Growing Gills

by David Joy

  “It’s a family tradition,” the other man replies.

  After laughing at the idea of fish STDs, I thought about that brief conversation and about what kissing fish meant to me. I realized, that at some point, it had become more than just habit or tradition. Kissing fish had become more intimate than that.

  Looking back, I think I can pinpoint the change to the moment Zac made me kiss my first native trout. When I held that beautiful brook trout, something inside of me evolved. That trout wasn’t just another fish on the totem—it was an animal whose heritage had survived here for millennia. That fish was one of the few things unchanged by time and the inevitable influence of man. Now when I hold a trout, especially the first of the season, I take in every speck of color and am careful not to hold it too long. After I’ve marveled at its beauty, I kneel down and kiss the fish out of respect for what it is, and then I release it back into its world. I’m blessed to share a moment with something so magnificent, and that little peck on the nose has become my way of saying thank you.

  The father of my ritual, Jimmy Houston, was asked in a New York Times interview whether he had ever kissed any of the fish that he later cooked. His response was simply, “If you was to kiss a fish, put it in the livewell and take it home and eat it—well, that would be like cheating on your wife.” I tend to agree. At this point in my life, I’ve kissed more fish than I have women, and being with the woman I plan to marry, I doubt that will ever change. The ritual has transcended its humble beginnings. The ritual reiterates respect.

  *****

  As we moved further up the stream, I held back a limb of rhododendron that overhung the creek so that the bent branch wouldn’t slap Greg in the face. He’d yet to make a first cast, but I could see in his eye that he was picking his seam. Greg pointed and began to ask, but I just nodded. I stayed back as he crept toward a nice run. He made his cast, the flick of the wrist off just enough to make the fly miss its mark. Greg tried again, and this time the fly landed closer but caught the current and quickly shot downstream. He lifted the fly from the water and rolled the line straight over; the 5-weight rod was parallel to the stream as he straightened his arm and dropped the Parachute Adams onto the inside.

  A small native appeared from beneath the ripples, rose to the dry, and took the offering back to its lair. Greg lifted the rod, a delayed reaction, and the fly came back through the surface with no sign of a fish. I almost explained he’d been a little late, that he should raise the rod as soon as the fish rolls over the fly, but his eagerness to recast made it obvious that he recognized his mistake. He dropped the fly directly into the same seam, but nothing stirred. The fish had been spooked and we moved on.

  I decided not to cast again until Greg hooked into a fish, so I stayed behind, let Greg take point up the creek, and watched as he maneuvered toward his next pocket. A small eddy circled around the left side of a large piece of quartz. The white stone had a hazy yellow hue where it came out of the water, and a mix of dirt and tiny mossy patches darkened the top of the rock. He didn’t point this time, sure of his line, no need to ask for my approval.

  Greg dropped the Adams right into the center of the swirling eddy, and as the dry fly circled, a fish rolled on the bottom and sucked in the submerged nymph. The Adams shot underwater and Greg lifted the rod. He had hooked his first true native trout, a landmark in all fly-fishing careers and a huge feat for his first time holding a fly rod. I had taken Greg to that creek because I knew he’d have a lot of chances to hook fish, but hooking up on his second bite boggled me. Needless to say, he took to the game quickly. Greg brought the fish toward him, knelt on the rocky bank, wet his hand as I’d told him, and grabbed the native brook trout. He unhooked the Appalachian marvel and held the gorgeous fish stretched out across his palm.

  “That’s a damn nice fish!” I said proudly. Greg didn’t respond but eyed the beautiful native from tip to tail. This trout was more colorful than my earlier catch, the pectoral fins as red as fall maple leaves. Without my saying a word, he lifted the fish to his lips, his tight pucker as timid as a young boy’s, and pecked the native on its nose. Then he lowered the fish to the current and let it dart back toward the standing quartz. He didn’t say anything afterward, but his silence meant one thing to me: he understood.

