Growing Gills

by David Joy

  I was alone now, exactly where I wanted to be, by myself with nothing but the wild. The creek meandered through the valley like a blacksnake, and cedars and balsams bowed toward the earth, the branches heavy with snowfall. The temperature of the icy water pierced through my thin waders, sweatpants, and long johns. The bitter cold was a reminder of my warm-blooded nature. But I chose the cold over the controlled warmth of a couch, glad to make the sacrifice. The long-awaited silence would soon bring me calmness.

  *****

  I’d come to escape the ongoing noise of civilization. Every day I walk around in a world where people listen more closely for the electronic ring tones of cell phones than for the faint cries of soft-spoken bluebirds, the trickle of water over rocks, or the rustle of dried leaves still holding onto twigs of shaking limbs. The sounds of nature are drowned out by speakers blaring electronic riffs, so when someone would like to hear something wild, they buy the sounds on compact disc and call it something like “Tranquil River.” Few take the time to just stop, hold still, and listen to what’s around them. The world has become a place of synthetic sound, a deafening reality—the definition of noise.

  The noise is a direct result of the rush. I drive on roads where forty miles per hour is a catalyst for middle fingers, blown horns, and curse words silenced behind windshields. Who’s got time to brake and look at a blooming yellow poplar when closing time is in an hour? Everyone hurries to get some place that doesn’t matter, to a place that will be there in the morning after the last leaf has fallen. People rush around with blood pressure boiling and aneurysms building until they need a prescribed fix. Rather than just taking the time to be still, they push themselves forward, each second another tick of wasted life. “Shorter of breath, and one step closer to death,” Pink Floyd sang.

  Personally, I can only wander through the modern world for so long before I feel the need to find places without people, without noise, without the frantic pace of modern society. I believe it is my disgust for what is happening to the environment that is associated with my noise phobia. I can tie it back to a moment when I heard the roar of a Bobcat tractor crack through a red maple I used to sit under every day. Now, the blended cacophony of machines angers me.

  I must leave and find refuge in the trees, by a stream, or on a rock and then refuse to move. I hold tight to my sanctuary until I can stay no longer. God, how I envy people like Thoreau, Horace Kephart, and Annie Dillard. To just run away and find serenity in the woods, become a pilgrim on a creek—what a wonderful dream, but the reality is that I can’t, at least not now. Another day, another dollar, another step toward the grave. Luckily I have places to hide, and right then, on that winter day, I was there.

  *****

  Kneeling in the shoal of the creek, I strung my fly rod and searched through boxes for the perfect midge. I would have to fish small. I had no use for tying on a bug the size of a green drake. No insects were out on the water and wouldn’t be for months. I knew that and the trout definitely understood it. The only forage for brookies in wintertime is a smorgasbord of tiny midges, larvae the size of arm hairs dancing in the frigid water. During the cold months, the entomology of a stream dwindles, leaving little more than chironomids (mosquito larvae) moving through the current. Yet thousands of the larvae can cloud a creek even during the coldest stretches of winter; and the trout wait, zero in, and snack.

  I found a couple of flies hidden in the back of my nymph box: a Zebra Midge and a Biot Midge. The size 24 Zebra Midge—consisting of black thread, silver ribbing, a turn of peacock herl, a silver bead head, and antron-yarn gills—was an elaborate representation, a microscopic work of art. The size 26 Biot Midge, on the other hand, was simple: a dyed yellow goose biot wrapped up the hook and a tiny gold bead the size of a pinhead. Tiny hairs that had lined the outside edges of the biot stuck out from the segmented body of the fly, a perfect match to the naturals. Still, picking the flies was the easy part. Now I had to run tippet through the tiny hook eyes, with dim light and shivering hands, frozen red as tomatoes.

  My stiffened fingers shook as I tried to run tippet through the eye of the Zebra Midge, but I finally got the flies on my line, attached a green strike indicator of braided poly-yarn four feet up the leader, and turned back toward the water. A spot of color caught my eye. I turned and saw a plump robin resting in the nook of a dogwood, his plumage fluffed out like a goose-down jacket. Unlike in the spring—chaotic with scampering footsteps, calling finches, and clicking gray squirrels—in the winter woods, all was quiet.

