All day he couldn’t get that fish out of his head.
During his morning walk along the stream he heard the biggest trout in five years rise and pull a large fly from the surface. It was the sound of it he couldn’t stop thinking about. Almost a gurgle. Not a pop or a splash like lesser fish, but he heard the sound of the water reverberating in the trout’s cavernous mouth for an instant. A rare experience.
Once home, he cruised through his day’s work, errands, and chores, often wondering what the fish was doing. He made sure to be finished and ready to head back down with his fishing gear during the golden hour when the fish was likeliest to be eating supper.
His work finished and his next day’s work planned in detail, he closed his notebook, stood up, and stretched. Before he could even lower his arms, his dog picked up on his energy. Even though late afternoon hikes were rare, she knew they were in for an adventure and stood looking up at him wagging her tail, each breath causing just the slightest whine.
He smiled, grabbed her behind the ears and said, “Listen Kiddo, I’m going after that trout we heard this morning, so I need you to be a good girl. A quiet girl. And today, you must listen to me. Ok?”
She understood not the words but the exact sentiment. The man kissed her between her eyes, grabbed his fishing rod, vest, & hip waders and slid out the door behind her.
As he walked along the path he’d mown through the tall grass, he smiled at Kiddo, who was sprinting in zig zags and hopping through the tall grass and wildflowers, chasing a scent here, perking her ears at a sound there, completely immersed in each moment with razor sharp focus. The man reflected upon the fact that he too had been immersed in the moment watching his dog, having temporarily forgotten the purpose of their excursion.
They exited the field and entered the pine forest adjacent to the stream. Old, eighty foot pines swayed in the breeze that whistled through its branches. There’s no sound quite like it. And the layer of fallen pine needles coating the ground felt like a thick carpet underfoot. It smelled like Christmas, the man thought to himself, and he hoped that Nature had a nice gift for him that day.
A second after the stream came into view, the man saw his dog lying down in the water, tongue hanging out and bobbing with each huff, the corners of her mouth turned upward into big smile. He wondered if any creature on Earth had ever been as happy as she was right then.
As always they crossed the stream in the shallowest spot. There was a worn path on the river rocks where the moss had been scraped away by many such crossings. A crawfish clapped its tail and scurried away from them as they approached.
They took a right and walked downstream on the footpath for half a mile. It was an unseasonably warm day in the middle of October, the perfect temperature where either a t-shirt or light sweatshirt is equally comfortable. Each day the footpath accumulated more and more acorns that missed their target of the fertile soil adjacent to the path, and so were destined to become more packed dirt, which was fine by them as they’d eventually break down into nutrients and feed the very trees from which they fell.
Occasionally a gust of wind would separate a few acorns from branches overhanging the stream and they’d plop into the water, spooking the fish below, and making the man hesitate involuntarily. Within a quarter of a second of the sound waves reaching his ears he knew it was not the sound of a fish, but in that first quarter second his brain had not yet analyzed the data, so he almost imperceptibly reacted to each of the dozen plops.
About two hundred yards before the pool where the man saw the trout that morning, he veered left off the path to distance himself from the stream to be as stealthy as possible.
As soon as he sat on an old log to prepare his fishing gear, Kiddo stopped and looked back at him, then sat facing him. Long before they even left the house the man had already decided on a micro crankbait made for panfish. It had a white belly, a dark green back, textured, reflective sides, and a single small treble hook hanging from the bottom. He tied it to the eight feet of six pound test flourocarbon leader which was attached to eight pound test bright yellow braid housed in a Shimano Stradic 1000 series reel on a St. Croix 7’1″ light power fast action rod. The setup was an absolute pleasure to fish, and when he worked that little lure just right, a slow pull, a couple twitches so tiny that the lure barely shook, then a harder twitch, a pause, and another long pull, no fish was capable of distinguishing it from a real, injured minnow, which is an irresistible treat, even with a full belly.
“Stay behind me and keep quiet,” he whispered as he stood up and made his way back toward the stream. He was fifty yards below where he’d seen the fish, and he crept into the stream in slow motion, pupils dilated, watching the water with the same level of focus Kiddo had had in the field.
“Stay there,” he said under his breath just loud enough for her to hear, with his palm pushing back at her, his eyes still on the stream. She sat and transitioned to breathing through her nose.