  Greg and I took to the water many times after that day, and I never once saw him drop a fish into the stream without first offering a kiss. We became good friends, swapping tales, sharing experiences about the natural world, and growing into men on the water. When I found out Jen was pregnant with their first child, my question was easy: “Is it a boy?” His answer promised one thing—another generation of fishermen. Not to say that a girl couldn’t have meant the same, but these things are generally easier to push onto boys.

  Greg left the mountains and the trout behind soon after Rowan was born. He found a job teaching at Elon University in the North Carolina Piedmont, but I knew of a few good rivers around that part of the state. All I hoped was that one day he would pass on the ritual. I hoped he’d take Rowan to the water, teach him to cast a rod, hook a fish, respect things wild, and kiss trout.

  When Rowan was six months old, Greg and Jen came to visit me. While Greg sat holding Rowan in his arms, he told me about catching a six-pound largemouth bass in Texas the month before. I looked at Rowan’s smiling face and then deep into his curious eyes, the same deep brown as his father’s. The baby’s hands clenched and opened—yearning for a rod, I imagined—and I had no doubt that the ritual would continue.

  The Grass Eater

  Waist-high field grass, overgrown since the cows had been rotated into another pasture, surrounded Johnston Pond. I rarely made it through the thicket without coming out covered in ticks. The shiny arachnids freckled my bare skin like spots on a spaniel; but they rarely got the chance to dig in, feed, and fatten. I was always sure to get them all off immediately when I went home to avoid maternal warnings of Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Ticks tangled themselves in the hairs of my legs every day, but with a pond full of fish, the reward always outweighed the risk.

  For my best friend, Darryl, and me, summer vacation meant one thing—fishing. Every morning the cardinals and chickadees, chirping toward the fiery light growing behind the wooded horizon, marked the time to grab a rod. Like clockwork, I rose out of bed, threw on tattered clothes, snatched up a rod, and headed out the door.

  A red clay path meandered through a thick grove of oaks and hickories toward the pond. The hike produced a sensory overload: honeysuckle wafting on currents of fog, bumblebees weaving through wildflowers, bluebirds ruffling feathers drenched with morning moisture, my feet crushing fallen muscadines half-eaten by coons the night before. Smells mingled, colors blended, and calls and sounds mixed accompaniment. Synesthesia.

  The clay path ended at a rusted barbed-wire fence lining a cow pasture. The splintered fence posts shifted in the dirt and the brittle wires wobbled under my weight as I crossed and dropped into the field grass. The field grass thinned under the shade of water oaks, and the ground, worn bare by heavy hooves, was veined with thick roots and fallen limbs. Once I walked into the shade, the pond came into view, the fog still hovering tightly above the stagnant surface.

  Some mornings Canada geese cut Vs across the pond as they glided like sailboats across the water. Some mornings a great blue heron waded through cattails and pecked minnows from the shallows with its piercing beak. Some mornings chimney swifts sliced air in acrobatic flips just above the surface as they chased one another in avian dogfights. Some mornings a largemouth bass would erupt on a bullfrog kicking across the surface for land. But every morning, I was there, rod in hand, casting for fish, and praying for the big one.

  If Darryl wasn’t standing on the bank when I arrived, I knew that he would come within an hour. Then, the rest of the day, we would cut jokes from opposite banks, show off our catches, yell our interpretations of the ones that got away, and go home satisfied. At twelve years old, there was nothin
g else. Fishing was life.

  *****

  In many ways the fish that get away are more satisfying than the twenty-inch trout that occasionally take the fly. The ones that never make it fully to hand show themselves like frightened ghosts, only for an instant and then are gone. They are fading glimpses, so brief that I often wonder if what I have seen even existed. I feel the pull, see the shimmering body flash in the dark water, smell the flesh as the tail slaps the surface, and then nothing. These are the fish that grow twelve inches by the time the story is told, the fish that lead to tales of Volkswagen-size catfish swimming below a dam, the fish that rip drag, break rods, shatter egos, and never look back. These fish are the reason that I trim my line, tie on a new hook, and cast again.

  *****

  Few bodies of water have had a line break their surface without stories of a fish of mythic proportion finning through the darkness. For Ahab, it was the white whale. For the characters in Grumpy Old Men II, it was Catfish Hunter. For me, in Johnston Pond, it was the grass eater.

