A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons

by Steve Raymond

Again, it was the steelhead’s fight that impressed Atherton, and he had little to say about the other qualities of steelhead.

  Enos Bradner, my old friend and mentor, was usually more concerned with the nuts and bolts of steelhead fishing than he was with the contemplative aspects of the sport. As outdoor editor of the Seattle Times, he had to be. But in 1960, when he received a letter from a teenage boy named Tim, asking for advice on how to become a steelhead fly fisherman, Bradner wrote a reply in which he came as close as he ever did to describing what it feels like to fish for wild steelhead. Here’s what he said:

  “Everything connected with this sport tugs at the heart … You get out right at dawn, walking up a gravel bar to the riffle you hope holds a fish. Anticipation builds up as you step into the water and start working out your sinking fly line … The river pushes your waders tight against the body as you work chest-deep into the current. You are alone with and become part of the stream.

  “But, Tim, you must have a mountain of patience … You must be willing to take long hours of fruitless casting. Perhaps days will go by without the slightest nibble. But then, some enchanted morning, or perhaps even at midday, there will come with startling abruptness a jolt that almost jerks the rod out of your hand. Your reel starts screaming as the steelhead streaks downstream faster than any other game fish can swim. You become alive in every fiber of your system, with adrenaline coursing through your arteries.

  “If you are lucky, you finally lead the fish into the shallows and onto the gravel. It lies there, a silver form with maybe a touch of red, as fine a trout as ever was created.”

  I think that passage captures the essence of steelhead fishing as well as anything ever written. But even in this case I believe some of the real reasons we fish for steelhead are left unsaid.

  Trey Combs, in his fine book Steelhead Fly Fishing, tells of catching a steelhead and asking it: “‘Where have you been?’ … What collaboration of instincts, what fusion of natural forces sends a hundred smolts to sea and returns to me this single adult? Beyond her own good fortune, what special traits for survival has she brought back for the next generation? Her ocean world is alien to me, and she carries few messages hinting of her past. But these have grown into the small understandings that fill me with admiration for her spirit and wandering ways—characteristics at the core of my romance with this gamefish, and why I am jubilant on this dreary winter day.” So, perhaps without realizing it, when Combs asked “where,” he really came up with an answer that had more to do with “why” he fishes for steelhead.

  But again it was Haig-Brown who first really addressed that question squarely, and his answer left us with one of the most familiar quotations in all of angling literature: “I 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 grayness 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 quite the same from one day to the next. It has its own life and its own beauty, and the creatures it nourishes are alive and beautiful also. Perhaps fishing is, for me, only an excuse to be near rivers. If so, I’m glad I thought of it.”

  That paragraph, I think, goes a long way toward explaining what motivates us as anglers, and we all share Haig-Brown’s excuse: Fishing gives us a reason to be near rivers, and we love wild steelhead because they come to us in rivers.

  But even as hypnotic and attractive as they are, I don’t think rivers are the sole explanation for our passion. If it weren’t for wild steelhead, I’m sure we would all spend less time around rivers. There’s something more involved here, some other reason why these fish have such a powerful attraction for us. What is it that we find so compelling about them?

  Most of the writers I have quoted remarked on the beauty and fighting qualities of wild steelhead, which are obvious things. But there are other things about steelhead, less obvious, that I think appeal to us on a deeper, perhaps even subconscious level. One of them, I believe, is that we intuitively realize steelhead are the most honest and uncompromising creatures we will ever meet, and we can meet them only on their terms. No steelhead has ever been indicted, and I daresay none will ever be. If only we could say as much for the members of our own species.

  Yet there’s even more to it than that, some other quality about these fish that makes them almost irresistible to us. I have thought deeply about this, trying to figure out the nature of this powerful attraction, and I think for the answer we must ultimately look to ourselves, not to the fish. And if we do that, I think we will find that deep down, at some primal level of our being, we share a powerful emotional link with wild steelhead.

  How could this be? How can we, as intelligent, warm-blooded, air-breathing beings, have some sort of deep-seated connection with an instinctive, cold-blooded creature that dwells in a world completely different from our own? The answer is that wild steelhead possess the very qualities we most deeply admire among ourselves: perseverance, courage, and lonely survival against great odds.

  Consider: A steelhead born of the river, who lives long enough to escape to the sea, who makes its way a thousand miles or more across the trackless ocean, stalked by predators every inch of the way, who survives to return and find the river of its birth, and who then fights its way upstream against the relentless weight of water that opposes every millimeter of its progress, and who finally spawns and fulfills the purpose of its life—such a creature is a hero, an inspiration, a model for us all. Small wonder that we should admire it so, or seek, even subconsciously, to emulate its virtues. Small wonder that we should marvel at its achievements, especially during a time in our history when wild steelhead are threatened over so much of their native range.

  So that, I think, is what really brings us together here tonight: our common devotion to a fish whose virtues we not only admire but wish we shared. And that devotion, I believe, is what drives our efforts to preserve wild steelhead, the noble purpose to which this organization has dedicated itself.

  I need not tell you that the task of preservation will be difficult, because we who love wild steelhead represent the very smallest minority of society. We face the hostility of all who would destroy steelhead habitat for personal gain, plus the vast apathy and indifference of the great majority of our fellow citizens, people who have never known the excitement or experienced the emotional voltage of a connection with wild steelhead.

  Yet that’s no cause for discouragement; instead, we should feel grateful, for we are among the few who have been fortunate enough to catch a wild steelhead, to experience one of life’s greatest thrills, one that most people will never know. It would be well to remember that on those occasions when it seems as if all the world is indifferent or opposed to us.

  And there will be such occasions. The road ahead will offer defeats as well as victories, and defeat often brings despair. But this organization cannot afford the luxury of despair, because there is only one way the battle to preserve wild steelhead will ever end—and that is if you surrender.

  So let the steelhead be your example. When things get tough, when the situation seems hopeless, remember the qualities we most admire about wild steelhead: perseverance, courage, and lonely survival against great odds.

  Without such an inspiration, you cannot succeed. With it, you cannot fail.

  CREDITS

  SOME PORTIONS of this book were published previously or have been adapted from the texts of oral presentations. They are:

  “A Seasonal Passion” was first published in slightly different form in Wild Steelhead & Atlantic Salmon magazine, Vol. 2, No. 2, summer, 1995.

  “The Man from Campbell River” includes portions of Special Collections, first published as a “Seasonable Angler” column in Fly Fisherman magazine, Vol 39, No. 3, March, 2008, plus
an adaptation from the text of an oral presentation to the annual general meeting of the British Columbia Federation of Fly Fishers at the University of Victoria May 26, 2001, subsequently published in Fly Lines, a publication of the BCFF, winter, 2004.

  “Better than Strawberries” was adapted from the text of an oral presentation to a graduate seminar on ocean resource management at the University of Washington, 1998.

  “Chernobyl Tomato” was first published as a “Seasonable Angler” column in Fly Fisherman magazine, Vol. 42, No. 5, Aug- Sep, 2011.

  “On the Wild Side” is adapted from the text of a speech given at the annual general meeting of the Wild Steelhead Coalition in Seattle, November 19, 2005, and subsequently published in The Osprey, publication of the Steelhead Committee of the International Federation of Fly Fishers, issue No. 54, May 2006, and The Flyfisher magazine, Vol. XL, No. 1, winter, 2007.

  Two quotations from Roderick Haig-Brown in “On the Wild Side” also appeared earlier in “The Man from Campbell River.” This was intentional; the author considers those quotations essential to both selections.