Spring-fed trout streams in Southeast Minnesota, those are the beds of aggressive trout, the German Brown with their golden sheen and bright red spots. These are not large trout, not the kind to find mounted on tavern walls. But what they lack in size of stature, they compensate with vigor.
On a warm, overcast evening, my father-in-law and I went fly-fishing. We waved to the farmer, as we always did, as we walked down his dirt driveway to the stream. Kenny and I chatted along the way, nothing important, but we always seemed to fill that space. Usually we would hit the stream, check our watches, and then head in opposite directions. However, as I had less and less time to stream fish, we seemed to hang together more and more closely, leapfrogging pools and runs as we went.
That day we started out together and soon realized we had run into a stream of hungry trout. They squirted bodily from the water, chasing flies as they flitted across the surface. What an exciting thing to watch from the bank, even more so when you know you can match that fly with one you have in your pocket. We discussed it only briefly, for we knew the tan Caddis, and then we each tied on our version--the Elk Hair Caddis. Kenny's favorite dry fly pattern. Normally with dry flies, the angler carefully lays the weighted line and long tippet into the pool from downstream. This way the fly drifts naturally, without drag, along the current. You may wonder if that makes a difference--it does.
On days where the Caddis fly flits and dips the surface of the stream, this method works very well to imitate it. I watched him flip the fly across the stream. It floated casually along the opposite bank until the slack in the line was spent. Then, as the fast current pulled at the loose line, it snapped taunt and straight away. He then dragged the fly across the current in quick jerks, giving it a bit of a jig and causing it to skip. I knew this technique, of course I did; he taught me all I knew about trout fishing.
There had been days I out-fished Kenny, and this was not one of them. It wasn't that he hogged all of the good holes for himself. On the contrary, he offered the best holes, which I reluctantly accepted. With Kenny being a skilled and polished negotiator, in these trivial matters I seldom found the word 'No' useful. So as we worked our way downstream, I caught fish, but Kenny caught more. Actually, he caught fish where I hadn't.
At some point in the years prior to that night, our fishing relationship had become somewhat competitive, albeit friendly but competitive. So, understandably, as the evening continued, he made sure that I knew he had caught another trout, even if I had moved on to the next hole. Over the drum of the churning stream, he would just give a little whistle, wait until I looked up, and hold up the trout just before releasing it back into the stream. I think he also smirked, but I couldn't be sure.
After a few hours of this, he stopped to show me the Elk Hair Caddis that he was fishing with. Specifically, he showed me how beat up it had become.
"Well…this is crazy," he said. "There's barely a thread there."
Indeed. He spoke truly. That thread of a fly he used continued to catch more trout than the same, intact version I used.
After catching a few more fish, he showed it to me again.
"Here. Let me see that," I said.
He flicked it proudly in front of my face.
I grabbed that damn fly, snipped it off, and tossed it in the creek.
He stood there a pole's-length away and uttered no words; mouth agape.
He closed his mouth into a flat frown and gave a half shake of his head, in disbelief, I think. "You clown!" he accused.
"Sorry, I replied, "I slipped."
We continued to fish for another hour or so until dark. He didn't say much all the way back to the truck. We went about our ritual of eating peanuts and drinking a can of 3-2 beer (that watery stuff sold at grocery stores) before we continued on to our favorite tavern.
Before too long, and over popcorn, beer, and that pizza that burns the roof of your mouth, we were already laughing about it. In the years to come, even as recently as two weeks before his death, we joked about it.
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