Growing Gills

by David Joy

  “Be easy on him. Don’t horse him. Be easy on him,” Darryl yelled as he finally got to where I was standing. I couldn’t speak because I was paying so much attention to fighting the fish. The carp moved across the pond and swam toward a tiny island covered with field grass and one blooming dogwood that scattered pink petals across the surface as a subtle wind blew from the south. Knowing if the carp made it around the island it would most likely break free, I turned the rod low in the opposite direction of the fish’s path to try to pressure it away, but the attempt was useless. The fish moved steadily, pulling line off the reel, quickly inching toward the backing.

  As the fish curved around the far edge of the island, I was sure I would lose it, so I let off the pressure and allowed the carp to swim freely. Unexpectedly, the fish turned and moved back around the island into open water. I put pressure on the carp, reeled the monster toward me, and sidestepped to an opening on the bank where there wasn’t any grass lining the water. The shallow opening was dense with gray mud, worn bare by hooves and weight as the cows had entered the pond to cool off from the hot summer sun. I thought that I would have a better chance of beaching the carp than reeling it to a steep bank and having to lift it. Assuming I ever got the carp close, I knew the gradual rise to the bank could provide a perfect place to beach the beast.

  The monster moved closer as I continued to reel it toward the bank. The carp was within twenty feet, but at any moment the fish might spook and tear off line. I reeled the carp closer and closer, and the leader came into sight. I back-stepped up the bank, my movement altering my reflection on the surface of the pond, the change startling the carp. The fish took off for deeper water, with each stroke of its tail ripping line off the reel.

  “You almost had him,” Darryl said, standing over my shoulder, watching my every move.

  “If I get him close again, get in the water and grab him.”

  “All right.”

  The carp was sharking back and forth across the middle of the pond. I began lightly reeling in again, trying to inch the big fish closer. Slowly but surely, the carp came toward the bank. Darryl started moving closer to the water and prepared to wrap his arms around the scaly body of the carp. The fish was nearing range and again the leader became visible, but the fish still swam too deep to be seen.

  Darryl took off his remaining shoe and both socks and tiptoed through the clay toward the shallow water. The gray mud squished between his toes as he entered the pond. His footsteps brought bubbles and a cloud of sediment to the surface. Darryl bent his knees, lowering his body toward the clouded water. With dirty khakis rolled up his calves, he stretched his arms over the surface and prepared to grab the fish. The carp came within reach and Darryl shot toward it. With the first sign of movement, the carp thrashed in the shallow water, the drag screaming as the fish pulled back into the deep. Darryl’s white undershirt was splattered with muddy water, and he wiped the splash from his face with his forearm.

  “Almost.” I tried to encourage him, hoping he wouldn’t give up.

  “As soon as that bastard saw me, he was gone. That fish is spooky as hell.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll just keep working him in till he gets tired. We’ll get him.”

  The truth was I probably couldn’t tire that fish out. I was fishing with my first fly rod. Now, it was a good rod to learn the basics on, but the drag system had not been designed for wearing down big fish. In fact, the drag system couldn’t be tightened at all, and the way that the reel had been constructed made it nearly impossible to palm drag the spool. I knew the fish wasn’t being worn down by my reel. The carp continued to casually swim close, following the little tension my rod could provide; yet, as soon as it sensed movement or saw us, it swam off. I was hooked onto a freight train with nothing holding us together but a spool of thread. Something was bound to go wrong.

  Knowing the fish kept getting spooked by our presence, I started stepping backward into the field grass. I used my steps to provide tension while I held the reel handle firm, not allowing any line to be pulled from the spool. Again the carp moved closer. This time Darryl was standing sideways along the outside edge of the shallow. He stood out of the fish’s path, giving the carp a free run into the muddy bank. As I continued to step backwards, the carp came into view. The fish’s thick back broke the surface. Its giant scales finally exposed, Darryl and I saw exactly how big the fish was. With the carp wallowing, its belly pushing through the soft clay, its fanned-out tail slapping water across the surface; Darryl moved behind the beast and tried to trap it. Instantly the carp turned, shot toward deeper water, and ran through Darryl’s straddling legs. The 8-pound leader snapped across the crotch of Darryl’s khakis and the carp was free.