  I was sure the trout were still there, that they finned slowly along the bottom of deep pools, that they congregated and shared the warmest sections of the creek. Now all I had to do was hike, find the fish, and offer my flies. The stream didn’t have any deep holes for a while, so I walked up the frigid creek farther into the haze of hardwoods. Sheets of ice encased stones resting in the frigid current. Jagged icicles hung along the edges of small waterfalls like glass teeth, with tiny air bubbles trapped inside each formation.

  I walked along the streamside, each step crunching the snow beneath my boots, my footprints filling back in as soon as I took the next step. Soon my footprints would fully disappear, covered by fresh powder, the only signs that I’d been there vanishing as if I had never existed at all. I was a ghost wandering through the valley, all signs of my presence vanishing, the world returning to stillness. About a mile upstream, I found the first pool big enough to hold winter trout.

  A wide hole bellied out beneath a five-foot plunge, and rushing water created a hollow hum against the rock wall behind the falls. Whitewater erupted as the current re-entered the stream, foaming bubbles clouding the head of the hole. Swords of ice hung along both sides of the waterfall. The water slowed as it pushed through the hole. The dark, sluggish current poured like wildflower honey wrapping around rocks. The tail of the hole sped up again as the exiting water rose around a freestone shallow.

  I stepped through a thin layer of ice along the left bank, the ice crackling beneath the felt soles of my wading boots, and pulled the Biot Midge from the hook keeper of the 2-weight rod. I figured that the fish would be holding beneath the outside edge of foam, the place where the bubbles burst and joined the slick of water. The trout lay in the deepest part of the hole along the oxygen-rich bottom of the pool. I lowered the flies into the water and soaked the midges, the added weight of saturation making them sink faster.

  The first false cast was a wide, sloppy loop as I adjusted to the resistance of the strike indicator disrupting the tightness of my cast. The added weight on the leader made it hard to take advantage of the taper. The leader wouldn’t roll over, and the green indicator woofed past like a wiffle ball with each progression of line.

  My stroke adjusting to the altered rhythm, I finally worked enough line out to hit the head of the hole. The poly-yarn indicator swirled for a moment in the eddy along the right side of the falls and then came down the stretch of water. The green ball of yarn looked like a tangled wad of Spanish moss floating along the middle seam of current. As the indicator reached the back of the hole, I lifted the line from the water and whipped the flies back into the pool, a little more to the right this time.

  Fishing in the winter is not like any other time of the year. In spring, summer, and fall, if the fish aren’t there, or if I miss a couple of opportunities, then I just wade farther upstream. During warmer months the trout are spread out, each fish finding its own feeding line along the creek. In the winter, however, the fish pod up in the deepest holes holding the warmest temperatures and higher oxygen levels.

  In the cold grasp of January, I had to cover every square inch of the pool. I knew of only three or four likely holes in the three-mile stretch of stream I was fishing. With so little good water, I had to make every cast count. It was a one-shot game; either I got my chance or I didn’t. Unwilling to waste any energy, trout refuse to budge from their positions in winter water, so missing a single line in a hole might make or break my shot.
With every speck of water covered and still no bites, I knew that the fish weren’t there, refused to feed, or didn’t like my flies. Regardless of the answer, I attached the bottom midge to the hook keeper of my rod, stepped out of the knee-deep current, and walked along the white bank and upstream for the next hole.

  *****

  What I find in the wilderness gives me the inner strength to face the monotony of modern life. Under the blinding glow of fluorescent lights, I can feel my thoughts race through my mind at warp speed, a frenzy of nonsense slowly driving me mad. I teeter on the edge until I can again stand under the soothing embrace of oak limbs and listen to a mockingbird go through a songbook of impersonations.

  I escape the madness of the mechanized world and become in tune, the silence strumming the aeolian harp of my mind. The cold arms of a mountain stream hold me sober, if not forever, at least for a moment.

