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Trout Reflections Excerpt from Trout Reflections: "Then I come to more level ground, I fish among the trees, recalling the first trout I saw taken here, a glimmering eight- or nine-inch speckled fish my friend pulled, as if by magic, from a black hole among the holdfasts of red maple and yellow birch. No casting or retrieving here, certainly. All was cautious approach and careful dropping of the baited hook or weighted nymph, and letting it ride and dance on upwelling or eddying water, or deftly jigging in dead pockets, presentations in their own right. He seemed to know just where, and how, to hook a trout. I worked no such magic. The trees and tangles I tried all seemed devoid of fish, and I spent a lot of time replacing hooks. It could be that my step was too heavy, or that I was not careful enough with my shadow. Trout were there, and obviously hungry, though it may have been earlier in the season than my quest today.
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©2006 David M Carroll |
Then
as happens with matters such as fishing - of desire necessitating skill,
or at least finding a way - the time, the touch, and the place all seemed
right. Fishing blind from behind a red maple, I felt that tug for which I
had waited all winter, that first unmistakable pull that was no trick of
current, stone, or sunken branch, nor of my own imagination. And so I
came to fish among tree roots, the reaching, writhing forms that look like
water held in place, their cell-by-cell advance and thickening over time
tracing a course nearly as penetrating and winding as that of water.
Among these snakelike branchings, hidden in holes and pockets, trout hold
themselves in place and wait for drifting prey."