Trout Quintet Read online

  With his belly finally comfortably full, Sam settled into a quiet spot beneath an undercut bank and rested, thinking about nothing. Maybe he napped for a while, although he wasn’t sure whether trout slept, so he really couldn’t tell whether he had or not. All he knew is that he felt refreshed.

  He decided to explore. Having learned to coordinate the movements of his fins and tail, he found it relatively easy to push upstream, moving from pool to pool and pausing in each just long enough to take in his surroundings. At length he came to the largest pool he had seen, a long, deep stretch of water with a tongue of current spilling into its upper end from a narrow chute between two huge boulders, one on either side of the stream. Smaller boulders were scattered across the bottom and at least a dozen sizeable trout occupied stations behind them, darting out now and then to capture something from the drift. Sam had never seen the pool from an underwater perspective, but there was something vaguely familiar about it. It was surely a classic trout pool.

  The sense of familiarity made him reluctant to leave the pool, but he still wanted to learn more about his new surroundings, so with a powerful thrust of his tail he drove upstream through the narrow chute and entered a stretch of quiet water. Here the stream spread out and rubbed against its borders until, over time, it had carved a series of deep holes under the banks. This stretch, too, seemed vaguely familiar.

  Suddenly Sam knew: he was in the South Branch of the Amalak, his favorite trout stream, one he had fished countless times as a human.

  The dark recess of the undercut bank beckoned. It appeared to be a good, safe spot for a trout, and in his mind’s eye he remembered the large rainbow he had once hooked that ran under that very bank and broke off on a submerged root. The spot also offered shelter near a line of drift that seemed to be bringing an endless supply of food downstream. It looked like a perfect place for a trout to hang out, so he nosed his way into the gloom. Almost immediately he bumped into another trout.

  The other trout sent a quick message that Sam felt mysteriously along his lateral line. “Shove off, Bud,” it said. “I was here first.” It took a moment for Sam’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did he saw the other trout was smaller than he was, perhaps only fifteen inches. “Too bad, fella,” Sam thought, and felt the message somehow radiating from those sensitive lines along his sides. “Maybe you can have this spot again when you get to be as big as I am.” He lunged forward and snapped at the tail of the other trout, which fled swiftly, transmitting signals that Sam didn’t recognize but felt certain were probably the trout’s equivalent of a string of profanities.

  He was proud of himself. It was his first territorial confrontation as a trout and he had won. But then his pride turned to guilt. This type of behavior wasn’t like him at all. He had always tried to be kind and respectful to others… at least, that had been his nature when he was human. He was beginning to wonder what sort of personality he had inherited along with his trout’s body.

  The undercut bank became his home. It was early spring when he settled there and the timing was fortunate because the Amalak was just coming alive with the season’s first hatches. As the days gradually lengthened and the water warmed, mayflies hatched thickly and became his favorite food, if only because they were more plentiful than anything else. The nymphs and freshly hatched duns were both decent mouthfuls, but he found mayfly spinners had scarcely enough food value to make it worth rising to the surface to capture them. He fed on them only when there was nothing else.

  Caddisflies and stoneflies followed the mayflies in abundance. The caddis became another favorite. They came in all sizes and Sam discovered it was great fun to chase the little ones that fluttered across the surface and deeply satisfying to rise quietly and suck in the larger adults that didn’t move as quickly. He also fed avidly on the defenseless caddis pupae as they ascended toward the surface on their way to hatch. He found stonefly nymphs a bit crunchy, but they were big mouthfuls. Same for the adults. A few of those and he didn’t have to eat again for the remainder of the day.

  He also learned to forage nose-down among the weeds growing thickly along the river’s bottom. There he found occasional caddis larvae, numerous squirming little scuds, and small black snails, which he plucked from the weed as if they were ripening grapes. In the nearby rocks he also found clinging mayfly nymphs not yet ready to hatch.