  Darryl stared at me, dumbfounded. He probably felt responsible for the lost fish, but that carp was at least three feet long and weighed a good thirty pounds. On 8-pound test with a cheap reel and no drag, I was lucky to have fought the fish as long as I did.

  “Shit!” Darryl yelled, voicing the exact emotion that was going through my head.

  “I don’t think there was a damn thing we could have done differently,” Darryl added, baffled.

  “No. We never stood a chance in hell.”

  Darryl stepped out of the clouded water, his legs covered in gray clay. From the knees down, he looked like a statue, his calves, ankles, and feet completely covered in the soft pond mud. He shook the water from his arms and wiped his muddy hands across his pants. I reeled in the line completely, broken leader wound loosely onto the cheap fly reel. I had no need to re-tie. I was going home.

  Darryl picked up his rod and walked along the dusty trail back around the pond toward the fishing hole he had left when he came to help. He was carrying one sneaker and two balled-up, mud-covered socks in one hand and a limber fly rod in the other. Darryl watched the ground, and grasshoppers shot from stalks as he brushed past. Cutting through the cattails and readying another cast, he looked more disappointed than I did. “I’m going home!” I yelled as Darryl shot his line toward the lily pads.

  On the way back I took my time and walked slowly through the field. Mr. Johnston, the owner of the farm and the pond, was baling hay in the neighboring pasture. A lone crow cawed from atop a rusted plow in the middle of the cow pen. I climbed the wobbly barbed-wire fence and crossed into the thicket of trees. I stopped along the red clay path and picked muscadines from a vine tangled in the low limbs of a water oak. The sweet taste of grapes cleared my dried mouth, but the feeling of losing that fish was still sour.

  Although I was disappointed, maybe even heartbroken, I think that losing that fish was part of the reason I cast to that carp for years after. Pitting my instinct against that of a monster was what fishing became. The battle was a primal competition between species, and my adversary had beaten me. I knew that water like the back of my hand and thought my knowledge would land the fish, but the carp knew Johnston Pond in a way I never could. Pictures of trophies fill my photo albums, but memories of lost fish haunt my dreams.

  The next day I went back with a fresh fly knotted to a new leader and tried again. I never hooked the carp a second time, but the chance that I might kept me casting.

  Floating Toward Humility

  The height of the fall spawn showed in the brightness of the maples, the chill in the air, and the crimson pectoral fins that shot upstream as I sloshed through the creek. I waited for these days all year, the moments when brook trout exploded into vibrancy, the times when every shade became as vivid as wet oil paints. At best it would last two, maybe three, weeks. Then the brown color would set in, the leaves would wilt and fall, the natives would dull, and the trees would become skeletons of themselves. For now, the fish were there, I was ready, and all that separated us was a thin strip of tippet and a Royal Coachman.

  The year before, I’d found a pod of spawners in the headwaters of Moses Creek. Zac and I had fished the creek from bottom to top and finally found fish at the day’s end. A twenty-foot waterfall casc
aded down a slender cliff face and a large open pool gathered beneath the plunge. The pool was as far as the trout could run upstream to spawn, and it seemed that every native in the creek had made the journey. Beds lined the sandy edges outside eddies, sex-driven brookies jolted around the beds, and other trouts’ curving bodies were stacked in the deeper water of the main flow. We hooked at least twenty fish before we climbed a wet grapevine up the falls and found little more than a shallow trickle of the creek remaining. A few days later the fish were gone, ghosts until the next year. Now the time had come and I was back. I hiked two miles up the red clay logging road and tromped through shallows to get to good water. Ignoring likely runs and gorgeous pocket water, my mind was made up that the fish would be at the top again. I had absolutely no use for wasting time on the small water when the trout had gathered in the last hole.

  My decision was a mistake. As I watched red fins take off through the ripples, I knew the fish had yet to make it all the way up the creek. My reliance on repeating the pattern of the year before had led me past miles of fish, but it was too late now to turn back and start over. I had to fish the remaining creek and hope a couple of trout had migrated to the last pool.

