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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
I sat in a quaint breakfast café
sipping my sixth cup of coffee while the elderly waitress eyed me from inside
the kitchen doorway as if I was a homeless man threatening to drink dry the
kitchen’s supply of coffee facilitated by free refills and local hospitality. The previous night’s temperature dropped well
below freezing, leaving me feeling rather lethargic despite appropriate gear. Coffee was bringing me back to life.
This brought to mind the couple I
met the night before when stepping out of the upper Connecticut River. The wife, an endearing retired schoolteacher
named Dixie, titled me insane for pitching my tent and actually intending to
sleep in it while the frost fell overnight.
I could make no strong case for my sanity apart from declaring that I “just
want to prove that I can.” The like-minded
husband, Dave, identified with me and offered to take me fishing the next day,
nevertheless.
I departed the café at half-past
eight, and raced along winding, gravel roads littered with signs of direction
for snowmobilers and ATV-ers. The
four-season destination of Pittsburg, New Hampshire, the smokestack of the
Granite State north of the 45th parallel that marks the northern
border of Vermont with Quebec, is a magnet for these tourists, who swap vehicles
with the seasons.
When at last I found my
destination, Dave’s figure emerged from the ground floor of their red camp,
having just finished breakfast, ready for the day’s adventures.
I gathered my fishing gear and
made two peanut butter sandwiches from the groceries in my car’s cooler, and we
made off for the river.
The Connecticut River is unique
in that it is four different rivers in its regularly-fished length, and all are
tailwaters. Flowing out of Fourth
Connecticut Lake, the upper river runs south on its course to Long Island
Sound, beaded by Third, Second, and First Connecticut Lakes, and Lake Francis.
We began the day fishing for about
an hour above Lake Francis without luck before heading to the “Trophy Section”
below “First Lake.” In a few hours
there, Dave tied into a large rainbow trout, and I landed several smaller,
including one landlocked salmon parr.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
When morning turned into
afternoon, we continued north in search of fish until reaching a spot below
“Second Lake” where Dave was proud to have caught and released a 19-inch salmon
the week before.
The water was comparatively
smaller, and fit the definition of “pocket water” better than did our last
destination, as an abundance of relatively-shallow pools stair-stepped down the
moderate grade of the mountain hollow.
Most pools held several brook trout and a few small salmon; and I was at
home nymphing to the fish of my Appalachian youth, though far from home.
Whenever I travel to a place
where brook trout are present, I make a point of inquiring on what a “trophy”
brook trout is locally. Everywhere the
answer is relative to a number of circumstances.
However, there are a few generally-accepted
benchmarks. At home, in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of Virginia, the answer is 12 inches, as it is most places and, as I
found, on the Connecticut. In Labrador,
the number is a factor of pounds.
Density introduces another factor. Whereas in Virginia, where one might catch a
12-inch Brookie every couple of outings, the same feat is readily achieved
several times in one day on the Connecticut, if not in the same pool.
It was upon this discovery that
my expectations for the fishery were shattered.
After landing my seventh Brookie from one particularly-productive pool,
I made another cast to a far current seam with my weighted nymph. As the fly tumbled past a small boulder, the
line hesitated, and my rod swept upward, bowed against the pressure, bringing
with it the explosive form of a leaping salmon the length of my arm.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
As it struggled to find safety
from the pressure of my arced Tycoon Tackle fly rod in the head of the pool, I,
having lost my net to some Catskill underbrush some weeks before, stumbled into
the center of the current, guarding the magnificent fish’s downstream exit with
sidesteps and sideways pressure from the rod.
The fish made two more silver
leaps as I chased him about the pool, until a fourth and final leap brought my
leader down hard on the boulder beside which the fish had emerged, loosing my
fly from its jaws sans photograph.
Dave caught up with me, and I
relayed my story. He smiled
sympathetically, and we returned to camp for dinner of BLTs and home-friend
potatoes.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
As I fell asleep that night, slightly
warmer, under the stars, my eyes didn’t blink.
“These woods hide giants,” I repeatedly thought, inhaling the
evergreen-tinted mountain air. Just like
that, I was once again haunted.
*Originally published in the Rural Virginian
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