He waded carefully on the shallow, sandy part of the bottom because the sound of rocks knocking each other travels fast and far underwater. No surface activity yet. He paused and made a cast to the opposite bank where a brook emptied into the stream, keeping the lure just above the water with speed then slowing the uncoiling line expertly with his left hand so the little lure made only the same splash it would have made if dropped into the water from two inches high. He started a slow pull and immediately got a strike, but within one second he knew it wasn’t his fish, or even a trout, but just a tiny four inch bluegill. He quickly reeled in the fish, skimming it to him along the surface. Holding the hook with his pliers, he brought the little guy up to his face, appreciated for a few seconds the colors, shape, and perfect health of the specimen. “Thanks little buddy. Stay safe out there,” he said as he turned the hook upside down and released the fish.
Kiddo hadn’t moved although her ears were perked as she watched the show.
The man regrouped and began to scan the water again as he continued walking upstream in the sand. He stopped mid-step when he saw a rise thirty yards ahead. It was itself a small rise, but what immediately spiked his adrenaline was the swirl that accompanied the rise two feet behind it. That was his fish. The swirl was her tail giving a single downward kick to return her to the spot behind the small boulder to swallow her bug. The man knew the pool well, he knew the boulder, but he still made an automatic mental note of where exactly the trout broke the surface.
“You moved up a pool, huh, you sneaky bitch?” he said lovingly to his prey. She was as yet completely oblivious to his presence, although her lizard brain gave her the faintest flash of unease, though too mild and quick to change her behavior.
He knew exactly where his fish was, and he knew the spot where he needed to go to be in the ideal position to trick her. There was a mini beach ten yards ahead, clear enough from trees to make a good backhand cast where he needed to. He turned slowly and crept downstream, away from his target. Stealth was his number one priority. Fish don’t get that big and old without an extreme sense of caution built into their DNA, plus a lot of experience and probably some incomprehensible dose of Universal Luck.
Kiddo was puzzled by the man’s actions and cocked her head to the right as she watched him approach. “You’re being such a good girl. It’ll all be over in a few minutes sweetie.” She felt his adrenaline spiked aura but channeled the energy she received into extreme obedience instead of rambunctiousness. She really, truly was a good girl.
The man arrived at the mini beach, Kiddo perched right behind him, and instead of risking the noise of entering the water, he stayed where he was, let out a little over six feet of line so the lure hung straight down to the reel. He held the top of the lure between his left thumb and forefinger, lowered the rod tip, and waited for another rise while he recalibrated the situation.
Not fifteen seconds later, the fish rose again, lazily inhaling a caddis, and the man saw the full silhouette of her body. “Hooooly shit,” he uttered, and felt a strong sense of nervousness in the form of tingles in his upper back. With his mind he moved the tingles to a single point between his eyes, three inches behind his forehead, and his intuition told him to give the fish five seconds to regroup before he made his cast. He used three of those seconds to look back at Kiddo and give her a wink. Her front paws were trembling with excited energy.
Two…one…he released the lure, raised the rod and released the line, sending the lure ten feet past the boulder and ten feet upstream of it. A long pull to get the lure to depth, and he took the little ball of energy from behind his forehead, closed his eyes, and transported it into the lure. He became the lure. He gave the rod another smaller pull to get the lure directly in front of the boulder, five feet away, and he let it drift with the current until it was just in front of it, then started twitching it lightly. In his mind he was an injured minnow, and as he twitched past the boulder and saw the giant trout hugging the bottom, the trout also noticed him, her right eye shifting up, her body still. A tense pause in the twitching as their eyes met, then a long, fast pull, and as the minnow tried to escape, the trout turned and with a few fast shakes of her tail she was inches away. The minnow paused and the trout instinctively opened her mouth and inhaled what she thought was an extremely easy ending to her hunt for a full belly. The man pulled his rod sharply at a downward angle to set the hook, and for a split second since the fish didn’t budge, he questioned whether or not he had hooked into a sunken log or some other debris.
His doubt was quickly vanquished when the fish, now realizing it was in a life or death struggle, shook her head violently, shaking the tip of the man’s fishing rod six inches back and forth. The St. Croix danced expertly and absorbed the shock just as its engineers had intended. Rarely in this world does a trout fisherman feel that kind of headshake.
Her first jump, clear out of the water, revealed that she was a rainbow, much feistier than her cousin the brown trout. She soared through a ray of sunlight which reflected pink into the man’s very soul. Every unit of his focus was on the fight and the illusion of time disappeared altogether. Kiddo was hopping around on the bank, parallel with the fish, whining and yelping occasionally.
The fish did a u-turn and raced downstream, pulling drag for a full seven seconds. His reel had never felt that kind of speed and power. It felt good.