  Sam loved the mornings best. As the sun slowly warmed the river, the river in turn slowly began warming him, awakening him and bringing renewed strength. He likened it to lying in bed late on a Saturday morning, perhaps enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee. At first he had hated the thought of being cold-blooded, of having to depend on the ambient temperature to raise or lower his own, but he had adapted quickly to his circumstances and now enjoyed the soft, almost sensual feel of warming water sliding easily past his flanks.

  Mornings also were quiet along the stream. Aquatic insects, cold-blooded like trout, were also just warming up and beginning to stir. Most fishermen, knowing this, remained absent until later in the day when they knew the hatches would be underway and the trout would be rising. Until then it was a good time just to lie back and enjoy scenery such as Sam had never seen above the surface. The river was a continuing kaleidoscope of colors and textures, delivering a never-ending parade of twigs, leaves, bits of bark, corpses of drowned insects, and the quick movements of small trout searching for food or shelter. The water also was filled with rising bubbles, far more than Sam had ever dreamed were present when he had looked on the river from above; they were generated by the turbulence of the current flowing over rocks, forcing air into the water, or from the photosynthetic discharges of weeds anchored tightly to the bottom. But Sam most enjoyed looking up at the dappled silver surface of the stream, with its constantly shifting patterns of shadow and light and occasional blurry hints of distant sky or foliage.

  He liked evenings, too. Sometimes, during hours of darkness, he would leave his lair beneath the cut bank and watch for small disturbances on the river’s surface, marking the struggles of moths or crane flies that had fallen to the water, and he would gratefully consume a few as evening snacks. He felt safe in the darkness.

  One warm, late-spring day there was a great fall of ants on the river. They came as thick as rain, ants of all sizes, especially small ones (Sam figured they were about a size 18), and he swam around just under the surface with his mouth open, ingesting ants by the score until he could eat no more. This, he thought, must be life as easy as it ever gets for a trout.

  Sam spent the whole summer under the cut bank, watching scores of fishermen come and go even while he grew steadily larger on the rich diet served by the stream. He looked on with amusement as anglers tried to solve the tricky current and somehow get their flies under the cut bank. Most failed, but Sam was contemptuous even of the few who succeeded. He remembered when he was human he’d always wondered if a trout could see the hook hanging down from the body of an artificial fly. Now, as a trout, he knew the answer; the hook was plainly visible.

  Nevertheless, smaller trout regularly managed to hook themselves and get caught, and Sam understood it was because they had never seen hooks before and didn’t recognize them as a threat. Only after having been caught and released a few times did other trout grow wary of flies with hooks—and not all trout were released after being caught.

  Sam recognized some anglers as fishermen he had known and fished with during his human life. It was a weird feeling to know that now they were fishing for him! He longed to reach out to them, to communicate with them somehow, but although he could sometimes see through the transparent meniscus that marked the boundary between water and air, that thin barrier also prevented any communication between the world Sam now inhabited and the world he had left.

  One fisherman he recognized easily was Frank Vincent, his old friend and fishing partner who had been at his bedside when Sam died. He had always admired Frank’s fly-fishing abilities, but now, seeing him from the perspecti
ve of a trout, he was somewhat critical of his technique. To be sure, Frank still caught his share of gullible smaller trout—which he always released—but his flies didn’t look as good from under water as they had from above, and his presentations were too transparent to fool Sam for a moment.

  Still, he watched Frank with affection, remembering his friendship, the many afternoons they had spent together along this very stream, fishing and talking or just resting on the bank and watching the unfolding saga of the river’s life. He also fondly remembered evenings at Frank’s home, the pair of them tying flies, sipping bourbon, chewing the fat, or enjoying the antics of Frank’s unusual pets, a pair of chipmunks he’d named Ferdinand and Isabella, for reasons known only to him.

  Another fisherman he recognized was Miles Anthony. His profile was distinctive because he always wore a pith helmet, shorts, and a vaguely military shirt with shoulder straps and flap pockets. He always waded wet, without waders, displaying a pair of scrawny, hairy legs with prominent purple veins. His posture was that of a West Point cadet, which rumor had it he once had been, although nobody knew for sure and Miles wasn’t telling. As a fly fisher, he was the staunchest of traditionalists, fishing only a dry fly and casting only upstream to rising trout, as if he had learned the sport directly from the great Halford.

  More than once Sam had been treated to close-up views of Miles’ scrawny legs while he spent long minutes casting upstream to rises beyond Sam’s vision. The unflattering view prompted Sam to consider biting one of his legs, but he finally dismissed the idea as potentially dangerous, both for himself and Miles. Instead, he merely sidled farther back into the darkness under the bank and waited for Miles to run out of rises and move upstream.

  Owen Fenner was another angler Sam recognized. He was easy to identify because his height barely exceeded five feet. Somehow he had obtained a waiver from the Navy’s minimum height requirement and had a long career as an officer, a good one by all accounts. An easygoing man, he was fond of joking that he had been forced to retire from the Navy because his sleeves were too short to accommodate any more gold stripes. His angling companions gently chided him about all the places his short stature prevented him from wading, but Fenner countered by pointing out it wasn’t his shadow that frightened all the trout away, because he barely had one. He was an efficient angler who fished with great concentration and caught perhaps more than his share of trout.

  Brian Barquist, fondly known to his compatriots as “Frugal,” was another Amalak regular. A rotund man well past middle age with endless energy and enthusiasm, he had spent his working life running a bookstore that sold only used books. He also claimed he had written several used books, including one titled The Frugal Fly Fisherman, the source of his nickname.

  Frugal was often asked how it was possible to write a used book and was always ready with a reply: “It’s easy. You write the book and when it’s printed you just fold over the corners of a few pages, like people do to mark their places. Then you add a few stains—coffee for sure, some mustard spots, maybe a little ketchup or bacon grease. Then you underline or highlight a few passages, write a phone number or two in the margins, put in the sales receipt from a supermarket or maybe the stub from an airline boarding pass as a bookmark, and sprinkle in a few cat hairs. Just for fun you can also write something in the front, like ‘To John from Marsha, Christmas 2005,’ and Presto! You have a used book. Put it on sale in a second-hand bookstore and it will pass through many hands and be read many times. What more could an author wish for any book?”

  Frugal’s frugality and his interest in used things also extended to fly fishing. He fished an old brown fiberglass rod with at least two guides held on by electrician’s tape. Attached to the rod was an ancient reel whose click had long ago uttered its last clack. It held the only fly line he owned, which was so worn there was little left of it but the core, and as a caster he was the very antipathy of grace. His waders had more patches than a quilt. All these impediments might have handicapped a lesser man, but Frugal nearly always held his own in terms of numbers of trout hooked and released. “Why should I spend $700 on a new fly rod, $400 on a reel, $300 for waders, and $100 more on a new line?” Frugal often asked. “When I was a boy, you could nearly buy a car for all that. I’d have to write a dozen used books to make that much money.”

  There were others Sam recognized, some whose names he knew and some he didn’t. They were all part of the convivial if slightly eccentric band of anglers who shared the Amalak.

  And then there was Doctor Evan Hobbs.

  If Hobbs had been an amiable sort, everyone would have called him Doc. The fact that everyone called him “Doctor” instead spoke volumes about his personality. He was hated by other Amalak anglers for a number of reasons. One was that he was not only a very competent fisherman, he also consistently tied the most perfect flies anyone had ever seen, inspiring jealousy and frustration among every angler who saw them. Even more aggravating was that Doctor Hobbs was the only dentist in town, which meant everyone was forced to rely on his services for their dental health. Hobbs had made it a cruel habit to fill the mouths of his fishing patients with rubber and metal so they couldn’t talk, and then, while he worked, subject them to endless stories of his fishing trips to exotic trout-fishing locales such as New Zealand, Alaska, Patagonia, or Tasmania—trips financed by his patients. Most of his fishing patients would have given their eye teeth (and Doctor Hobbs would gladly have pulled them) to make such trips if only they could afford them.

