chance.

  Who’s the better fisherman, Ray or Tom? Sometimes I play around with this, try imagining which one I would choose to wade out into the river to try for an extraordinarily large and difficult fish, knowing only one person would have a crack at him before he took off. Choose Ray with his instinct or Tom with his patience? I think about this, compare their approaches, and for the life of me I can never pick out which one would get the nod—and so, as in the case of all such ties, there’s only one option left.

  “Hey, Tom,” I would say, glancing over to where he s stringing up his rod, all but drooling in anticipation of that trout. “Remember all those times I’ve paddled you around in a canoe, muscled us upstream just to get you in a good casting position? Remember those picnics I’ve thrown together, the nachos, the roast beef, the salami? Remember how I’ve always field-tested the concoctions that come off your tying bench, including those Clouser Minnows that are borderline legal? Remember all the books I’ve loaned you over the years, the times I’ve given you what turned out to be good advice?”

  “Yeah, sure I remember,” he would say, his forehead creasing up in suspicion.

  “Hey Ray,” I would say, turning the other way toward where Ray is tying on a caddis. “Remember who was responsible for introducing you to this sport? Remember all the times I’ve shared my thermos of hot tea with you, those cold rainy afternoons? Remember all the good fish I’ve stepped aside from to let you have your chance?”

  “Uh, yes,” he would say, frowning, beginning to catch my drift.

  I’d have my own rod strung up now, my fly ready, my leader stretched tight. “Tom, Ray. You guys are the greatest friends a man ever had. I want you to sit here on the bank, relax in comfort, and enjoy watching a real fisherman strut his stuff.”

  And as my partners gape in admiration, I would wade out into the river and make friends with that trout.

  July 4

  I crossed the divide, but not a great one. The road climbed just enough for me to downshift into third, then there was a level stretch, then it started down. Flashing out the window like little silver mirrors signaling me to stop was a stream hardly wider than a yardstick, but it was dropping westward now, not eastward like the stream I had been following up to the height of land. The sources of both were beaver ponds so close to each other that a child could lob a beach ball from one to the other without strain, and yet the difference was dramatic for all that, at least when it came to flowage, trendings, and ultimate destinations.

  Behind me the water ran abruptly down to the Waits River, then straight ahead to the Connecticut, thence three hundred miles to the placid, overused waters of Long Island Sound. Ahead of me it flowed down by many windings to the Winooski, then to Lake Champlain, thence to the Richelieu River into Canada, north to the St. Lawrence, and down that river to the wild and tempestuous ocean off Newfoundland. Or, in other words, what was a difference of a few yards on a nondescript patch of green Vermont hillside became, given gravity time to operate: a global spread of some twelve degrees of latitude and nearly a thousand nautical miles.

  It’s the kind of thing I enjoy thinking about as I cross this little hump. I don’t make the drive often, and when I do it to fish the Dog River, my favorite medium-small stream in the state—a real charmer, whose wild fish are smart and pretty enough to make even a longer drive worthwhile. Water that stays clear and cool even in July; lush coils of vines and shrubbery that hide it under a tunnel; a rough-hewn frame of village, woodlot, and farm centered squarely against verdant hills. It’s a stream best described as—Well, at the time I couldn’t remember the exact word, though I was trying to. There’s an old-fashioned adjective that fits the Dog perfectly, but for the life of me I couldn’t come up with it, this being the only vexation in what was otherwise a perfect summer afternoon of low humidity and high nubby clouds.

  I parked a hundred yards downstream from my favorite pool, then bushwhacked through the jungle of greenery that hides it from the road. I was betting July 4th would be an ideal time to fish—people off partying and the green drakes hatching right on schedule. I was right on both counts—no fishermen, plenty of mayflies—but here I’m getting ahead of myself, giving away the end before I’ve even gotten wet.

  There’s an odd quality to fishing the best Vermont trout streams; so perfect can be the surroundings that you blink and disbelieve for a moment that they’re real. I pushed through the crisp mare’s tails and sharp raspberry vines to a border of cinnamon ferns, then out onto the undercut gravel embankment that fronts the river proper. To my right the water ran down in a wide shallow chute that emptied into a pool deep enough for swimming; when I turned the other way I could see the rusty railroad bridge that crossed the river from bank to bank; past this, curving out of sight, was a choppy stretch of riffles that ran through high pine.

  Lovely as all this was, it was only the inner core in entwined strands that were each beautiful in a different way. The surrounding farmland with its green corn that was knee-high, just like it was supposed to be on the Fourth; the two-hundred-year-old farmhouses that sat back on the first high land from the river; the railroad tracks, so serene now and forgotten; the sense all this gave you of a wise and responsible stewardship. Throw in some deer (a doe splashing across the river; its fawn shyer, staying on the bank until I passed), a red-shouldered hawk, a rare scarlet tanager (only the second I’d ever seen), some high-spirited trout, and you have a river that exudes the sense of wellbeing only the last best places on earth can.

  Even the ambient sounds, usually so corrosive,
only added to the overall effect. There was a tractor taking care of second haying, never mind the holiday; the distant laughter of people playing miniature golf in a simple course a farmer had put up on his spare field; the chesty booms of fireworks even more distant, even happier, a pleasant staccato in the lushness of the prevailing tune. Here for the space of a summer evening the world was staying at exactly the right distance; I hitched up my waders, shook my head to stir up the perfection some, eased my way down the bank into the light, skipping pressure of the stream.

  Has anyone ever written in praise of ankle-deep rapids? They’re delightful, both in sound and sensation—the smooth- moving sheen, the way your wading boots break it apart into foaming runnels that don’t reform until twice your shoe size downstream. The Dog, at least when it’s flavored by a setting sun, is the color of mild chamomile tea, and that amber quality was most pronounced directly at my feet. Again, and with the same vexation, I tried remembering the word that describes the rivers murmuring quality, but it still wouldn’t come.

  By the railroad bridge the streambed is littered with old granite blocks left over from the original construction; they’ve been there so long now they’ve become a yellowed part of the natural landscape. The rainbows like to hide in the slow water behind them, getting up the nerve with excited little spinnings, then dashing out into the current to swipe a fly. As mentioned, these are wild fish (the Dog hasn’t been stocked in thirty years), and they show it the moment you hook one. Never—not in catching salmon, not in catching bass—have I seen fish jump so high proportionate to their size; an eight-inch fish will shoot out of the water so fast, so high, your head snaps back to keep it in sight. Pyrotechnics! The analogy, with those boom-hiss-booms in the background, the flaring arcs of the rainbows’ parabola, is both fitting and inevitable.