A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons

by Steve Raymond

  I think, on an individual level, it also has made us better. Certainly it has made me a more thoughtful and careful fisherman than I used to be. Now I take the time to weigh my approach to every run or riffle, to make each cast with care, and to fish every pocket or patch of water where a steelhead might conceivably hold.

  It’s hard to measure the results of this. Like most anglers on hard-fished rivers, my rate of angling success is not what it used to be, but it might be even less were it not for these added measures. Perhaps that in itself is a sign of success in an age of fewer steelhead, the most we can hope. But even if I catch nothing, at least now I can leave the river feeling satisfied that I have fished it thoroughly and left nothing to chance.

  Anglers always have spent much more time fishing than they have catching fish, even in bygone days when steelhead were far more numerous and anglers far less so. Such time is never wasted; aside from the sheer pleasure of fishing, even when no fish respond, it affords the opportunity for practice and experiment, for observation and contemplation, and for learning. These quiet, introspective periods, which always have accounted for most of our hours astream, remain one of the chief attractions of fly fishing, largely responsible for its restorative powers.

  But today, with fewer fish and more fishermen, these quiet periods tend to be longer and more frequent, and anglers have responded by finding new ways to derive satisfaction and reward from them. In my case this has meant redefining the very way I fish.

  This I have done by giving up the longer rods and heavier lines I once used (even these were smaller and lighter than those used by most steelhead anglers) in favor of a very light seven-foot rod and floating line. This combination, now used for most of my summer fishing, requires wading in places I would probably avoid if I were still using a longer rod and heavier line; this, in turn, has added much to the challenge of wading, which I have always enjoyed.

  The small rod and light line also force me to exercise more care with every cast and to be much more precise in handling and mending line, and I find this adds much to the pleasure of casting.

  Some anglers might consider these things impediments or handicaps, but fly fishing by its very nature requires acceptance of self-imposed handicaps, and for me they simply make the sport more interesting. I can spend many long hours on a summer river using such tackle and methods, catch nothing, and still come away feeling I have had a full and satisfying day.

  True, such light tackle would be out of place on rivers larger than those I usually fish, but only by a matter of degree. I think it is always possible to add to the challenge and enjoyment of fishing by using the smallest, lightest tackle allowable under the circumstances. If an angler chooses to do this, I also think it will make him a better fisherman.

  Of course there are still days when I catch a fish, or sometimes two, and rare occasions when I catch more. On one memorable day, not very many seasons ago, fourteen steelhead came to my fly and I managed to land and release nine of them—and believe me, fighting fourteen steelhead in a single day really tires you out. The next day I went out and released five more. Last season’s best was a four-fish day, but that wasn’t bad; there have been other seasons when a single fish was the best I could do on any day.

  The occasional multiple-fish day proves only that in steelhead fly fishing, as in almost everything else, it helps to be in the right place at the right time. It’s also probably a good thing such days come only rarely; with all the other pleasures fishing gives, they amount to an embarrassment of riches, more than any angler should want.

  But they also amount to something more: a reward for persistence and an affirmation that in lean times my reason for being on the river is still a valid one, that all the hours, all the effort, all the thousands of fishless casts are still worth it—because the very next cast may bring a fish that justifies everything.

  That hope is what keeps me going. As long as I know there is still a chance for success—if not every day, or even every week, then eventually—that’s enough to fuel my seasonal passion.

  THE MAN FROM CAMPBELL RIVER

  A LIBRARY, it would seem, is about as far from a trout stream as it’s possible to get. Trout streams are always lively and busy and noisy; libraries, by their very nature, are eternally quiet, and within their precincts everything seems to move at a glacial pace. The air always feels clean on a trout stream, clear and redolent with the scents of the surrounding forest; a library smells mostly of old books.

  Yet libraries also offer many opportunities for anglers, for they are the repositories of the fishing in print—the recorded culture, history, tradition, and technology of the sport, the fount of all fly-fishing knowledge. Most libraries also have “special collections,” a place where they house their most rare and precious books, manuscripts, and historic records, and these sometimes provide even greater treasures for inquisitive anglers.

  The rooms containing a library’s special collections typically lie behind a thick door with an electronic lock that can be opened only from the inside, unless you have the combination. To gain entry you may have to surrender your driver’s license and sign a form authorizing the temporary waiver of at least several of your civil rights. It’s probably a little like trying to gain admission to the Pentagon command center. The fuss is worth it, though, because special collections are like gold mines for writers or researchers. Even when the subject is fly fishing.

  The fine special collections at the library of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver are an example. Here, among other treasures, you will find the original manuscripts, notes, and correspondence of Roderick Haig-Brown, in my opinion the greatest fishing writer of his generation, perhaps of any generation. His twenty-seven books—most written in the spacious study of his riverside home in Campbell River, British Columbia—were for me a continuing source of inspiration, and his lyrical prose style became the model for my own literary voice when I began writing. Most of his nonfiction works were about fly fishing and conservation, but he also wrote novels, for both adults and young people, and essays on a wide range of subjects—the passing of the age of steam, thoughts on law, education, and war, observations on animals and wildlife, even libraries and librarians.