  I’d made one of the biggest blunders that a fisherman can make—faith in repetition. I should have known that just because something works one time, or one day, doesn’t mean it will work again. I’ve cast dry flies to fish that repeatedly rose during a caddis hatch one evening; and when I fished the same stretch the following day, I watched them roll on nymphs during the same hatch until the sun disappeared. That is not to say that I cannot learn from success, but as Heraclitus wrote, “You could not step twice in the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” I should have read the water of that day, but I played out the currents of a year before. Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” and I’d been a fool.

  With little more than a half-mile stretch of creek before the last hole, I found a nice run that looked promising. The shaded current flowed under the stretched boughs of a hemlock, and I had no doubt that somewhere there’d be a fish waiting. I plucked the Royal Coachmen from the cork handle of the 2-weight and rubbed Gink into the hackles. The peacock herl and red floss body shone in the afternoon sun, and I knew it was a nice attractor pattern for the shaded water. I stripped some line, began the false cast, and aimed for the head of the run. The cast had to be tight, but there was enough room to squeeze through the narrow lane outside the hemlock branches. I made the cast, and as the line shot forward, a slight turn of the wrist directed the fly into the tree. The tippet wrapped a few times around a quivering branch, and there was no use jerking. I would have to go get it.

  I stepped toward the entangled branch—the tippet wrapping the fresh growth like spider web—and watched as a nice-size native swam from my encroaching footsteps. The trout had lain right where I thought, but a mistake on the cast had ruined my shot. Second chances were out of the question with these fish. I flipped the fly around the limb, the Coachmen fell to the water, and I stumbled back to the bank. With fly in hand, the crimped tippet stretched near breaking, I knew I’d have to re-tie. I plopped down onto the bank, cursed to myself, and bit through the ruined tippet. The mishap meant more time lost on a day when the sun was sinking fast, and I’d yet to even see a fish rise.

  Around the forest floor where I sat, shining buckeyes were scattered like a game of marbles. I looked up into the outstretched arms of an Ohio buckeye, towering at least fifty feet. The needle-covered seed casings lay shriveled around the trunk, and the freed seeds had rolled away from the tree’s base. I remembered my grandfather always carrying a buckeye in his pocket for luck and thought, what the hell…it couldn’t hurt. I found a fat, auburn-colored seed with a big, tan eye along the bottom, made a socket with my thumb and index finger, and cradling the seed inside, I saw where it had gotten its name. I knew the seeds were poisonous and that the Cherokee had floated them in pools for generations in these waters to stun trout. As I dropped the buckeye into the mesh pocket of my fly vest, all I hoped was that it could bring me at least one fish. I prayed that luck could fix my mistake.

  I didn’t have time to dawdle, and, with a new piece of tippet and the fly re-tied, I stepped back onto the logging road. A half mile of trail led to the hole, and my only hope was that the fading light would grant me a few casts to a native brook trout. The Coachman hadn’t even touched water yet, but one fish dressed up for the spawn would bring a happy end to an otherwise unfortunate trip.

  Hearing the sound of water crashing on rock, I ducked beneath a thick tangle of rhododendron blocking the view of the falls and finally saw the hole. Sunlight still touched the creek’s edge, and I was happy that I’d made it in time. I walked forward, stopping on a long slab of limestone to stay far enough back from the pool. I knelt down, scoped the water, and looked for movement beneath the surface. Instantly, I saw a lone native reposition itself on the sandy shallow.

  I took the Royal Coachman into my fingers and stripped some line off the Fly Logic reel, the drag clicking as I pulled. I checked around me, unwilling to snag any branch on the backcast, and saw that the only tree posing a threat was a thin paper birch fifteen feet behind. I repositioned myself on the limestone so that the line would miss the limbs and began the rhythm. As soon as I lifted the rod, graphite slapped wood and leaves, and the overhanging limb shook from the impact. The trout vanished into the bubbling waterfall, and my final shot was gone as fast as it appeared.

