Rejuvenation
December 1, 2004
Long, narrow shadows were creeping across the final days of salmon season like fingers of spilled ink spreading over a page. The bank-side cottonwoods, awash in yellow foliage but a week ago were now mostly bare and their branches shivered in a northerly wind. The end was near and I wished I could will it to speed up.
I had been grinding it out since the middle of June and the salad days were long since passed.
The big schools of salmon that had delighted us for so many weeks were well upriver, either dead and picked clean by stream-side scavengers or in the last throws of spawning. Fresh, shiny kings were few and far between and my last charters of the year hadn’t gone extremely well from a fish in the boat perspective.
On the last day of the season, I had two very excited fellows in my boat – a father and his young son, both of whom had never been salmon fishing before. Their almost giddy enthusiasm contrasted loudly with the sleep-deprived haze in which I was slowly shuffling like so many B-movie zombies. Without a day off in five weeks, I was so far gone that I secretly loathed them for their zeal. How could they be so happy? Didn’t they know it was a stupid idea to come out so late in the season when there were no fish around? Weren’t they aware of how rude it was to prolong a guy’s agony for one more day? Why couldn’t they just go home and leave a weary, grumpy guide alone?
Apparently, I had lost the entire essence of fishing and forgotten why I originally started doing the job I do.
Content with just getting through the day, I spoke only when necessary. I had not the energy to bust out my usual bag of yarns, jokes and antidotes that I normally used to fill the time between bites. All I could think about was getting home and sleeping for about a week straight. To that end, I wasn’t particularly disappointed when the early morning bite – traditionally the best time to hook a salmon – passed us by without incident. By 2 p.m., we had solicited not a lick of interest from the fish and we had yet to even see one jump. Things weren’t looking good, but I didn’t care – the finish line was in sight.
We continued to swim baits and lures through holes that had once been kegged with salmon, but it seemed as if there wasn’t a fish in the river now. As the late autumn sun dropped onto the jagged tips of the cottonwoods, it burst like the juicy yoke of a fried egg and a brilliant yellow-orange color ran across the distant horizon. A late departure of south-bound geese barked in the distance and doe and fawn cautiously came down to the water’s edge for a drink. The evening grew calm, and with only a few minutes left in a very long season, I felt strangely like I didn’t want it all to end.
Just before darkness fell, the kid’s rod bucked wildly. I rubbed my eyes twice to make sure it was not some hallucination, induced by too many hours on the water. Vision clear, I saw that the long black graphite shaft was still bent nearly in half.
Fis…
I tried to blurt out those two magical words an angler never grows tired of – fish on – but the kid was already on it. He snapped the rod from the holder and gave it a herculean yank. Somewhere out in the darkening currents, a salmon realized something was wrong and it shook its head violently. The kid expertly kept his tip up as the fish surged downstream. I suddenly felt refreshed and full of life. When its headlong dash for parts unknown stopped, the salmon turned tail and shot upstream past the boat like it had been launched from the torpedo tube of a U-boat. I frantically hollered for the kid to reel, to take up the slack in the line and keep tension on the fish. For a heart-stopping split second, I saw the bend in the rod straighten out and I thought he’d lost the fish. But the kid reeled like a champion and caught back up with the stampeding salmon.
We drifted a quarter of a mile downstream as the kid and the kid-sized salmon tried to outwit and out-muscle one another. The battle raged for another 20 minutes and a giant orange basketball of a harvest moon rose above the trees. Both combatants were tired now, but the kid looked to have the upper hand. He worked the fish close to the boat, and as I stood ready with the net, I could see moonlight shimmering off the silver scales of the largest salmon of the year. A few more cranks of the reel and a couple more pumps of the rod tip and the kid would have his monster. I was so nervous, I felt a few shakes reverberate through my frame.
Just a little closer…yea, that’s it. Now lift that rod up and reel. In just a second, we’ll have him…
Beaten, the salmon made a slow circle alongside the boat and then the kid lead the great fish towards the waiting mesh. As the fish’s snout closed within a foot of the waiting bag, he shook his massive head one more time and I watched in super slow motion as the hooks pulled free. The biggest salmon of the season slipped into the shadowy depths and there was silence for a few seconds as all hands aboard stared into the abyss. The fish was gone, the day had ended and salmon season was now closed.
I was afraid to turn and face the kid for fear the look on his face would break my already busted heart. Before I turned, I put on my bravest face for him and quickly rehearsed my best consolation line. I just hoped he wouldn’t cry.
And then the excited voice of the kid lured my thoughts out of the dark.
“Hey dad, I can’t wait to do this again next year,” he exclaimed with nary a trace of disappointment.
I can’t wait either, kid…I can’t either.
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