  Haig-Brown’s fishing books, including The Western Angler, A River Never Sleeps, the famous “four seasons” books—Fisherman’s Winter, Fisherman’s Spring, Fisherman’s Summer, and Fisherman’s Fall—were notable for some of the most vivid, lyrical prose ever to grace the printed page, and it was mostly those books that earned their author a deserved place in the annals of English literature.

  But Haig-Brown was more than a writer; he was also a leader. He served as a magistrate, army officer, and chancellor of the University of Victoria. He also was an activist, alerting the people of British Columbia to the need to conserve their natural resources. By any measure, that’s an impressive résumé, and it’s tempting to say that Haig-Brown was the very model of a modern renaissance man. Such a role may have come naturally to him, considering his family and educational background in England, but it also reveals a man of powerful intellect, which is an absolute prerequisite for becoming a successful writer.

  He also was an extraordinarily sensitive man, one who felt things strongly and sensed how others felt, and thus he was able to write with great feeling. He was blessed with great natural curiosity and interest in the world around him and spent a great deal of time observing it and thinking about what he saw. These are also necessary qualifications for a writer, especially one whose chief topic was nature—for such was Haig-Brown’s chief topic, although he usually approached it from the perspective of a fisherman. That he did so was only natural, because it’s axiomatic that writers should write about the things they know best, and Haig-Brown was already an experienced fly fisher when he came to this country from his native England; thus he saw it through the eyes of a fisherman, and it was from that vantage point that he mainly wrote.

  He also loved books, and a writer
must love books. You can’t expect to write well until you’ve read the works of others who have written well, and Haig-Brown was devoted to books all his life. In fact, it was this devotion that first brought him in contact with Ann Elmore, the woman who would become his wife. She was working in a Seattle bookstore when they met, and their mutual interest in books was one of the things that bound them together through all their years of marriage. Anyone who has visited the book-filled study of Haig-Brown House in Campbell River can testify to the breadth and depth of their literary interests.

  So by the time he embarked on his literary career, Haig-Brown already possessed many of the requirements of a successful writer—great natural talent, a keen intellect, sensitivity, strong powers of observation, a developing knowledge of a particular subject—nature or the outdoors, in his case—and a broad exposure to the works of other writers. But even with all this going for him, he still had to serve a literary apprenticeship, spending the time necessary to develop his craft and define his own literary style.

  He started in England with Silver, a children’s book about the life history of the Atlantic salmon. Next came a novel, Pool and Rapid, based on his early years on Vancouver Island, and then, in 1939, The Western Angler, his first true fishing book. It also was the book that brought Haig-Brown to attention in North America, but that had less to do with literary excellence than with the fact it was really the first book to describe the abundant angling opportunities of the Pacific Northwest. The original manuscript in the University of British Columbia special collections clearly shows that when he wrote it, Haig-Brown was still searching for his literary voice.

  Paging through that manuscript and Haig-Brown’s other records was for me an almost eerie experience. It made me feel slightly guilty, as if I were prowling through his desk drawers while he was out of the room, or as if I were poking around in the rafters of his brain, eavesdropping on the creative process. Either seemed an egregious violation of his privacy—and yet I assume that by giving his papers to the library, he or his family intended for them to be made available for inquiring minds like mine.

  Haig-Brown never learned to master the typewriter. All his books were written in longhand with a fountain pen, filling scores of ruled notebooks, the same type of composition book once popular with elementary-school students. Most or all his final manuscripts were typed by his wife, Ann. The original handwritten manuscript of The Western Angler shows many corrections—sentences lined out, words or phrases inserted, marginal notes, and so on—not frenzied, agonizing edits like those found on the score of a Beethoven symphony, but calm, deliberate attempts to craft a better phrase or evoke a clearer image.

  One notebook indicates Haig-Brown considered several alternative titles for The Western Angler. Among them: Western Trout and Pacific Salmon; The Rise at Sunset; Salt, Swift, and Still; Green Waters; The Evening Rise; or “some such title as ‘Angling Economics’ or ‘Sustained Yield’ or ‘Fish for All’.” He added: “Don’t care for any of these, but a good one might be the soundest bet from the point of view of persuading the bookseller.” How he arrived at the final title is not explained in his notes. Perhaps it was supplied by the publisher, the late and greatly lamented Derrydale Press, which published The Western Angler in a beautiful, deluxe two-volume edition of 950 copies.

  Two years later, in 1941, Haig-Brown published Return to the River, and it was immediately obvious the young author had finally found his literary voice. Return to the River is, of course, a novel, and it would be less than candid to say it is distinguished for its structure, plot, dialogue, or characterizations; it is not. What makes it extraordinary, what sets it apart from anything Haig-Brown had written previously, is its abundance of lush, lyrical prose. Here, for the first time, the full power of Haig-Brown’s descriptive writing was visible, the kind of writing that was to establish him as a literary figure of the very first rank.

