Fly-fishing

Critical

/ jameswindale / Leave a comment

It’s early, and with the drive to his house I’ve had a much earlier start than Barry. I roll up to his house and he waves to me, an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth as he’s passing a pair of rods through the back gate of his 4Runner. It’s about as old as he is, at least in car years, and ambles along with a similar limp.

I spent the first year of my career running with my local hometown volunteer ambulance corps, and the satellite operation of a private outfit based out of Boston. I learned nothing my first year, relegated to a “Get out of the way” attitude and dialysis transports. Not so with Barry. After moving to Pinellas County, Florida at the end of 2004 I took a job in a local emergency department. Barry was assigned to me as a preceptor. A cardiac arrest rolled in that first night and when I told him I’d never done CPR before he threw me to the wolves. I learned more in a month than I had in the past year. “Crackin’ ribs your first night on the job! Kid’s a fahkin’ natural.”

Barry had been a corpsman with the First Marine Division in Vietnam. The hitch in his gitty-up was a combination of shrapnel and too many years playing semi-pro soccer in Europe (that’s futbol to us American savages). He became a Registered Nurse after realizing his playing days were over and had been wheeling and dealing in local ERs and ICUs ever since.

“It’s critical,” he’d emphatically state over some essential medical intervention, chewing a wad of gum when he couldn’t smoke a cigarette. Bilateral lines, type and cross, twelve leads, every one of them “Fahkin’critical!” Barry more or less adopted me, and the other two legs of my buddy tripod, as a surrogate sons. One of the legs tells me he cheats at golf, so I only fish with him. If we’re honest, and most fishermen are liars by default, cheating is okay as long as the hookups happen. It might even be essential. Fahkin’ critical…

There’s a case of beer in the back, condensation growing by the second in the Florida humidity. We still have to stop for ice. Depending on how the day goes, we may or may not stop at one of the restaurants with an inlet dock where we’ll get shitty on oysters, crab pate, and whiskey until we decide to sober up and bring the boat back. Otherwise, it’s cold Cubans and beers which won’t be bad because he’s already warned me that it’s going to be hot.

Barry’s not one to split hairs over the appropriate times for drinking a beer and right after I’ve ponied up for gas at the filling station in the marina he’s got one cracked beside the wheel on the center console. He sips at the suds, balancing the now-lit cigar just behind the cracked windscreen as we veer out of the channel and head for the smell of freshly-cut grass that can only mean one thing: bait.

He knows I’ve brought a fly rod, and if he’s honest, he’d rather hook a tarpon on the four inches of chicken feathers I’ve produced from the little box that’s marked ‘Poon Food, than his artificials. Bringing the boat around to the site of seagulls hovering, he passes me a cold one and limps up on the bow. He throws the casting net like a seasoned Cuban, the cigar clenched in his teeth, completing the picture. The beer is cold as the blue mountains promise, but he’s expecting me to steer while he throws the net and the in gear to neutral flip-flop that can sometimes take more than an hour.

“Waaaait,” he growls like a hound that just might have spotted a squirrel. He studies a patch of water at some distance for a moment before climbing down and taking the freshly cracked beer from my hand. “Get your rod, there’s one rolling at two o’clock.” Barry brings us about and brings us nearly parallel to the silver king. My heart is pounding as I know I’ve got one, maybe two shots at this before I spook it and it makes a run for Mexico. I manage to start a double haul despite my shaking hands as Barry slams the boat into neutral. The fly doubles over and lands too close, passing over the fish as I furiously strip.

“She’s a big fat pig,” Barry says as he slurps his beer. “You gotta get that thing in front of her, don’t bounce it off her head,” he explains as I pull back and start the cadence again. “Fahkin’ critical.”

My second attempt is in a better position, but she’s not interested. The next time she rolls, she’s farther down and closer to the beach, well out of range before I can even consider another cast.

“Ah, she’ll be back,” he assures me, but I know she’s gone. It’s not such a big deal though, it’s the middle of summer and they’ll be around until the fall at least before they head South again. In the spring they’ll show up off Boca Grande and the cycle will start again. He puts the boat back in gear and we jet off for a small cove he assures me is full of reds and trout.

Another spot of choppy water and hovering gulls piques his interest. “Get up there!” he spits, jamming the cigar back into his teeth. “Toss it right into the middle of all that shit. Let’s see what happens.”

The fly hits the water and I wait excitedly, forcing myself to count five Mississippis before I start stripping my line. I’m waiting, hoping, wishing, and praying for that telltale sign of something smacking the fly and committing to the mistake. There’s nothing, despite having pulled it through all that turbulence, nothing in all that chaos even takes notice. I’m about to pull from the water and start another cast when the line goes tight. I have enough foresight to not trout-set the hook and instead place just the lightest suggestion of tension on the line. There’s a slight tick-tick of the reel, and it starts to zing.

