Dreaming Steelhead
A broken pilgrim and his watery god
You don’t fish for wild steelhead. You hunt for wild steelhead. You arm and armor yourself to the task: chest-high waders, studded or felt bottom boots, twelve-foot double-handed spey rod, carefully selected self-tied fly upon which you heap benediction upon prayer upon hope and a fatalistic determination of spirit reserved for desperate causes.
The middle of winter is the obscenest time to do this in the dark and damp pacific northwest. That was when all this happened.
There is a special kind of wetness one can experience in a northwest winter rainstorm when you are waist deep in a rushing river casting a double-handed spey rod over and over after a series falls, slips and missteps off mossy boulders, slick logs, and puddling riverbanks.
Bone-soaked. Wet beyond wet. Dissolving wet. Steelhead wet.
Consider that these remarkable fish move down the river as fry from fresh water to the salt, journey hundreds and even thousands of miles across the pacific, return and make their way back to the spawning grounds, then do it again and again up to four times.
Even the legendary salmon fish cannot claim this kind of repetitive endurance. All the while these trout are cheating death at the hands of humans, animals, chemicals, nets, ships, waste, toxicity, and chance. Their saga is remarkable and their survival as a species is very much in question in our time. No wonder we Washingtonians chose it as our state fish.
Working a trout run is a kind of a moving meditation. You select the area after scrutinizing the current, color, dynamic and shape. You sniff the breezes and note their direction. You watch the treetops, tree line, bushes and fallen logs for any signs or omens.
Then you carefully wade in. Most likely the trout sense your intrusion from their hiding places. Maybe some move off to another part of the river. Maybe some don’t care. Steady. Let the water settle again. Cast, swing the fly across the current, retrieve, take a few careful steps, cast, swing the fly across the current, retrieve, take a few careful steps and so on until you reach the end of the designated section of the river.
When one is working a run alone often an altered state of being takes hold; the river, the rod, the fly, the wind, the trees, the birds, your hands, your feet, your breathe, your thoughts all begin to take on a simultaneous heightened presence and a melding into a larger, impressionistic picture of some kind of rhythmic ritual. Your attention is focused on the part of the river you cannot see: the trout’s secret domain beneath the roiling surface.
Once called the fish of a thousand casts, all wild steel headers in our era know it is now known as the fish of five or even ten thousand casts. That number will only increase as the future inevitably arrives. There will soon come the day when the wild steelhead is only a rumor and legend.
That day is coming swifter that we would like to admit. Such is the way of things when we humans exercise our wanton need to destroy the natural world around us in the name of progress. Always elusive, never easy to find, the wild steelhead holds a special mystique for all traditional fly fishers. When asked why the fly fisher will not simply engage in the lazy practice of dropping bait from a boat drifting down the river, usually the fly fisher refrains from pointing out the kind of person one sees doing this activity.
That would be rude. Instead, the fly fisher may refer to the hunter who stalks the deer instead of going to the supermarket to buy their meat or the bird watcher in the woods who would rather seek and wait for the view than go to the aviary at the zoo and stare. Two very different ways of living in the world.
The Nehalem River runs in a rough loop south to north to west in Oregon until it meets the Pacific Ocean near the Columbia River. Profound and quixotic, the river runs for about 120 miles down the mountains towards the sea. Often swollen and petulant, sometimes calm and collected, its waters are the historic home of some of the best wild steelhead fishing in north America, or at least they were.
The best runs which hide the elusive wild steelhead are mostly tough to get to and treacherous to wade into.
Hooking into a wild steelhead is like grabbing a live electrical current on a lightning rod. There is a vibration, a tug, a feeling, a yank and then there is a special kind of madness: the blistering speed with which your line screams from your reel and the darting, pulling, spinning, dragging force of the powerful fish.
A wild steelhead has the temper of a bull in a ring along with incredible strength and remarkable intelligence. The fish whom you fooled with an artificial fly is enraged. Under logs, around submerged boulders, down river, upriver, towards one bank and then the other the steelhead fights for its freedom.
This battle can last ten minutes, twenty minutes. Mine lasted near half an hour. My guide calmly directed tactical battle instructions to me as I flailed through the treacherous dips and bouldered traps of the river: “Let him have the line. Work your way further out. He’s gonna head for those rocks and break you off. Easy. Reel in. Now let him have the line again. Uh-oh. You okay there?”
When at last this great fish is exhausted, it drifts towards your net, into your hands, and settles, trying to regain its strength. This is when, all the while cradling this magnificent creature gently, you remove your barbless hook, hold the fish’s head pointing upstream and let is sit quietly in the water.
After a minute or two, the fish will let you know it is ready to be freed. You dip your net deeper into the water, you slowly take away your cradled hand and you say, either out loud or to yourself: “Thank you, wild steelhead for this encounter. I wish you many more days in the river before your time comes.” Then you watch the glory of silver, red, speckled, or banded gold swim away, it’s always open eye already looking into the deeper parts of the river where it will now go.