  I can’t remember the first time I saw that fish, but I do remember that originally there were two grass carp chomping algae along the swampy bank. Both carp had been plopped into the pond to try to take care of the encroaching vegetation springing from hot days, stagnant water, and manure-rich mud. The fish certainly did their job, trimming the hydrilla like piscine weed whackers, and I watched, mesmerized by the sheer size of those monsters. Eventually one of them must have died because they no longer swam together. The carp that was left moved just below the surface like a shallow running submarine. From a distance the fish was a dark spot creeping around the pond and staying just high enough in the water column to remain visible—up close was another story.

  When I was stealthy enough to move through the field grass and get close to where the fish was feeding, I was able to see every detail of the carp’s huge body: the gray snout protruding through the surface; its fat lips sucking in weeds like an infant mouthing a pacifier; its bulging eyes the size of doorknobs; the fanning pectoral fins sweeping the stagnant water; scales as big as fifty-cent pieces rowed down the thick sides making fishnet lines across the golden body; its waving tail unsettling the bottom and creating clouds of mud that darkened the water. As soon as the carp saw me, the water would explode as the fish pivoted and disappeared into the murk.

  I stood on the banks of Johnston Pond and scanned the still water every day for that fish. On hot summer days I saw its feeding lips spread ripples as the carp slurped algae from lily pads. In the fall I watched its thick silhouette slowly slide under red, yellow, and orange leaves, flames floating across the sea green surface. Early on cold winter mornings I saw the giant carp feeding on the stalks of dead watergrass under a paper-thin layer of ice. Year round I stared at the carp moving slowly through the shallow pond, and I knew that it was unmistakably the master of its domain. Whereas every other fish swimming in Johnston Pond was forced to stay alert to predators (minnows dodging herons and bream, bream darting from turtles and bass, bass running from other bass and me), the carp had no predator. The fish was three feet long and easily weighed twenty-five pounds. The carp was a tank in a battlefield of foot soldiers, king by sheer size, legendary, and I wanted to hook it.

  *****

  I don’t know of any instance that can destroy a fisherman’s vocabulary faster, instantly reverting him to monosyllabic cursing, than when he watches a trophy fish break free and disappear into the darkness. Those moments, more crushing than finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real, flip emotions in a heartbeat. Riding an adrenal high, the fisherman stares down at the monster fish slowly coming closer to the net, the fisherman’s intense yearning working like psychic control to draw the object closer and closer. Then in one quick snap, all is lost, hearts drop into stomachs, posture melts into a puddle of wax, and all that is left are archaic words like Fuck! Shit! Bitch! Damn! Ass! and Hell!—often turned into one continual exclamation.

  In spite of that, I live for these moments. The single thing that holds me waist-deep in rushing water and casting chicken feathers at invisible trout are the ones that got away. If every fish were landed, I wouldn’t have reason to go back. Perfection means an end has been reached and that nothing can possibly be bettered. The firecracker pop of tippet is an instant reminder that while I am good and always getting better, no matter what I do, I’ll never be perfect, and the fish will swim on.

  *****

  Stalks of cattail swayed over Darryl’s head like Maduro cigars leaning back and forth in the wind. He was trying to cast a balsa wood Bass Popper along the edge of a lily pad bed, but most of the time the hook ripped into the birch leaves on the backcast. I watched as he sneaked a cast through a break in the vegetation and shot the massive fly onto the surface. With each strip, the sound of the popper, similar to a small pebble dropped into a glass of water, resonated across the pond and the silicon legs pushed ripples like the steps of a water strider.

  I’d known Darryl since kindergarten, when he moved onto the only other street in my neighborhood. His folks were both from New York, but he adopted the southern dialect pretty quickly. He was shorter than I, with small, toned muscles. We’d fished every speck of water around our homes, but Johnston Pond was our hideaway where in summertime we’d sneak warm beers and stolen cigarettes to the pond to enjoy brief glimpses of “adult” life between casts.