  *****

  When I snapped back to reality, the snowfall had slowed until only a few specks fell toward the earth like pieces of confetti hanging on the air before settling amongst the rest. Farther up the creek, the snow stopped completely. The clouds thinned and rose higher around the peaks revealing the afternoon sun, a perfect circle, like an ivory marble hovering above the mountainside without rays or beams or halos. I stopped for a moment and sat down on the back of a limestone boulder, the layer of snow cushioning my buttocks, and stared at the white sun sitting still behind the tangled fingers of tree limbs.

  The trees stood like bark-covered skeletons along each slope. I smelled the freshness of the woods, and my breath hung on the cold air. Everything was slowed, and I hesitated to move from that rock, afraid that my movement would break the stillness and shatter the silence. Then the desire to raise a trout smoldered inside me and lifted me from my seat. I continued upstream, headed for the next big pool and the next shot at a finicky fish.

  Up ahead, a thick grove of rhododendron hugged the creek. Behind the spearhead leaves, I watched a wide section of water moving between the snow-covered thicket of leaves. I knew the pool well; in fact, that familiar hole was the main reason I chose to fish that section of creek. I walked toward the water, eased through the entanglement of wiry rhododendron, and stepped onto a long slab of granite lining the left side of the stream.

  Removing the tiny midge from the hook keeper, I stared into the black surface of the creek. Snow had begun falling again, the soft flakes landing silently on the current and disappearing without a ripple. The pool was at least thirty feet long, and the piece of granite stretched beside the entire hole. A steep trickle entered the silken stream from the right. The deepest section lay along the edge of granite, but the entire pool was five feet at its shallowest, a perfect section of water for winter brookies.

  I made my first cast, a short flip into the steady current pushing through the tail. The strike indicator rode high but never bounced across the sheen. I whipped the flies out again, this time closer to the slab of granite on which I stood. Again, the indicator drifted perfectly, but a fish never took. I was beginning to think that my odds of catching a fish were slim, but I wasn’t bothered by that reality.

  I stripped some line off of the 2-weight and set the cast in motion, this time aiming further into the hole. The flies entered the head of the pool and quickly descended into the unseen. Suddenly the strike indicator sat upright, bobbed a little, and then disappeared under the surface. Unready for the bite, I gathered myself and raised the rod, the slim stick of graphite curving to the water as the fish tugged across the pebbly bottom. The slack line between the reel and the stripping guide shot out of the tip-top as the trout made a run toward the head of the pool. Flashes of yellow and orange lit up the black water as I reeled the fish closer to the surface. With the stiff leader running through the guides of the rod, I pulled the small native from the water and laid the fish on the snowy granite slab.

  The flesh of the trout was vibrant against the blank canvas of snow. Snowflakes melted against the skin of the fish as I removed the bottom fly, the Biot Midge, from the trout’s hard lip. I took one last look at the brilliant colors of the trout, kissed the fish, and then released the brookie back into the creek. One last spark of yellow flashed as the fish turned toward the dark bottom.

  Kneeling on the flat piece of granite, I peered deep into the stream and tried to see the movement of fish, but there was nothing. I laid the rod on the snow and lay back on the rock. Staring up through the crisscrossed lines of overhanging branches, I felt the snowflakes turn to water on my stinging cheeks. I opened my mouth, caught some flakes on my tongue, closed my eyes, and listened to the silence. The slow creak of a shifting conifer rang through the dead air, but I didn’t move. I lay still and willed myself to converge with everything.

  Glimpses of Monsters

  The current eddying around my exposed legs was numbing to say the least. I had no idea that mountain water would be so cold in August, but with my calves burning red I knew that I’d have to buy some waders before too long. I had moved from Charlotte to Appalachia a week before to attend Western Carolina University. I’d packed more rods than socks for my new home, and this was my first attempt casting to mountain trout. The fish were there. I could see them, but a trout had yet to rise.

  Since I was a boy I’d loved the coloration of brown trout; and my heart raced at the possibility to hook one, hold it in my hands, and kiss its slimy flesh. Before I came I studied field guides on the trout of North Carolina and found three trout I could hook in Carolinian streams: brook trout, rainbows, and brown trout.

