‘I’m just happy to be out here …”
If you’ve hunted and fished long enough — or hung around hunters and fishermen long enough — you’ve no doubt uttered or heard the phrase “Sometimes, they win” to explain an empty game bag or fish stringer. You missed your shots, didn’t see a feathered or furred critter, or the fish turned up their noses at your lures and bait and flies.
And sometimes, they win by knockout.
I know this, because I got beat up the other day. By a fish.
No, you did not read that incorrectly. There were no typos; I did not accidentally misspell “weapon-wielding thug threatening life and limb” with the letters “f-i-s-h.” A fish — a 15-pound salmon, to be more precise — kicked my rear end and left me muttering, “I’m just happy to be out here … I’m just happy …” over and over as cold water drained to my ankles and, stepping onto the riverbank, a sharp pain stabbed my knee.
In a new book released earlier this month — shameless plug: it’s the third volume from the Lost Branch Sportsman’s Club, the quartet of writers you’ve been reading in this space for the last couple of years — author Greg Frey makes this observation in his story “It’s a Fish-Eat-Fish World:”
“If salmon fishing can be melancholy, and I believe it can, that season comes when they [salmon] move upriver. By then, they’ve stopped eating unless you count feasting on their own fat reserves. Think Atkins diet on steroids. Their flesh loses its orange color as their skin loses its silver sheen. Flesh and skin are replaced respectively by the white and black of a depressing Ansel Adams photograph. … Still, anglers battle these brutes in the rivers. I’m just not one of them ….”
And now I think I know why Greg doesn’t fish for salmon in the river. It’s because these brutes fight back, and he probably had his keister handed to him, too, but won’t admit it.
The episode started idyllically enough, the third time this year I’d visited this particular stretch of river I like to disappear into. Previously, my daughter Maddie joined me, and we had a grand time watching fish, tying into a couple, and igniting a grilled cheese sandwich when I forgot a pan for the camp stove.
Once again, this stretch lay magically void of anglers, and I’d timed the run perfectly. A couple dozen bullies cruised in front of me in about a 50-yard run, and several threatened to ram my legs in their battles against one another, gripped in the fever of full spawning aggression.
I probably should’ve seen the warning. But what harm could drifting a little old woolly bugger across the river do?
Apparently, make them mad.
I remember casting, hundreds of times probably, while gazing pensively at the treetops beginning to glow gold in the lowering September sun. Sure, the river stunk of rotting fish, but the cell phone remained silent, the river’s melody played its calming tune, and I had nowhere else to be except in the moment.
Just like the movie with the perfect family sharing a perfect picnic lunch on a perfect summer day before the escaped serial killer invites himself in for tea.
The hit wasn’t much — a flash of the mouth, and the woolly bugger bit deep. Even the fight wasn’t much. The fish darted upstream and I held on; darted back downstream and I reclaimed line and held on; slid over into heavy current and sat there tugging periodically, annoyed, me nothing more than a pesky mosquito.
After several minutes, I found I could turn the fish where I wanted, which led me to scoping out landing spots downstream. Being alone and without a net — and on more delicate tippet than I wanted — limited my options. The previous (read: only) salmon I’d landed lay in water shallow enough that I employed the heave-ho-with-the-boot method. Yeah, let’s go with that. I had this.
With a solid hook-set, things were lining up for a repeat. I spotted a slight backwater cove along the bank where I figured I’d guide the fish into nose first to keep it from dashing downstream, and then boot-heave-ho again. Surprisingly, the salmon allowed me to guide it right into this chokepoint. Check. And. Mate.
Han Solo’s famous admonition “Don’t get cocky” definitely did not fill my ears. Actually, I take that back. I heard Han Solo say that, and I told him to stuff it.
The late great fishing author John Gierach eloquently told us that Even Brook Trout Get the Blues, so it’s not a stretch to think that salmon get mad and take it out on cocky anglers.
And if fish can think — and after all this, I have no doubt they can; mean thoughts, too — I’m pretty sure this particular salmon thought, “Whatever, dude. Let’s get this over with. I’m bored.”
I crept closer, keeping the line tight, the salmon holding still in the cove. Plotting.
Rats. The water reached my knees. Too deep for the heave-ho with the boot, and, come to think of it, why didn’t I see that the edge of the bank was so high?
I know. I’ll just reach down and grab it by the tail. I’ve seen people do that. I mean, people have done that, surely. Or maybe I’m thinking of bears.
Unknowingly lulled into the fish’s trap, I reached down. I grabbed the tail. I lifted. The trap sprung.
In a massive flick that would’ve made Captain Ahab catch his breath, the salmon’s tail smacked me, swatting me — the pesky mosquito — away, sending me stumbling backward into the log jam I vaguely remembered stepping over before the arrogant and failed tailing attempt.
I sprawled horizontally into the river, my boots above my head. Up to my neck, water plunged down my back and ballooned my waders as I flailed, but, gosh darn it, I held that rod tip high.
This was it. What every fly fisherman dreams of: my Brad Pitt in “A River Runs Through It” moment, the climactic battle of man versus beast when he’s fighting the fish while tumbling down Montana’s Big Blackfoot River. This was bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth; curling around the top of the key for a last second three-pointer in the National Championship; a 10-foot birdie putt tracking right to the heart of the cup on the 18th at Augusta.
Oh man, I thought, what a story this will be. I’m going to land this fish like Brad-freaking-Pitt.
Nope. One more casual flick and my now flyless line drifted lazily in the cooling September evening air. I lay there, the river filling my waders and draining down to the tips of my boots.
In a laugh, the fish thrashed the surface in the middle of the river on its way back upstream. “Better luck next time, sucker.”
Stepping onto shore, an irksome piece of loose cartilage wandering around my knee joint the last couple of months decided to park itself right where it could cause the most agony. And a half-mile walk back to the truck lay before me. Literally uphill. Not both ways; all the way.
My brother asked me afterward, “But did you have fun?”
No, Chris. This time, it was not fun. I bow to no one in the ability to find appreciation in the simplest moments afield, whether or not game or fish comes to hand. But this was not fun. I got beat up by a fish. I was cold and wet and my knee hurt.
Relaying the misadventure to Vickie and feeling sorry for myself while doing so, she consoled me with, “You were going to let it go anyway … you essentially caught it … catch and release ….” Days later, when I could chuckle about it — and she didn’t feel bad stifling the laughter in front of me anymore — I compared it to a deer episode that saw several things go awry. With a deer that I didn’t even shoot. Because I don’t even deer hunt. It’s a long story.
She shook her head, the comparison not apt. “That one had layers,” she pointed out. By layers, she meant layers of mishaps that could only happen to me.
She was right. This was a single layer: One big old smack from a salmon’s tail.