  That day in June, I heard a fish slash out from across the pond toward the popper, saw Darryl set the hook, and watched as he reeled in a hand-size bluegill. The bluegill was a nice fish, a decent fight on a limber fly rod, but we knew bigger fish moved under the algae.

  I stood under the branches of a thick white oak, a bent NO TRESPASSING sign scattered with buckshot nailed into the bark. I tied on a Black Gnat with silver tinsel ribbing the body. By the time I cinched the knot, Darryl was reeling in another fish. This time a thirteen-inch largemouth was tearing through the water and slinging tangled hydrilla off the leader.

  I grabbed my line three or four inches above the dangling fly and held the Black Gnat under water. The dubbing and hackle soaked up pond water, which made the fly sink faster on the first cast. I flipped the fly into the corner of the pond, a spot shaded constantly by the white oak, and watched as the Black Gnat slowly descended beside a sunken tree stump. A dark silhouette rose through the hazy green water. The sinking fly converged with the silhouette, the floating line pulsed forward, and a fish was hooked.

  I didn’t have enough line out for a fight, so I raised the rod to lift a small green sunfish out of the water and into my hand. The fish’s olive back was a mirror image of the pond’s foggy water. A blackened orange colored the fish’s belly, exactly the same shade as the sunlight being filtered through the water. The sun, over 96,000,000 miles from earth, appeared on the fish’s belly. The green sunfish had been perfectly camouflaged in Johnston Pond, and I wondered if the pigments would change if the fish were suddenly dropped into another body of water. I unhooked the wet fly from the jaw and plopped the fish back in the water. Bream were bedding beside the sunken tree stump, so I knew it wouldn’t be long before another one snatched up my fly.

  I flipped another cast and readied myself as the Gnat slowly fell into the darkness. Nothing bit. I tried again. Nothing bit, and I soon figured that a snapping turtle had probably come into the shallows and spooked the bedding bream. Instead of moving to another spot, I flicked the fly once more into the pond. A huge outline came up from the bottom like a sunken log finally freed from sediment. The dark silhouette was the grass carp and it was eying the Black Gnat!

  As the carp opened its gills, it sucked the fly into its mouth and I yanked. The carp, startled by the prick and onset of tension, took off toward the middle of the pond and ripped drag off the Medalist reel. The trophy I had been after for so long was on the line! All that was left was to play it smart, let the fish run, and slowly tire the beast.

  With a giant fish on the line, the instinct is always the same—get the ba
stard to hand as quickly as possible. There’s one problem with this plan—big fish will exploit the smallest flaw in equipment: tight drag, a nick in the line, a loose knot, a brittle hook. In order to hook and land big fish, every detail must be played to perfection.

  When patience and fishing are associated, generally patience refers to waiting for a fish to bite; however, the patience it takes to wait for a fish is incomparable to what it takes to land big ones. If the fish wants to run, then it has to be allowed to run. Sometimes I’ve gained ten yards of line only to have a trout tear off thirty yards on a run downstream. Two steps forward, three steps back. Being unwilling to slowly wear a fish down almost always leads to a freed fish. In time, I’ve learned not to muscle a fish, to let the fish do what it does, and to rely on my equipment to slowly tire the fish out. If a big fish wants to run, I let it run. If a big fish wants to swim straight at me, I strip in line as fast as I can to keep up. If a big fish tries to swim toward thick cover, I turn the rod and try to pressure the fish into swimming in another direction. What I try not to do is horse a fish in, but that’s not to say I’ve always been this composed.

  *****

  “Darryl! I got him!” I yelled across the still, green water, my voice echoing off the softwoods surrounding the pond.

  “Got what?”

  “I got him! I’ve got the carp!”

  Darryl wound in his line stretched out on top of the water, the olive green floating line disappearing from the surface and back onto his battered reel. He tried to come quickly, but he was standing in thick, boggy mud as black as wet coal, making each step a battle just to pull his shoes through the muck. He wove through the cattails and onto the leafy bank with one shoe still on and a muddy sock on the other foot. He had lost a sneaker in the dense mud, but, regardless, he was on his way across the log bridge and around the pond.