STORIES

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Fly Fishing Conjures Flies and Salmon

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Community: Fraser Valley

I cast my line into the current and let it sink and swing downstream. On the end of my line: the fourth fly I had tried in this first hour of fishing. Daylight had clearly broken now. We were well past first light when the fish bite best. High tide approached. The rain squalled in fits, heavy for few minutes as a cloud glided up the valley, then misty as it passed.

My fly stopped moving in the current. I tightened the line and lifted the fly off the bottom, then started to retrieve it. Something was on the fly. Not a fish, but something felt different.

The fly surfaced and made the V of a wake, dragging a clump of something. Another stick like a few cast prior? A leaf like I had seen floating by in the river?

I pulled it closer and found that my fly had caught another fly, this new one trailing a length of broken fishing line. I plucked the new fly off my own fly. The new fly was just what I had been looking for the night prior at the fly shop, where they had a sale on and scarce inventory.

Purple and pink with a little flash, this new fly was what I wanted to be fishing. That was clear to me. I clipped the length of line of another fisherman’s bad luck and tied it onto my own leader. I dropped it into the water to see how it sank and ran in the water. Perfect, was the answer.

I pulled out line and casted, mended the line and watched it sink into the water. I retrieved the line and casted again. Just where the fly left the fast green water of the main stem and settled into the darker clear water I felt a thrilling and familiar pull. Fish on!

A beautiful silver chum salmon rolled and fought on the surface. It jumped a few minutes later and pulled in great, intermittent lunges that had the drag on my reel screaming. I landed him on the shore and there was the fly I had caught two casts earlier in his bottom teeth. The river had given me the fly and the salmon.