  Consider, for example, this passage:

  “The water was a little colored, not muddy but less clear than during the brilliance of its summer flow, and brought with it fallen leaves and twigs and dead fir needles. Most of the leaves twisted and swam and swirled a few inches below the surface—alder leaves, some black and rightly fallen, others still green, torn from the trees by winds that had brought the fall rains; maple leaves, sodden, dark brown and fast breaking up; willow leaves, long and slender, some yellow, some black. Under the leaves, deeper in the water, were the salmon.”

  I defy anyone to read those words without forming a vivid image of the scene, or without being caught up in its poetic rhythm.

  Here’s another example, one of my favorites:

  “The warm wind passed upstream, sighing with its freight of rain, finding always a stronger gust of itself to shatter the big drops from leaves that still held them. It swayed the tall firs almost gently, loading them with water, trembling the water from them again minutes later. Drenched with water, the dark leaves of salal and rhododendron shone and quivered and dripped in penetrated shelter down under the tall trees. The clouds rolled up, white and gray and soft, climbing the valley and misting into the mountains … The creeks talked on the hillsides, turning brown and foamy and tumbling faster in their rocky beds.”

  We who live in the Pacific Northwest are surely among the world’s foremost experts on wind and rain, but I think even the most wind-blown and rain-soaked among us would agree that no one has ever penned a better description of our usual weather.

  In 1946, Haig-Brown published A River Never Sleeps, now judged the finest of all his fishing books. The handwritten manuscript of that book, also in the University of British Columbia collection, shows surprisingly few corrections, and it seems amazing that such beautiful prose could flow from the mind through the hand to the paper with so little need for revision. If anything, his words evoked even more vivid images than those contained in Return to the River. Consider his description of steelhead fishing:

  “The steelhead, with the brightness of the sea still on him, is livest of all the river’s life. When you have made your cast for him, you are no longer a careless observer. As you mend the cast and work your fly well down to him through the cold water, your whole mind is with it, picturing its drift, guiding its swing, holding it where you know he will be. And when the shock of his take jars through you to your forearms and you lift the rod to its bend, you know that in a moment the strength of his leaping body will shatter the water to brilliance, however dark the day.”

  Or this account of a mountain sunset:

  “The mountains were clear in the sunlight; they are clear still, yet somehow veiled by the lesser light of the sinking sun. Soon the snow slides will be colored with sunset, not pink, though pink is the word that means some part of the color, but flushed and glowing with the reflection of clean, bright flame.”

  But again he had to search for the right title. A notebook with outlines, notes, and ideas for the book is labeled A Year of Fishing Days, apparently the name Haig-Brown used to refer to the work while it was in progress.

  The handwritten manuscript of A River Never Sleeps fills several notebooks. The original typescript also is in the UBC special collections, so it’s easy to follow the creative process all the way through and see how Haig-Brown developed his ideas from written notes and refined his prose until it had just the mood or inflection he desired. A good example is the evolution of the famous last paragraph of the book, perhaps the most oft-quoted passage in all Haig-Brown’s writings. This is how it appears in the original handwritten manuscript, including his corrections:

  “I still don’t know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel. But I do know that if it were not for the strong, quick life of rivers, for their sparkle in the sunshine, for the cold greyness of them under rain, and the feel of them about my legs as I set my feet hard down on rocks or sand or gravel, I should fish less often. A river is never quite silent; it can never, of its very nature, be quite still; it is never qu
ite the same from one day to the next. It has its own life and its own beauty and the creatures [here he originally wrote ‘that depend on it,’ then crossed it out] it nourishes are live and beautiful [here he later inserted the word ‘also’]. Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers; if so, I’m glad I thought of it.”

  The paragraph is followed by a broad, bold dash across the page, perhaps an exclamation of relief or satisfaction at having finished the manuscript.

  The typescript version of the same paragraph includes a couple of other changes; whether they were made by Haig-Brown or by an anonymous copy editor preparing the typescript for publication is not clear. But the spelling of “greyness” was changed to “grayness,” and the last sentence was broken into two sentences, becoming: “Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers. If that is so, I’m glad I thought of it.”

  Somewhere along the line, another change was made, for when the book was published the final sentence read: “If so, I’m glad I thought of it.” And thank goodness; removing the awkward and unnecessary words “that is” made the sentence a thousand times more effective.

  These may seem like small changes, but that’s how the writing process works—many small changes, little edits here and there, shaping, polishing, refining the manuscript until it has just the right feel or inflection. It’s not much different from making adjustments to a new fly pattern until it proves itself effective.

  All of Haig-Brown’s subsequent fishing books featured the same sort of lyrical prose, but it wasn’t confined merely to his books about fishing. For example, when he wrote The Living Land, a remarkable inventory of the natural resources of British Columbia, he offered this definition of the meaning of conservation: