In The Country He Loved

Jack waded into Silver Creek at the near end of the backwater and tied on a size-16 callibeatis nymph imitation. The callibeatis is a swimming nymph, and the idea, as Fred explained to me as we circled to the other side of the pond, was to cast well ahead of the cruising rainbow, allow the nymph to sink, then, as the trout approached, to pop the nymph out of the sand and retrieve it as quickly and smoothly as possible. Through scuba observation Fred had discovered that when a foreign object came near a callibeatis nymph—a hand, a face mask, the mouth of a trout—the callibeatis began swimming like crazy. So it was quite important not to slow down the retrieve.

Fred waded in to demonstrate. On his second cast a large dark shadow veered off its course. This was trout fishing, bonefish style. "He's interested," Fred said, stripping in the line by a reverse hand-twist technique. "Come on, mister, come on. Yes." Twenty feet from Fred the trout took the fly and was hooked by a barely perceptible raise of the rod tip. The line climbed in the water until suddenly the surface was broken by a splash and a brilliantly colored tail. Fred played the fish gently—his leader was 1½-pound test—and brought him to his side in 10 minutes. The barbless hook came out easily as Fred moved the 4½-pound fish up and back in the water, allowing it to recover from the fight. "Now the best part," he said, releasing it. The trout swam away.

It had all seemed so easy. This was going to be like taking candy from a baby. Sure enough, on my first cast a cruising rainbow followed my fly. It checked out my retrieve and then swerved away. This happened two or three more times before word went out that a hacker was flailing at the west end of the backwater, and no more cruisers came within casting range. "Your retrieve's too jerky," Fred noted from his new spot, downstream. "One trout eats up to 300 callibeatis nymphs a day, so he knows exactly what he's looking for. Do you know the hand-twist retrieve?" He made a cast. "Hold it, I've got a customer. Yes, mister, yes. Oooh, yes." Again, a barely perceptible raise of the rod tip, and the fish was hooked. This one we never saw. The line began screeching off the reel. "Can you believe this?" Fred kept saying as the fish made its exit. Seventy-five yards away the creek turned, and when the trout reached that point, the leader broke. Fred grinned and reeled in the slack. "That mother was a U-boat."

I spent the next hour or so tying granny knots around my thumb while trying to master the reverse hand-twist retrieve. Once, with Fred coaching over my shoulder, a two-foot rainbow followed my nymph for 30 feet, until it was less than six feet from my rod tip. Unable to bear the tension, I struck. The line flew over my shoulder, and the fish bolted.

"What happened?" Fred asked me, bewildered.

"I couldn't stand it. How do you know when they've taken it?"

"You don't strike like that" he said, amazed. "Just lift the rod tip. And watch for the wink. When the trout opens his mouth to take the fly, there's a flash of white, like a wink."

I thought he was pulling my leg. Fred had told me a number of strange things already, and I'd stopped taking him at his word since early that morning when he described fishing for lunker brown trout in Alaska with flies tied to resemble swimming mice. When I expressed my skepticism about this at lunch time, Jack came to Fred's rescue by producing a mouse fly from his tackle box, complete with rawhide ears and tail and beady little eyes. He insisted that I take it as a keepsake.

Think wink, then, was the motto for the afternoon. Jack jumped a couple of rainbows and landed a 17-inch brook trout, but by late in the day I'd still not fielded a strike. Fred and I decided to move, and waded into the center of the backwater slough to cast to several large, cruising fish that had been out of range all day. "Three U-boats at two o'clock," Fred said in a predatory tone. "U-52, U-53 and U-55. Go ahead."

I cast ahead of them, let the nymph sink, then, when the trout were five feet away and closing, began my retrieve. The nymph popping out of the sand attracted the biggest trout's attention. "We've got a customer," Fred commentated. "Hold it, hold it, come on." We could see the rainbow's fins quivering out from its body, a sure sign of interest. It followed the fly for a few seconds, and then, from 20 feet away, I saw a brief but unmistakable wink. I struck. For one shining moment I felt the unyielding weight of a magnificent fish, a trout that Fred later estimated at 26 inches. The strike, influenced by adrenaline, was that of a bass or tarpon fisherman, a cruel jerk that could have penetrated iron scales. Instead, it merely broke the leader. We stood there, we two, staring at the water where my fish had been. "You really put the pork to that sonuvagun," Fred finally said with gentleness. "I'm worried you might have deboned him."