You can’t choose your relatives – and everybody has a cross to bear. Cousin Barry is mine. Barry and I have been fishing together since we were kids. Once – we were about eight or nine – I executed an overexcited cast, failing to monitor the backcast, and nailed him with a Bass-O-Reno, sinking all three treble hooks into his scalp, resulting in a bloody, trauma filled trip to the hospital emergency room. I feel like I owe him for that one. The incident happened fifty years ago but he still brings it up often – the story a Cousin Barry standard at family gatherings and holiday parties.
We’re camped on the Big River, loading my canoe, preparing to launch for an evening of fishing on Long Eddy. Soon as I rig new tippets on both rods we’ll get going. Tending his cigar, Barry isn’t any help. He considers it the greater role and his job to provide an informative narrative while I work the gear. Barry loves to talk. He sells cars but always has things going on the side. He’d like to be rich, yet so far hasn’t struck it. He’s on a roll:
“Nope. I know what I’m talkin’ about Steve. You don’t think I’m smarter than nine outta ten people? Bet yer ass I am. I don’t like the silver bars. The silver bars don’t speak to me. No more silver. But… BUT! Wanna make money?… Royal Wooster. Figurines. Lotta money to be made. Yup. That’s the way to make money. Believe me. I know what I’m talkin’ about. …Actually… I’m… somewhat of an expert on ceramic figurines. Yup. Huh? The coins? Shit. Those fooled alotta people. I shoulda known those communist bastards couldn’t be trusted. Red Chinese. Master copiers. Those fooled alotta people, oh yeah. Yup. But the gold?… Buddy it’s a roll of the dice right now, this whole thing could be comin’ down. I took a 10,000-dollar crapshoot an the price of gold is set by the World Market… right?… It’s gotta go up a coupla’ hundred before I can make any money on it. Oh I got other stuff, you know, the golf clubs – I was havin’ breakfast at Denny’s the other day and I saw this guy payin’ his bill at the register – an I knew the guy was a golfer. I can tell. So I yell to the guy – HEY! SIR! I can tell that YEW are a golfer! His family was already outside the door waiting for him – but I had the guy for about ten minutes an he almost bought the clubs. There’s an ass for every seat, Steve. Ah-huh. Cigars. You should smoke cigars. I’m surprised you’re not into the complexities of a good cigar – Nicaragua, the best cigars – you can retire very well down there, yup, expatriate paradise – be cheap to go down there. …Look at yer fingers… man… those nicotine stains on yer fingers. Hope you’re gonna be around to write those stories. Those fingers are brown. Bet yer lungs look like that. Yup. Beautiful Joe. That was a good book, remember?… about the dog?… the mean guy cuts his ears and tail off?… that one got me oh yeah but Steve, Steve, you wanna make money?… ready?… Figurines. Fi-gur-eens.”
I grunt.
We shove off and Barry launches into another monologue. World Affairs this time. With a lot of crazy Politics thrown in. Blood is thicker than water but I’ve already had three days of this while camping with Barry and I’m getting irritated and feel the need for less blood and more water, less rowing and more fishing. I interrupt him:
“Hey Barry… why don’t you just take the canoe by yourself… think I’ll walk down and swing the Grotto.”
It’s a vindictive suggestion because I know Cousin Barry has an aversion to the educated Grotto trout who experience quite a bit of spring and summer traffic, feeling the sting and trauma of being caught and released, and are, by now, difficult. The Grotto trout have had their way with Barry a few times – but he’s been doing alright on Long Eddy where, nightly, I’ve been rowing him up and down the run while he fishes nothing but dryflies, puffing on his cigar, casting while issuing tight-lipped and continuous micro-directives on where to position the boat.
Long Eddy is a half-mile-long stretch of water located on a bend of the river. It has a perfect seam running its length, from its head down to a bedrock formation jutting into the river at the tailout, the Grotto. The current to the inside of the seam flows uphill counter to the main flow. The seams are shifting windows of neutral water, sometimes holding prodigious concentrations of feed for trout, particularly during spotted sedge season when roving gangs of thuggo trout work the seam line – you’ll see three or four rise at once, tear-ass and bold, working uphill on the faster outside current, then working back down the inside water. There’s no need to go anywhere else. No need to go jamming around the river looking for fish. I don’t like to leave fish to go looking for fish. And that is a thing you will have to do if you fish from a motorized vessel. Motor puts them down. Even a rowboat will put them down if you don’t stay quiet and keep it out of their faces.