On that day I was so exalted from my victory I decided to go further upriver in a wild-eyed quest to seek another steelhead encounter: hubris, pride, arrogance, ego flowed through my veins as I stood high above another section of the river like a triumphant god, staring down at possibilities. A steep, muddy slope of ferns, trees, and various obstacles. A boulder strewn bank, giant slick bowling balls of dampness.
A wide and strong current, various shades of green to black: pea, emerald, luminous, murky, greying and finally deep pocketed darkness. Then a step, a slide, a bracing of hands and balancing of rod. Tipping this way and that. Digging in of heel and toe. Gloved hand gripping mud and flora. A move to the left, a shift to the right, standing slide, sitting slips, then…
The drop.
An instant, and yet an eternity of falling. An audible crunch, and then stillness. It turns out the crunch was both vertical bones that once comprised my left ankle.
As I lay there below that fateful boulder, booted feet in the water, I thought about the strange and ethereal color of a wild steelhead’s sides and wondered about that incredible beauty. Then I thought about the piercing pain in my left ankle and stole a look in that direction.
Bent off weirdly at an angle, my left foot was partially submerged. I think the icy water eased the agony a bit. However, the teeth-rattling shock of pain that fired up my body and out the top of my head into the sky is something I won’t ever forget.
I cannot make sense of my love for these fish and my longing to torture them. The arguments that engulf the act of fly fishing are well-known to me and other fly fishers. Those of us in the “catch and release” and “keep ’em wet” camp imagine ourselves more evolved. We never kill a fish.
We always let them go and do our utmost to treat them with care and kindness. We have even come to the point where we scold others for the unfortunate “grip and grin” habit of lifting a fish out of the net and taking a selfie with them. We think that is vanity and unnecessary.
We say, “Leave it in the net and in the water, bend your face down close to the fish, take your stupid picture and then let it go.” We think we are morally superior. This after we have also dragged the unfortunate creature from its natural habitat in a struggle of great violence and desperation. Who are we kidding? The act of fly fishing is an act of moral arrogance: I tie the artificial fly which deceives the fish which bites the hook which leads to the battle which results in the strange exultation we crave.
Then we let the exhausted and terrorized fish go and think: “See, I am one with nature because I did not kill this beautiful fish.” A bizarre maelstrom of denial upon argument upon accusation upon self-righteousness. Of course, these absurd debates occur in my own mind as I carefully lift my steelhead out of the water for my own embarrassing “grip and grin”.
As I gently return him to the water, I can feel the pulse of power in his body: experience, resilience, instinct, stamina, will. Perhaps a few drops of these qualities will make their way into me somehow.
Looking back now on that fateful day when my winter steel heading adventures came to an abrupt and painful end, I feel a mix of fond memory and a bit of awe that I was so undaunted in my quest to wrestle a steelhead that neither storm, distance, danger nor great risk could deter me.
Who was that man? These days it is mellower, slower, shallower waters that you will find me in. I still use a double-handed rod, I still work a run the same way, still savor the gift of being out there with the trout and the river. A tug or a bite from a rainbow or brown does not have the same charge as a steelhead strike, but it still satisfies.
Still, I dream of his eye: knowing, sage, wise and wild I see it ever. In that eye, ten million years of seeing the watery parts of the world. What does he know? Is he still out there, roaming the ocean and swimming ever towards whatever fate awaits him? Is he back in the river, seeking to spawn one more time before his time is over? Has he been caught again? I hope not.
I like to think he and I were fated to meet that day, my only steelhead and his only human being. We taught each other something and learned many things through the battle. Perhaps he will examine things with more scrutiny, bordering on the cynical. That is what experience can do. Maybe his encounter with me will increase his caution, his awareness that there is yet another force trying to stop him from existing.
When spring comes, and I am shin deep the clear shallow riffle of an older gentleman’s more civilized trout run, my thoughts will once again turn towards that great, steely fish. ‘Ahab’-like I will contemplate the singular relationship we once had. If I feel a slight twinge in my semi-metallic ankle, I will smile and think: “Not a peg leg, but surely a war wound. Well done, my friend.”
Soon I will leave fly fishing behind for good. I will snag my final trout, watch it swim away after releasing hook and net and saying thanks. At my age now even the kindest streams are beginning to whisper warnings to my unsteady feet. No matter. I have the memory this day to reflect on.
O fish of majesty and wonder hear my song;
Upon your battled flanks the story told
Enigma of oceans, ghost of rivers long
House of stone and water never old
Who am I to stand among your kind?
Sanctified by wind and rain today
Seeking here that which I hope to find
Nature’s panorama soft array
Line and lure a message then to all:
I must command this moment, yea, I must
For I will wither sure as autumn falls
My ridiculous rod will surely turn to dust
After the battle we become one thing
A pilgrim and his god communing
Baptized we bid each other unsaid sounds
Until what is lost becomes what is found