  “Son of a bitch!” My yell echoed off the granite cliff face. I’d looked everywhere but up, and my mistake had cost me. The smack of rod on limb, the rattle of leaves, and the waving branches of the tree had sounded the starter pistol for the spooked native sitting ready on the blocks. The trout was gone, the sun was dying, no more water to fish, and I hadn’t gotten one drift, let alone a bite. If I’d dreamed it, I would have woken up sweaty and shaking, but at least it wouldn’t have been real. Instead, I was wide awake, pissed off, and headed home with no one to blame but myself. I yanked the rod, ripping the line from the tree, the leader snapping, and the fly left dangling in the dogwood.

  I marched fast down the trail toward the truck like some hopped-up SS infantryman during the Blitz. Usually I walked slowly and tried to suck in every detail, but I was livid. I saw no beauty in the world at that moment, the color of fall leaves only mocking my rage. I got to the pickup, chucked the rod in the bed, didn’t even bother taking off my waders, and spun tires all the way down the gravel road. I threw a grown man hissy fit.

  I know it was immature, but it was a shitty day, a day when nothing had gone right, a slate I’d just as soon wipe clean. They say the sun shines on a dog’s ass every once in a while, but that day I was not that dog, and I sped toward a case of cold beer with the pedal mashed beneath my muddy wading boot. A long time passed before I took anything away from that trip besides a hangover, a scratched reel, and bad memories; but maturity never comes easily.

  *****

  Thinking back on that day, my blood still boils a little, but eventually my heart rate settles and I laugh. The truth is I’ve never learned anything when every cast went perfectly. I seem to learn more about myself during my darkest hours than I ever do during the short-lived seconds of perfection, and as I’ve grown older these are the times I value most.

  Now, my eyes instinctively check every angle before I lift my rod to cast, a habit I wouldn’t have picked up without days spent tangled in trees. That’s not to say that I don’t get mad when I watch a fly wrap high on a limb, but I calm more quickly now.

  Fishing one afternoon with my dad on the Catawba in late fall, I let my anger ruin one of the few moments we got to share on the water anymore. My first five casts wrapped the limbs of a crabapple, and every time I jerked, the line snapped, and my bobber was left bouncing in the tree. Cold rain began pelting the boat and fueled my rage. The scene was like some pastoral elegy for the death of my fishing ability, where the
weather reflected and intensified the emotion. I cursed, stamped, threw the spinning rod into the bottom of the boat, and sucked on a damp cigarette, the tobacco almost too wet to burn. My dad’s age kept him sober, but it wasn’t long before my mood destroyed our day on the river, and we headed home. That day is one of those moments I wish I could take back but can’t—time lost on the water with my father—and all I can do is remember and learn.

  The Royal Coachman still dangles in the dogwood on Moses Creek. Every time I hike back to that pool, the fly’s rusted hook reminds me of the day I lost. The fly hangs around like the rest of my bad memories, but like them all, it has something to teach. Those moments of mistake shatter the illusion of perfection, shock me into realization that there’s still room for improvement, and force me to recognize my humanity. Fishing has become one of my life’s greatest teachers. Humanity is inherently flawed.

  I’ve spent years reading the words of the great philosophers, from Plato to Nietzsche. Though their prose left me awed, their thoughts never taught me as much about life as time spent knee-deep in the water with a fly hung in the hemlocks. Just as soon as my ego grows and my head swells, there always seems to be a tree limb to knock me down a peg. Sure enough, I will make a cast right into the limbs, lose everything, and have to start from scratch. Older now, I try to inhale deeply, use my breathing as meditation, collect myself, accept my imperfections, and re-tie.

  *****

  In early February the recent snowmelt had the Tuckasegee racing high along its banks. Grassy shorelines that had remained yellow, bringing a shot of color to an otherwise dead season, were now bowed beneath the rising current. The memory of a handful of winter browns I’d caught a few weeks earlier brought me back to the icy river again. I’d readied my fly box with midge patterns and tied a couple dozen Zebra Midges and Brassies. The browns had hammered Brassies and Zebras before and I hoped—but did not expect—to find them again.