Here’s how it works on Long Eddy: The majority of the trout are located on the seam between the fast water on the outside, toward the middle of the river, and the much slower back-current on the inside. While Barry fishes I row, staying on the inside where the water is neutral so that the fast water won’t sweep us down and out of the eddy, into water too fast to row back up. Every time Barry sees a trout rise on the outside in fast water he directs me to row farther out. I inform him, over and over, that it’s foolish to fight the ripping outside current and it’s not necessary because there are more fish on the inside of the seam, which is easier to work from the soft water. A slow feathering of the oars against the weak back-eddy gives us a nice, workable drift. When we get to the bottom of the run, at the tailout where it picks up speed, we angle toward shore before it’s too late, the uphill back-current catches us and we drift toward the top again, fishing all the way. And the fishing is good. There’s enough trout to last a whole session in a few drifts down and back. But you have to be careful. If you don’t angle in toward shore soon enough at the tailout you’ll be caught in fast water you can’t row against. If you’re lucky you’ll be swept to the inside and go bumping around the big rock formation and into the calmer water of the Grotto, where, with some effort, the canoe can be dragged up over the rocks and back to Long Eddy without too much trouble. If you’re unlucky, the fast water will carry you toward a house-sized rock protruding like an ominous devil’s hoof from the river. The rock is surrounded by insane hydraulics. Current takes you that way, you either smash into the rock, or you end up in a giant whirlpool where you row eternally but never get free. Bad deal either way.
The canoe is a 17-foot Old Towne Discovery Sport, plastic with an aluminum frame. More a rowboat than a canoe – it’s equipped with oarlocks and oars – slightly wider with a flatter bottom than a conventional canoe, with a square transom where a small motor can be mounted – designed after the old-time guide boats popular in northern New England and the Maritimes – easy to drag into places without boat launches. A drawback of the design is that it will tip over fairly easy, particularly if a standing fisherman makes a sudden, quick movement. You have to know the boat.
I cackle to myself. Barry is taking the canoe and I’m going to hit the Grotto, finally able to fish, blessedly alone, and not having to row while listening to Barry’s nonstop, directive-loaded, lunatic monologue.
The main current streams toward that ominous rock I mentioned sticking up from the river below the Grotto. But a considerable flow curls around the Grotto outcrop and into a spreading convergence window that concentrates trout. You cast from the outcropping rocks and let the fly swing down into the convergence. The spot looks easy but it’s not as easy as it looks. Barry might attest. Grotto trout know the vulnerability of their location so they are extra selective. I love the challenge of these trout and have been rewarded with some fine catches, hammering it out on that spot.
I get there and there are some heads showing up top. I tie on a #14 soft-hackle Hares Ear, make the cast, and hook a good trout on the first drift – a deep-bodied wild redband of about 20 inches. It raises hell before I net it, putting its compatriots down, so I sit on a rock, roll a smoke, and wait for the fish to regather and get going again.
I sit, watching the sun descend, listening to the sound of water rubbing away the rocks. I’m sinking deep into the scene and I think I hear somebody yell my name. I hear it again, my name, strangled, desperate…
…It’s Barry! He’s in the river!…
I grab the long-handled landing net and clamber out to the end of a rock finger – and he’s coming down, treading water, paddling like a manatee in a fly vest, his rod clenched between his teeth – he looks like a nightmare version of some hero posing with a bonefish – but without the bonefish. Here he comes. I reach down with the net, he makes the grab, and I haul him out. He’s lucky. He caught that inside water that brings you into the Grotto. Barry sputters and grabs while I struggle to haul his wet bulk up onto the rock, and I get him up, and he collapses from fatigue. He’s pathetic. Soaked and shivering, blue with cold and shock. His hat is gone. Tufts of wet hair stick straight out from the sides of his head. I notice his leader is wrecked, tippet and fly gone.
“Okay you’re alive so where’s my boat?”
He’d hooked a trout and while fighting it drifted too far down into the tailout and found himself going down the chute. Leaning over to grab an oar he upset the canoe. When it rolled over the anchor dumped – the bitter end tied to the bow-ring – and when the anchor caught bottom, the upside-down canoe dove under like a swordfish.
We wait, watching the water. And we wait for a long time but see no sign of any re-emerged canoe. It’s gone. I entertain a flimsy hope it will show up downriver. That might take a while if the canoe is firmly snagged into the cow-sized rubble lining the bottom out there in thirty feet of water. Or, possibly, it’s not snagged – the whole sunken show submarining, bumping down the bottom careening against the rocks at six knots, beating itself up like some berserk sturgeon.
Lucky Barry is a good swimmer because even though there were two lifejackets onboard, he wasn’t wearing one.
I’m crushed at losing the boat yet secretly relieved Barry survived. I’m kicking myself.
At camp, I’m frying us a couple burgers while Cousin Barry, now in dry clothes and his hair combed, sits on the ice chest swirling and contemplating a last swallow of Scotch in his glass. He’s been quiet. Suddenly, he stands up, decisively lifts and downs the remainder of the whiskey, and goes for his wallet.
He hands me a pud of wet bills, says, “Man I’m sorry about the boat. This is everything I got.”
I’m pissed and bummed about losing the canoe and count the money in front of him out of spite. Almost enough to cover half the cost of the canoe, not factoring the lost gear. I hand him back half the money. “We’ll go Dutch,” I tell him. He takes the wad back without arguing. Strange, I suddenly don’t feel right about keeping even half the money. I feel bad but slip it into my pocket anyway.
My cousin remains contemplative and out-of-character until we roll out our sleeping bags in the tent. I douse the lamp and we lay there in the dark. Barry, facing me in his bag, speaks up and asks, “Remember what I told you?”
I hazard a guess: “Figurines?…”
Crickets saw in the dark.
Barry doesn’t say anything. He turns over, emits a loud and long fart, and goes to sleep.