a magazine for anglers
by David Snyder
It’s Good Friday, Viernes Santos, my final afternoon fishing for sea-run brown trout, in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The full moon is up well before sunset. The wind has calmed only enough to erase the nervous riffles from atop the white caps. My brother-in-law, Mike, is upstream struggling with his double haul.
Peter, our guide, points to the two pink birds in the tail-out of Middle Pool. “I’ve never before seen flamingoes on the Rio Grande.” He steps away from the truck for a closer look. His curly chin beard protrudes from the snug-fitting hood. His green eyes are hidden behind wrap around sunglasses. “Really. I was born in Rio Grande. You can see the birds other places on Tierra del Fuego, but never here.”
“They’re confused by the wind,” I say. Then I remember that down here it’s a constant, like the guanacos. We’ve been in Tierra del Fuego a week, and have yet to fish a day with the wind of under thirty knots. Earlier today, I hooked and played my fifth fish and broke into laughter: the idea of it, waves splashing off the backs of my legs, over my head, and I’m catching enormous trout.
Peter hands me a small purple fly with rubber legs. “Put this on and finish the run.” He motions to the thirty yards of green cut-bank remaining in the Corralito. “Start there at the broken bank.”
My watch says 6:30. I’m eager to move to the next pool downstream, the Corral, for the magic hour between sunset and complete darkness. Of all the beats we’ve fished, the tail-out of the Corral Pool is my favorite. Last year it was where I caught my only fish over twenty pounds. When we fished it two mornings ago, I hooked a twenty-six that took me almost down to Peter’s pool before finding the net. This is our final afternoon. I have expectations.
Ever since my first visit to Estancia Despedida a year ago, I’ve wondered what part was calling me back. In my usual habitat, I like technical fishing—sight casting, thin tippets to visible, preferably rising fish, or the small, brightly colored natives in the mountain streams near my home outside Santa Fe, or the spooky ones in Montana spring creeks, or tiny flies that are impossible to see on downstream drifts to tail-water fish in tight feeding lanes. But twenty-pound leaders and sink tip lines are anything but technical. And with the constant wind, the physical demands of the double haul on an eight-weight rod with a 200 grain Versi-tip has once again left my hands and fingers swollen. Mornings when I awaken, I am unable complete a fist. My wedding ring is safely in my wallet. The daily aspirin burns my stomach. The muscles in my shoulder and trunk are strained. Now I understand. The attraction is the fish, not their size, but their will.
When we arrived at the airport, Oswaldo, one of the lodge owners, said that a minority of our catch would be bright silver, and fresh from the sea. To our surprise, the opposite has been true. Other than the deeply colored, hook-jawed male, from the Corral Pool, all the fish I’ve netted have been bright, only days from the sea. The will of these fish. They first enter the river in early November and continue through summer and fall. And with the full moon and big tides, a fresh run has accommodated our visit. Oswaldo says this year’s run began late, and for weeks, he was afraid they wouldn’t come. He also said he’s seen fresh fish jumping, moving upstream in the middle of winter. When I asked him the particulars of the trout—how long they stay at sea, the interval between runs, where they go—he brushed his palm over his oversized mustache and said, “No one knows.”
Danny, the other lodge owner, told us that fish scales are like the tree trunks. Each time the fish goes from sea to river, a new ring is added. In his collection of scales, some are from fish that have returned to the fresh water five and six times. No one knows how long the fish live or the interval between river runs. Unlike Pacific salmon, they don’t have sex and then die. And with fewer fish kills, each year’s run is more numerous.
Now thigh-deep in forty-two degree water, I turn back to the shore for some instruction. Peter points to the twenty yards remaining in the run. A big male breaks the water in the riffle below the tail-out, beyond my reach. I recheck my watch. My focus remains on the Corral.
Fishing this windswept ends-of-the-earth terrain of condors, no trees and arctic foxes, of ground nesting hawks, and grass eating beavers, I am filled with wonder. Fishing on Good Friday only adds to the glory. I inherited fly-fishing from my grandfather, a staunch German Catholic, who worked as a land-man in southern Louisiana for the Gulf Oil Company. When I was eight years old, he bought my first fly-rod then taught me to cast the gangling green Shakespeare in the front yard of my central Texas home. We fished stock ponds and conservation lakes filled with bass and bluegills. If we insisted on using bait or spin casting rigs, he treated any success as if we’d used gillnets or trotlines.
Of his many spiritual tenets, his most memorable is that of fishing on Good Friday. “The earth is contaminated by Christ’s Blood,” he said. “We can’t touch the land.” His conclusion that fishing on Good Friday was a mandate, a directive from God, made perfect sense to a ten year-old boy. Fishing became as much a part of the Holy Week liturgy as stripping the alter on Holy Thursday or lighting the new fire, midnight Holy Saturday. Now almost fifty years later, even though I’m far removed from my Catholic upbringing, his words have significance, especially in this landscape at the bottom of the earth, where the sky seems closer; the sun more at hand; and the fish have such a will.