  Another infuriating thing about Doctor Hobbs was that he was one of those fishermen who felt compelled to whoop and holler whenever he hooked a fish. His piercing cries were often heard along the Amalak, to the everlasting annoyance of fellow anglers.

  But the worst thing about him—the thing that convinced other fishermen that Doctor Hobbs was the personification of evil—was his relentless habit of killing every single trout he landed. He made no exceptions for size or condition; he even killed trout that were on the verge of spawning, or had not fully recovered from doing so. He quit fishing only when he had caught his daily limit, which he nearly always did, but often returned the following day to kill another limit.

  Nobody knew why. It was impossible for him or his family to eat all the trout he caught (although Sam could remember a few times in the dentist’s chair when he thought he smelled trout on the doctor’s breath). If he had given some of his catch away, or donated it to the local food bank or some other charity, his fellow anglers might have been willing to cut him some slack, but there was no evidence he did. Instead, there was a persistent rumor, never verified, that he used dead trout to fertilize his rose garden, the care and nurturing of which was his chief hobby besides fly fishing.

  One thing was clear, though: Doctor Hobbs had no friends on the Amalak. He always fished alone.

  During the low, languid water of August, the grasshoppers came—big, easy, awkward targets that fell noisily into the water. Just one or two were enough for a meal, though Sam was always eager to find more.

  He even tried capturing a few crayfish. When he finally caught one among the rocks of the stream bottom it was enough to keep his stomach full for days, but as he swallowed it the words “garlic” and “butter” kept popping into his mind like lightning flashes.

  Life still seemed easy, but there had been moments when it also seemed dangerous. Sam had sadly witnessed the sight of many trout being caught by the anglers who passed his hiding place, mostly smaller fish but some as large as or larger than he was. He watched helplessly as they fought for their lives, running, jumping, seeking refuge among friendly roots or snags, gradually tiring but still battling until they could fight no more. A few succeeded in escaping, but most did not. Mercifully, the fight usually ended with the victorious angler gently removing a barbless hook and returning the exhausted trout to the stream, where it wearily sought refuge and waited long for its strength to return.

  But Doctor Hobbs never released a fish. Time after t
ime, Sam saw him play a fish to exhaustion, pick up a handy streamside rock and use it to crush the trout’s skull, then add its lifeless weight to his already heavy creel. Each such episode left Sam more frustrated and furious than the last, but he could do nothing except renew his resolve not to allow himself to fall victim to one of Doctor Hobbs’s perfect flies.

  Anglers were not the only threat. One day when Sam left the cut bank to explore, he was almost mortally startled when a huge osprey crashed through the surface and seized a nearby trout in its razor-sharp talons. The osprey lifted off, clutching the bleeding trout, and vanished overhead, leaving Sam frantically seeking shelter while he quivered with fright from nose to tail. When his trout heart finally returned to something resembling normal rhythm, he considered what had happened, and wondered if he might also become an osprey target. He thought size was in his favor; he probably weighed too much for an osprey to carry. But an osprey might not know that, and if one got its talons into Sam’s flanks, it might do mortal damage. He resolved to keep a wary eye overhead.

  His caution paid off a few days later, not because he spied a diving osprey, but because he glimpsed a merganser swimming upstream, stabbing the water with its toothy beak to capture fish. Sam faded back into his gloomy retreat and waited until the merganser passed.

  His resolve to keep a careful watch yielded other dividends. He saw cheerful little dippers working the rocks at the stream’s edge, sometimes bobbing under the surface and walking under water a considerable distance, and enjoyed the fractured spray of light from their plunges and the streams of bright bubbles that marked their passage. Sam wished he could hear their sweet songs, which he had often enjoyed as a human angler, but they were not audible under water. He also marveled at the bright, quick flash of diving kingfishers, blue flashes that burst through the surface and then just as quickly vanished, sometimes flying off with writhing fingerling trout in their beaks.