Another jump, not as energetic as the first, another u-turn and drag run upstream, then she went to the bottom and turned into a sideways door. As he smoothly but forcefully pumped the rod to pull the fish closer, the drag clicked slowly under duress. Pump, reel, four times, and the trout, a full minute into the battle, started to lose hope.
As he gradually finessed the fish into the shallow, sandy water, he realized he’d forgotten his net. “I guess we’ll do it the old-fashioned way. Kiddo, STAY!” With his tone he was trying to fake himself out and convince himself he was okay, but the prospect of losing the fish at this point was too painful to imagine, and the absence of a net tripled its probability.
Right as he felt ready to grab the leader to guide his catch to shore, Kiddo lost all self control and hopped through the water toward the fish, who was spooked out of her fatigue and sped off upstream with another big jump and drag run. “Kiddo you stupid bitch! BAD GIRL!” he yelled as he pushed her away with his leg and refocused on the fight he had thought was over. Unbeknownst to him, the lure had detached from the trout’s left lip and luckily hooked the right lip on its way out of her mouth. With a depth of anger in his voice she hadn’t heard in years, Kiddo felt ashamed and regained control and sat on the bank once again, head lowered but eyes intent on the man’s fish, who had now definitely used up the last of her adrenaline-fueled energy, and only occasionally struggled as a formality. He pulled the rod behind him with his right hand drawing the glorious fish closer, grabbed the leader three feet above the lure, put the butt of the rod in his right armpit and cradled her belly easing her to shore. He was ready in every instant to drop everything and grab the fish with a death grip should the hook detach, but it wasn’t necessary.
Kiddo’s shame replaced once again with excitement, she tapped her front feet but stayed put as the man moved the fish past her out of the river.
The man knew he had won when he got the fish over land. There was no escape now. His blood pressure dropped and all of the pent up nerves released and his whole body shook involuntarily. As he grabbed his prize around the tail with his left hand, his right hand still under her belly, she shook half-heartedly and the lure dropped out of her mouth. He knelt down and held her out. “Whaddaya think, Kiddo?” She sniffed the fish and gave it a quick taste. “Sorry I yelled at you before sweetheart,” the man said. “Sorry I lost control,” Kiddo said with her eyes.
He looked into the fish’s right eye then up and down her plump, flawless body. Twenty-four inch, seven pound trout are often all beat up and have hooked jaws, but this one was flawless and proportionate. The pink on her gills and down her lateral line had an almost neon quality to it, her thousand black spots like as many mysteries, and her bottom fins had an orange tint, which he’d never seen on a rainbow trout. “I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you,” he said to the fish. “Thanks for the fight, for everything. For your life.” He closed his eyes and said quietly, “All glory to God.” He never prayed for good fishing but always gave thanks when it was good, and usually even when it wasn’t.
He forgot his stringer along with his net but found a perfect stick: dried out and lightweight with a strong eight inch branch protruding at a thirty degree angle. He slid the branch up through the gills, out the mouth, holding the fatter main branch just above the fish’s head, and started to make his way home.
The long day of anticipation, the perfection of his execution, the weather, everything about the whole experience was so perfect, even the dramatic end to the fight. He reflected on the fact that maybe nothing he ever did again would go so perfectly, and felt a deep sense of gratitude. He didn’t realize it, but he was emitting a sphere of powerful gratitude energy twenty feet all around him. The trees felt it and moved toward him slightly as he walked past. Their roots under the path soaked it in.
Kiddo’s excitement had waned and she walked next to the man, matching his pace, no longer actively hunting but lazily sniffing here and there as they walked. In her mind, even though the man did all the work, she’d had a successful hunt. She looked over at her fish often.
Unbeknownst to the pair, the man’s wife was waiting for them in the living room window with her old camera with the telephoto lens. As they made their way up the hill toward the house, the late afternoon sunlight lit them up, and the woman snapped a single photo.
It showed a proud, happy man holding a big, beautiful trout on a stick, the fish reflecting the sunlight, against the shaded dark green backdrop of the pine forest. He appeared to gaze directly at the camera but somehow it was also clear he didn’t know his photo was being taken. The light, whispy fur of his loyal companion shined bright like a halo, her mouth open and smiling, tongue lolling. It was a perfect moment after a perfect catch.
The woman had the photo professionally printed and framed and it graced a prominent wall in their home for the next forty years. It was an icon in their family. When the man’s wife passed away less than a year after he did, their eldest grandson, who was ten, inherited it. It occupied a prominent place in his bedroom, then his home. He gazed upon it tens of thousands of times over the following seventy-five years. And it was the very last thing his old eyes saw as they closed for the last time.