55 ~ Trout: A love story (with apologies to Michael Perry)

Good things come to those who wade.  – Anonymous

As the alchemy of fall burnishes the Driftless hills to copper and gold, I’m getting back to writing more, to my own attempt at alchemy. This seems to be the pattern - in summer and early fall my free time and attention are pulled to the vegetable gardens and, increasingly, to trout.

The trout season in Wisconsin ended on October 15, in Switzerland on September 15, and I was present, with feet wet, for both. As I write this my freezer holds my legal possession limit of trout (ten), including some of them smoked (which I learned to do this summer), and some smoked trout dip, from this fine recipe by southern chef Sean Brock.

Trout fishing is something comparatively new for me – I cast my first fly into a stream in pursuit of trout just in the summer of 2019 (over the decades prior to this my trout forays totaled just three, all with worms).  It is perhaps a measure of my passion that this season I caught 503 trout (and also that I recorded each one; so in fact I have been writing – just mostly in my trout notebook).  That’s undoubtedly far fewer than more experienced and skilled troutmen (or women) could tally, and is more a testament to the abundance of Wisconsin’s streams than to my skill set.  Still, it’s an order of magnitude more than my first season two years ago. We tend to get good at what we love.

My late-bloomed passion for trout fishing is something of a mystery. It’s unusual for we humans to pick up something with fervor so late in life. More often, we’re doing at 60 what rocked our worlds at 16, or 6 (see James Hillman’s wonderful and insightful book on this phenomenon, The Soul’s Code).  For example, the life of my brother Jim, who passed away last year, was defined from beginning to end by a passion for flight – he qualified for his pilot’s license when he was yet too young to drive a car (our mother had to drive him to the local airfield for his solo flight test).

I’ve been watching this passion for trout with curiosity, waiting for an answer, like a cat at a mousehole.  A clue finally came in August, in the course of going through old family photos to prepare a ‘life of Jim’ slideshow for my brother’s memorial gathering that month (for those who knew Jim, or those who would like to, see here). I came upon the old photo above of my brother Jack and me. Jack passed away in October 2005, and in many ways was the most important person in my life (and in many ways still is).  The photo was taken in either Yosemite or Yellowstone, during an epic family road and camping trip in the western US in the 1960s.  It shows me age 4 (with a prized plastic sword purchased during a stop in San Francisco’s Chinatown) and Jack about age 12, with wild trout he caught (and in the background, our legendary family tent, “Big Blue”).  The photo tells much – Jack’s happiness, and my pride in his trout. My emotional connection to trout probably started here. In 2019, I just made a reconnection. 

Also from the time of this photo – possibly on the same day – I carry one of my earliest concrete memories (the mark of a firm imprint on our psyches):  My grandfather, sitting beside the campfire in late morning or early afternoon, eating some of the fried trout from the morning’s catch. I still remember the beautiful, exotic orange of the trout’s flesh, the good smell of wood smoke mixed with fried fish, and my grandfather ‘mmming’ how tasty the trout were, and encouraging me to try some.  It would still be years before I developed a taste for fish, and so I declined, despite how tempting it was.

That early experience might explain in part why, as a trout fisherman today, I’m more of a catch & eat guy than catch & release (although rest assured, dear readers, I do release the majority of trout I catch).  Strict catch & release feels like video game fishing (or harassment of wildlife).  For me, the full experience of trout fishing is inseparable from taking, with grief and gratitude, some of the trout I’ve been fortunate to catch, and later consuming them with gratitude, and sharing the abundance with others.  The cycle of life feeding life – something that catch & release truncates. 

I’m particularly enamored of brook trout (see post #25), and my betrothal to them also came early. Another memory that surfaced in the course of my recent trout musings is from about age 10 or 12, this time on the other side of the country.  I’m at the cabin of relatives (an aunt and uncle and their family, my cousins) on the beautiful, clear, rushing Green River in western Massachusetts (the part of the world where my parents grew up).  I’m there with just my dad, who could be as mercurial with love and approval as Jack was reliably generous and forthcoming with them. There wasn’t much fishing then in the Green River (at least that I could sort out), but my dad said that if I explored a small, nearby tributary of the Green, which flowed to the river down through steep, deeply shaded woods of maple, I might find that holiest of holies (and the most beautiful) - a wild, native brook trout.  And so I set off, with my small spinning rod and some worms. I might as well have been going off to hunt bear or tiger, for the feelings of adventure, challenge and importance the quest had. Did I have it in me (or did the world have it for me?) to return triumphant, with the Grail?

Following the stream up through the woods, most of it too small, steep and rushing to hold a fish, I eventually reached a small, deep pool, where the water paused and collected.  On my knees, like a prayer, I cautiously peered into the pool, and a couple of feet below the surface I could see an underwater rock ledge.  I let my worm drift down past the ledge, and BAM! – a large brook trout shot out and took it.  I felt my first experience of a miracle.  I heaved the vibrating fish from the water – for a brookie in a stream this small, it was a trophy, 11” or 12” long.  Before I could get hold of the trout, it came off the hook and flopped on the bank at the edge of the water. I grasped at it frantically, but it flipped back into the pool and disappeared.  The woods and the water were suddenly quiet, in my shock of triumph, snatched. It was as if Lazarus had been raised from the dead, only to keel over moments later from a heart-attack.

I soldiered on, and eventually caught another brookie that morning, a small one of about six inches. I returned to the cabin with it, with feelings of both success and failure jostling for position. My father was complimentary and congratulatory, and fried the small trout for our lunch, even though it wasn’t enough for even one of us.  It remained the only brook trout I caught for many years, until 2019.

Autumn colors: brook trout.

On reflection, it’s probably not chance that September was the only month in which I’ve not published a post since I started “A Bird in the Bush” 19 months ago. The memorial gathering I hosted for Jim was August 22, and as such things do, it both filled me up and took a lot out of me. In the weeks that followed I spent a lot of time in trout streams. There is something deeply cathartic about wading into the flow and the sound of their waters. As it does for the trout pools I fish, the current both refills and calms me, and also seems to wash away some of the grief downstream.

And with every cast, I’m probably still looking for Jack and for my dad.

Have a fine Halloween everyone, and enjoy these glorious days of fall.

Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower. -Albert Camus