My cast bounces off the grass bank. I make a big upstream mend then suddenly tension interrupts the line’s downstream drift, a rock or a snag. Instinctively, I jerk the rod toward the shore, and the interruption begins to vibrate. I see nothing. The clear water is made opaque by the brown, rocky bottom. The snag begins to move, and the rod tip quivers. Sometimes the line explodes, other times it just bores deeper, deeper. I back-step toward the shore, keeping the rod bent and parallel with the water. The heel of the rod is pressed into my belly button. The tension increases, line escapes the drag, another step, and I feel the headshake. More line escapes, another headshake, then nothing. I retrieve the fly. Pierced by the point is a single silver scale.
I look to the shore. Peter grins and points to his butt.
“Tail hook.” I look downstream.
Peter shakes his head. “Finish the run with that fly. Then we’ll move.”
Reluctantly I return to the twenty yards remaining in the Corralito. Mike is upstream working the head of the pool. He’s already fished this water at the end. My arm is tired. I check my watch once again.
The wind at the tail of the Corral will be more to our backs, blowing right to left. The casts will be longer but easier, so I move quickly, cast strip then five steps, cast strip, five steps. When I return to the truck Peter pulls at his beard. “You must be in a hurry,” he says with a grin.
“You noticed,” I say.
“Maybe you missed a big fish.”
“I’m ready to change directions,” I say.
Peter is tall and under spoken except when it comes to big fish or good whiskey. He is a gracious blend of purpose and possibility.
“Lets move,” he yells to Mike, and once we’re loaded, he drives the truck downstream. We wade across the river. Peter points to the tail-out. “Go on,” he says.
I happily trudge to the knee deep sand bar that runs parallel to the long grassy bank with a deep undercut. The cast is fifty to sixty feet. Two days ago, after three good ones, I was twice broken off. I’m convinced that another giant is hiding beneath the undercut.
Peter places Mike upstream, back at the Corralito, to fish the same water I hastily addressed, this time from the high bank, where his casts are shorter and the drift immediately sinks into the fishing lane. The sun is now completely gone; the bright moon is over my left shoulder. I am reminded again of my grandfather’s faith. He would’ve enjoyed this double-haul, with its rules: lay the line on the water, one false cast with no more than two feet of running line between the rod tip and the Versi-tip section, then strip twice and throw. My tendency is one more false cast—get more line out. When I disobey the rule, the line falls in a mid-river heap, or the fly slams the back of my head. It takes belief to let the line go, and each time I do, I am surprised. I understand the physics of it, but like faith, it is counter intuitive.
Halfway through my run, I’m still working the purple fly. Mike lets out a big whoop. From the corner of my eye, a big silver fish jumps once, then twice. Peter belts out his characteristic, “Holy Moly.” Mike’s found his really big one, so I quickly retrieve my line and head for the bank. When I arrive, Mike is kneeling in the water, whisps of gray hair blow like feathers from beneath his orange cap; his grin is bright like the moon; his shaking hands surround the silver female.
“Twenty-seven,” he says.
Peter winks. I understand his inferred, “I told you so,” but am happy for Mike. My week’s allotment of big ones is already full. “Did you see him jump?”
The great hen-fish gasps for air, a distance runner.
“Like a silver moving van,” I say. I join in the photo-feast with the fish: first Mike alone, then Mike and Peter, then Mike and myself. And when we’re done, before Mike can ease the fish back to the water, the big female takes control and surges out of Mike’s grip, leaving behind a remarkable wake, no hesitation or need for revival. That’s what I mean by the will of these fish.
It’s now 7:35. The streaks of orange are now dark gray. The wind is down to a whisper.
“Time for the purple and black leach,” Peter says.
By now it’s too dark to see the fly-line. The cast is all by feel, beginning when I hear the tick of the Versi-tip against the rod tip on the retrieve. The leach yields three final fish; the last pulls me downstream, taking line into the heavy water between the Corral and Peter’s Pool. I’m running atop the high bank, rod-tip held high over my head. Peter’s headlamp bounces off the dark water. We hear an occasional splash as the unseen fish breaks the surface of the river. Finally, I work the fish into the same side channel where I landed the big one two mornings ago. Peter and I both laugh; the fish is tail-hooked. On the walk back to Corral, he reminds me that I had hurried through the Corralito. Again, his headlamp bounces off the water. The wind has completely gone.
“I told you there was a big one,” he says.
“And if I’d fished it hard, I would have buggered up Mike’s catch,” I say. We both laugh.
David Snyder lives with his wife Vicki, a ceramic artist, in the small traditional village of Galisteo near Santa Fe, New Mexico where he divides his time between his medical oncology practice, writing, and fishing the numerous waters of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Previous work has appeared in Narrative Magazine.
