“Why?”
“Because you’re snoring very loud.”
Each night he took in my claim sleepily and replied, “Oh no, I’m afraid you’re mistaken about that.” And went back to snoring.
AT PRICE’S POOL you climb down a rocky embankment to where the river drops off immediately, then you must wade out among enormous, deeply submerged boulders to get a bit of casting room. At this rather vigorous range you can reach the mixed slick and broken water at the top of a long break in the river. Between your casting position and this ledge are many submerged rocks and an intricate skein of currents and submerged rips. Salmon will hold right out in this hard water; deep, fast, even broken, it is not too much for them, especially these fierce far-northern fish of the Whale.
I worked methodically through the upper part of this water, as methodically as the broken footing allowed. Sometimes it was necessary to wriggle through the current around a chest-high boulder, then to brace myself against it with one hand and somehow manufacture a cast. The Whale seems to particularly favor the riffled hitch, so it’s not just a matter of making a presentation from an awkward place and fishing it out. You have to make sure the fly continues to behave itself, by which I mean proper fly speed.
Of the many views as to how the riffled fly should be fished, I’m certain that finding a personal comfort level is first among equals, comfort level in this case being whatever produces conviction in the angler. I have a clear picture of what I want to see in order to facilitate the feeling that a take is imminent. I want the fly to be breaking the surface in such a way that it pulls a long, narrow, and serpentine V in the water, the effect of a little water snake making its way toward the shore. It does not sparkle along like a mackeral bait; it does not spit water; it does not sink and reappear. Instead, its movement ought to be seductive, which requires mending and back mending, line control to keep it working properly in various current speeds. One of my Whale River companions showed me how on my first trip. Nat demonstrated the whole business on a short line in about ten minutes. Though it’s not all that difficult, it does require a high degree of vigilance over long hours to make the most of it. When fishing is slow and one’s daydreaming escalates, it is sometimes more agreeable to return to the more conventional across-and-down presentation, the metronomic, two-step consumption of the river.
I found myself at the end of Price’s, the end I liked best. Here the fish, having come up through wild white water, pause in currents which have slowed enough to clear, forming a rapid slick. I made a cast and watched the progress of the riffled fly as it swung down and crossed this inviting patch. A salmon surged up under it and stopped without taking the fly. The boil appeared with something of the shape of a large fish visible within it, then opened and rolled into the white water.
Now the slick, until recently one of many spots that offered the mild likeliness of potential holding water throughout the river, was water which specifically held an Atlantic salmon. There was a difference. You feel all your senses training on this bit of moving water. There is a kind of anxiety that comes of knowing an interested fish awaits. The general unlikeliness of good hookups becomes theoretical even before you’ve had a take. You sense that fate has spoken: You asked for it, here it is. There is a slight feeling of dread.
Any tightening or interruption in the track of the fly results in a missed fish. This can be so subtle that I now asked myself if this boil might have been a take I had somehow fouled up. In this kind of fishing, as with fishing waking flies for steelhead, there is sometimes entirely too much visual information during the take. If the fish doesn’t come back, there is reason to assume I have been at fault; if it returns, I’m absolved.
I rested the fish, an interval which for me amounts to a painful refusal to make another cast for as long as I can bear it. Others have borne this same trying experience before me and described the pause as one full cigarette, counting to such-and-such a number, saying rosaries, et cetera. And some good anglers go straight back with the experience-hardened take-it-or-leave-it attitude of tired shopkeepers. No one knows for sure if you should rest the fish. For example, what if the fish moves upriver during the “rest”? All things considered, I think the pause clears the air a bit, freshens the salmon’s mind for another look. When you do resume, there is new pressure to make a good cast and a heightened alertness about what could happen. Once the mend has been made, I hold the rod by my side, sometimes circling thumb and forefinger in front of the grip so that the rod swings freely as it tracks the line. I try not to hold my rod in a striking position in case my resolve gets overpowered by a violent and visible take. I am in no position to make a reactive strike. Few things in life are more painful than taking a fly out of the mouth of a salmon or steelhead, especially, as is sometimes the case, after days of fruitless casting. Suddenly the angler is tired of living. If a fish takes, there will be ample opportunity for the tightening and securing lift. In fast, wild, broken rivers with great races of fish like those of the Whale, things will soon enough be out of control; the angler mustn’t add to that.
I removed the size 6 Rusty Rat, replaced it with a size 8 Green Highlander, and kept the original length of line. Then it was just a matter of a roll, a pickup, and a cast before I was swinging through the slot again. This time the refusal was slow and considered, amazingly so in view of the current speed. I could more clearly see the size of the fish and knew it much bigger than the typical twelve-pound fish of the Whale. While these salmon are not large, their strength is such that they could drag the twenty-pounders of other rivers to death. In this kind of situation, you are aware that you have unsuccessfully played another card and that the number of remaining cards is uncertain but not unlimited. I made another cast with the Green Highlander and saw no sign of the fish.
I took my time tying on another fly, a Black Bear Green Butt, the fly I would fish if I were reduced to a single pattern, another number 8. While smoking down the imaginary cigarette, I thought about our host Stanley Karbosky, a member of Darby’s Rangers who had fought the Nazis virtually hand-to-hand everywhere they went, finally getting machine-gunned himself in Italy. After a long recovery he came to Labrador as a professional explorer. And it was Stanley who discovered the salmon fishery of the Whale. Such thoughts made my fish-resting lull feel both brief and painless.
I had absolute faith, close to a hunch, in the latest change of fly. I tracked it toward the salmon’s lie with hypnotic attention and was expecting the sight of the fish, which came as a leisurely inspection and refusal. The fly trailed on past the fish into the slow water against the bank before I picked it up and held its soggy shape between my thumb and forefinger, feeling that this dismissal was perhaps final. When I tried it again the fish’s nonappearance seemed emphatic.
For the first time in this episode I gave in to impatience and a kind of annoyance at my fortunes, and promptly marched through six more fly changes, all the Rats and a small black General Practitioner, without getting another response. My attempts to engage the mind of this fish to my advantage had failed utterly. Using my own tackle, this simple creature had turned the tables and driven me crazy. When I looked out at the river and imagined beginning another long search for a fish, I was discouraged. So, like an old and chronic sinner gazing into his Bible in hopes of a last-minute reconsideration by God, I once more opened my fly book and peered within. It was a phenomenal mess of used and replaced flies, a week’s worth of arguing with fate, flies once in neat rows now pointing every which way, some with bits of leader still attached or riffle knots embedded at their throats, heads once lacquer bright now milky and dull, hair-and-feather brainstorms from Norway, Russia, Ireland, Iceland, Scotland, and Canada. All I wanted was one fish to bite one fly!