“Your drag!” Barry shouts. I brace the palm of my hand on the bottom of the reel and apply pressure with one hand, stuffing the butt of the rod into my armpit, and tightening down the drag knob with the other. The reel stops giving up line but I can still feel the tug on the other end as I start to pull it in. “Put him on the reel,” Barry says. “If he starts to run and you’ve got all that line around your feet you’ll be fucked eight ways from Sunday.”

“It’s no a tarpon,” I say as I bring it closer to the boat. “It’s got a little fight though.”

Barry peers over the side, gazing into the water through his polarized sunglasses. “Ladyfish,” he laments. “You wanted the big sonovabitch that was chasing it.”

He snatches it out of the water and shrugs as he pulls it off the hook. “Good bait, anyway. And they can be fun to catch when they’re big enough,” he chuckles as he tosses it into the live well. “They’re still out there. Give ‘em hell.”

I let the fly sail again, straight through the flock of seagulls and it lands just past the mess of choppy water. Barry belches as he cracks another beer “Strip it fast, make them strike on impulse.”

In this moment, we realize the game was over before it started. The sound of air puffing off our port side draws my attention and my heart sinks again. A small pod of dolphins cruises past and heads straight for the school, scattering it every which way. Once they show up, giving chase to the bait, whatever predatory fish were nearby will find new lunch options. Barry spits and flips off the mammals. “Dolphins are the jet skiers of the animal world.”

“Cocksuckers,” I lament as he brings us around again. I loop the line around the reel and set the hook inside a guide, ready to set in motion again if we spot a flash of silver or a rolling back.

The cove is nestled between two islands that had once been connected, but through various passing storms and hurricanes, the middle sand bar had been washed out. There’s a small inlet that we can cruise through if we want to head out into the Gulf proper, but Barry wasn’t kidding when he said it was hot, and now we’re ready to tie up beside the mangroves and marinate on the grass flat. I swap out the chicken feathers for something crunchy looking with legs and scan the grass flat for movement.

“Drink this,” he advises handing me a beer. It’s as good an idea as any, and opening his Pelican Case he produces a sticky joint, lighting it with the remnant embers of his dwindling cigar. Pulling the gasping ladyfish from the live well he steaks it sloppily with a filet knife and skewers a chunk of bloody flesh onto a hook. His spinning rod sings as he tosses it to the far end of the grass flat, the splash it makes barely audible in the hot stillness. The head of the ladyfish is still gasping with a look that reminds me of surprise as if it’s wondering where its rear end wandered off to.

“Beats the hell out of working,” he sighs. He slips his rod into the holder and commits to sliding into the water himself for the unspoken act of relieving himself. By this time I’m in the water myself, ignoring the fact that the water I’m in is mingling with his micturition. My beer is safely on the bow within reach. It’s a big-name brand, and while I prefer a microbrew, man code dictates that you don’t criticize the brand when you’re not paying for it. Besides that, it’s functional and essential to the overall process of fishing on the Gulf of Mexico. Beer is critical. Fahkin’ critical.

“Over there,” he says. His posture and concentration is still obvious, like a dog who found a hydrant. Toss one in that area of the grass. I more or less know where he’s gesturing and land the fly about thirty feet away, where the mangroves start, and start a count down from five.

The line goes tight and I assume I’m hooked up, but mangroves don’t pull back. My drag is already set and the fish is small enough to not need anymore. I’m half tempted to let off on it and fight the little speck, but it’s too hot. It’s too small to recover properly and to force it into a fight wouldn’t be sporting. I’m almost certain to release it, regardless of its size anyway, and to fight it would mean death by lactic acid buildup and suffocation, or being made lunch by any of the small sharks cruising the flats. I unbutton him, show him to Jerry who snaps a quick picture on his phone, and let him go.

“Good enough,” he grins.

James Windale is the author of Twenty-Five at the Lip, Just Say Maybe, and The Delirium: A Zombie Opera of the Great War. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Gray Ghosts and Jim Beam

/ jameswindale / 2 Comments

It’s the summer of 1999 and I’m sitting shotgun beside a man I’ve spent most of my life genuinely afraid of. Grampa isn’t much for conversation, at least with me, and I was far short of excited to learn that I’d be spending three days at a fishing camp in Rangeley, Maine with him. I’m going through with it because the alternative is listening to Mom’s ex-boyfriend crying in our garage as he tosses all the junk he’s filled our house with for the last five years. It’s all going into a dumpster in our driveway and it’s the sort of eyesore that draws neighborhood attention.

9/11 is still two years away and it’s the tail end of a decade that was nice to grow up in. Marcy Playground and Fastball are in my CD player, and they’re slowly getting scored by the laser that reads them. My ten-speed is my primary mode of transportation and I’m able to make my way around town easily enough, enjoying getting lost and trying to make sure I get home in time to claim it isn’t dark yet. It’s a pretty idyllic time bridging the gap between teenage youth and actual adult responsibility.