  Brookies were the only trout species native to Appalachia, having swum into these waters over ten thousand years ago during the last Ice Age. The ’bows, on the other hand, were an introduced species. They had been brought from western waters and introduced to test the drags of eastern anglers. The browns were also brought into Appalachia. These fish were native to Germany and first introduced in Michigan for the same reason as the ’bows. However they had gotten here, I wouldn’t discriminate. I wanted to catch them all.

  After casting for a few hours, I left the Tuckasegee River without ever getting a bite. As I walked across the Wayehutta Bridge I could see the fish shifting along the bottom. From twenty feet up I had no way of knowing what species the finning shadows belonged to, but I wanted to mark each one on my list of fish caught. Climbing into my silver Chevy Blazer and driving away from the river, I vowed to catch every type of trout in the stream. I didn’t just want any fish though; I wanted a monster from each species, and I’d spend the rest of my college career checking them off the list.

  *****

  The Brookie

  One afternoon during my sophomore year of college, I waded through Cullowhee Creek in search of rising trout. As I moved along the tunnel under a bridge, the passageway was dark. Mud squished around my wading boots as I glared at empty insect casings stuck to the shotcrete walls like dangling artifacts. The remaining daylight shone at the end of the tunnel, and I could see the stream. Water didn’t push through the two middle passageways under the bridge. The creek’s current was diverted to the right and left tunnels by a sandbar covered with grass in the middle of the creek. Inside the tunnel seemed awfully snaky, but that was probably more mental than scientific, so I walked through. Being cold, damp, and muddy, the narrow tunnel was a much better place for frogs and mosquito larvae than snakes—but it was eerie nonetheless.

  Exiting the tunnel, I saw sunlight and noticed raccoon prints embedded in the sand, the footprints pointing back into the tunnel. I was grateful to be where I could see everything and where the things I couldn’t see were far enough away not to bother. As I eased out of the tunnel the creek bent to the left, swept across a freestone bed and pooled up before pushing under the bridge. I stood still in the shadow of the bridge and unhooked my fly from the bottom guide of the 5-weight rod. I tugged on the leader, pulling just enough line through the tip-top to make the cast. With one flick of the wrist, the elk-hair wing landed quietly on the surface
and began to ride along the rapid. A trout rose to the Stimulator, and in one quick motion, it opened its mouth, took the fly, and turned toward the bottom. I pulled up, felt weight, and brought the fish to hand.

  I held a small eleven-inch rainbow in my palm. Its stubby round head thrashed wildly trying to pulsate its body from my grasp. The rainbow’s amber eyes looked downward toward the current as I plucked the size 12 Stimulator from its jaw. I opened my hand slightly to see the fish’s color: a pale pink lateral line just beginning to show, dark bluish-gray spots mottled over the pink, and dark black specks scattering its olive back. With the dark mottled spots, the ’bow looked like the wild fish in small streams, but all juveniles wear the parr marks. I kissed its snout and released it back into the cool current.

  I swung the fly into my hand and held it between my index finger and the cork grip of my rod. Through the overhanging tree limbs I could see the hole that I’d come for: a beautiful feeder stream emptying into a sand-bottom pool. I made my way upstream, felt soles gripping slick rocks as I stepped against the current. The stream was shallow (except for a short, mid-depth run along the right bank), so I stepped quietly, being careful not to send shock waves up the creek that would startle any fish that held there. In range of a fifteen-foot cast, I stayed in position and looked over the hole.

  On the right side of the creek, water flushed from a pipe that ran under Highway 107. The current eddied around a fallen log and slowed as it pushed through a deep pool. The trick was to cast toward the pipe and then let the fly swing onto the outside edge of current as it made its way through the hole. I had done this hundreds of times and caught plenty of fish doing so. I was positive I could do it again.

  I stripped enough line to make the cast, wiggled the tip to let a little line out and began false casting. A narrow opening between the overhanging branches lining both sides of the creek behind me made it hard for a backcast. I shot line through the gap and placed the fly into the current. The Stimulator landed smoothly on the backside of the pool and began curving with the current.