After A Summer Of Being All Wet, An Angler Drifts Quietly Into Winter

That summer the storms rolled in every few days, so that no sooner would the rivers I fished begin to clear than another thunderstorm would blow in, usually after dark. The next morning would break leaf-wet and steamy, the fishing ruined. On the hot days between storms we'd drive to a sandy stretch on the upper Eau Claire, where my daughter would chase minnows in shallows murky from rain and I'd anguish over not having caught a fish that summer.

My friends attempted to distract me by discussing plans for autumn bird hunts, but I was reluctant to put away my tackle. The seasons here are like separate countries, and when crossing the borders between them, one is obliged to abandon favorite customs and, in a sense, change languages. When I suggested a last fishing trip, my erstwhile companions spoke gravely of storm windows that wanted putting up and firewood that needed to be cut. But I wasn't ready to cross the frontier with them. So, on the fifth day of a rare rainless stretch, I decided to go fishing on my own. My wife drove the pickup through verdant Wisconsin countryside to the bridge over the Chippewa on County Road H. She waited in the cab, with our daughter asleep beside her, while I untied the canoe and carried it down to the riverbank. The Chippewa had fallen a foot from the highwater, according to the mark on the bridge column, and had cleared to a shade resembling iced tea. A broad river at this point, the Chippewa is the sum of all the alder-choked creeks and fast streams I might have fished that summer. Floating on it, I could sample a little of each tributary.

I loaded tackle and cooler into the canoe and walked it into the river. The 17-foot Shell Lake canoe is old and deserving of special handling, and I didn't mind getting my feet wet. Then I was drifting. Soon the river began to bend until the bridge, the truck and my family were out of sight.

The day was heating up. I paddled to the far bank, where the current was the strongest, and then eased up, letting the river do the work. The takeout at Meridean lay seven miles downstream and the whole day stretched before me. When a dragonfly alit on the still-wet blade of my paddle, I felt singled out for good fortune.

Rigging up a bucktail spinner, I worked the shoreline carefully, casting for smallmouths beneath overhanging maple and river birch. Often as not, the lure would get hung up in the branches, and I would have to backpaddle to free it. Then I'd have to take the bird's nest of monofilament into the canoe and untangle it. By the time I was finished and able to cast again, the terrain through which the river flowed would have changed, wooded banks having given way to meadows.

While drift-fishing the Chippewa, which is home for 60 species offish, one ranges over all sorts of piscine habitat: deep holes for walleye, a shore of upended trees to hide bass, and quiet backwaters where one can raise anything from pike to monstrous sturgeon. There are no bad stretches on the river, only different possibilities.

In an eddy behind a windfall, my rod bowed suddenly. Thinking I had hit a snag, I thumbed the release, which only served to send the line screaming off the reel. I had a fish; he was heavy and deep. When the run stopped, I began coaxing my line back, worrying all the while that the fish would snag a sunken limb. The line came in, and, looking over the side of the canoe, I could see the fish rising through the deep brown water.

Then the fish dived. It disappeared from view. My line drew taut against the gunwale as the fish swam beneath the canoe, putting great strain on the line. Finally it broke.

Adrift in midriver, I slowly reeled in the slack. The fish had felt enormous, and I felt at once drained and exhilarated by my encounter with it. I opened a beer from the cooler. The trip had just started and already I had lost the biggest fish I might have hoped for in an entire summer's fishing.

The beer had no taste; it was merely cold. I would have to stop dwelling on what had been lost, or I'd ruin a perfectly good day. After all, I had caught the fish, had failed only to separate it from the water. When the first beer was gone, I opened another and let the current carry me on.