Why was I going on a fishing trip out of nowhere? Maybe Mom wanted to spare me the grief at the house, or maybe she wanted me to spend some time with the man, but I was having trouble reconciling the relationship I had with Grampa and the objective of the adventure. I’d spent most of my life passively avoiding a man that I was about to take a road trip with.

Fishing isn’t even on my radar at this point. Grampa tried to take me when I was younger but it didn’t take. Mostly, I think, because he expected a 6-year-old to be able to sit still for more than three minutes watching a bobber with a skewered, half-drowned worm on a hook. He ties flies with my uncle and they fish together, bitten by the fly fishing bug decades before. It’s their bonding element. Their special club.

Grampa purchased three-day licenses for us and bought a bunch of flies out of the glass-topped counter. “A Gray Ghost,” he pointed out to me; a name that had exactly zero meaning to me at this point. Our cabin faced the lower lake and I’m told that after the power is turned off I’ll have to flush the toilet with a bucket of water. I’m charmed by the simplicity and immediately wonder if there is a way to spend the rest of my life like this. Just disappear and never be heard from again.

Lakewood Camps is place out of time and there are no real roads to get there; somewhere between Kinnebunk-Nowhere and the third moose on the left; the sort of place where they say things like “A’yuh,” or “Ya cahn’t get there from hea.” He calls the lodge from a gas station pay phone to tell them we were twenty miles away and continue on passing buck-shot-riddled yield signs and endless evergreen forests. A retired Maine Game Warden picked us up at the dock and brought us down the length of the Richardson Lakes on a boat to a place called Middle Dam. At 10 p.m. they shut down the power to discourage the sort of loud booze-hounding and substance abuse I’d be doing with fishing buddies a decade later. You didn’t go up there for that.

We started out just below the dam on what’s known as the Rapid River. I received a short lesson in fly casting and could sense the frustration in his tone as he guided me, neglecting his own rod to make sure I was getting the most out of the trip. I didn’t have much in the way of luck, but Grampa’s tone is such that I want to do well in his eyes. I hate to disappoint people, and he is someone I’m genuinely afraid of, so my motivation is peaked.

We move down the river over the next few hours, rock-hopping from boulder to boulder, trying to keep my back cast out of the trees that line the bank behind us. With his trained eye he manages to spot a fish holding on the downstream side of a boulder on the opposite bank. It takes a few attempts, but I manage to drop the Gray Ghost just upstream of the boulder and let it sweep around, pulling slack out of the line just like Grampa told me. The line goes tight and I look on in horror as the rod bends and I feel the line slip back through my fingers.

“Easy,” he breathes. “Keep the pressure on him and gently pull him in on the line.” I do exactly as he says, almost fearing that the net he’s lowering into the water might get swung on me if I lose this fish connected to me through a few feet of line, feathers, and a barbless hook. In one of those wonders of parenthood, he manages to get the fish to slip effortlessly into the net like I knew what the heck I was doing. I take hold of the net and he’s snapping pictures on his SLR and he’s coaching me on the way to lift the rainbow out of the net to get the hero shot. This is easily the biggest fish I’ve ever caught (which isn’t saying much), dwarfing the bluegills I’d spin cast for in the ponds of my childhood. It kicks and squirms out of my hands before I can turn, splashing into the cold water.

I expect a burn. I’m waiting for the cutting remark of failure I’d learned to associate with a man who grew up bitter and angry at the world for the hand that it had dealt him. Turning shamefully to look in his direction I see his smile, the one my daughter will have in another couple decades. “Very good,” he says. I’m relieved. I’ve passed some kind of test and I feel like I’ve done something that counts in his eyes. My feet, encased in hip waders, are dangling in the river and I can feel the cool pull of the water against my ankles. I look at the rod in my hand feeling the weight and the balance with the reel. I’m in the club now.

Later that night the power is shut off as promised, but we’re sitting out in rocking chairs on the front porch of our cabin. The air is cool despite it being August and I’m glad to be wearing the sweatshirt that Gram told me to pack. Our rods are hung up on pegs behind us for easy access in the morning. Between us there is a pair of glasses and a bit of ice marinating in Jim Beam – working-class bourbon and his preferred brand. It’s something I’ve come to associate with him now and there is always a bottle in my own liquor cabinet today. It’s Jim Beam, Gray Ghosts, Brut aftershave, and the Masons that tie me to Grampa.

The layers that make up the man seem to fall away in the midst of this bull session. I realize there is much more to Grampa than I could have understood from my vantage point. He’d been intimidating in my eyes for years, but now he was different. He seemed a whole person, a human, and I was starting to understand him. He puts his glass down after a thoughtful pull and leans back in his rocking chair looking out on the still lake reflecting the stars in the heavens.

“This…” he says with a sigh, and I get it.

James Windale is the author of Twenty-Five at the Lip, Just Say Maybe, and The Delirium, A Zombie Opera of the Great War. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter