Trout Fishing - A Christmas Folly

I don’t get Up North as much as I’d like, heck, not even as much as I need to steer clear of insanity’s brink. So, when I do get up, I'll accept nearly any opportunity to lash the old stream, which sometimes means trout fishing at Christmas. With all apologies to Jim Harrison and his wonderful story "Ice Fishing, the Moronic Sport," stream fishing in December is incredibly stupid as well as decidedly unpleasant. It features some of those exquisite attributes of Michigan winters like bone-chilling temperatures, sheets of snow and sleet, and those uniquely Midwestern, leaden clouds my brother calls Edmund Fitzgeralds. Christmas fishing combines these with other all-time favorites like tingling toes, frozen rod guides and flies completely ignored by the, presumably, none to comfortable trout. The rivers look nothing like the ebullient freshets of spring or the languorous meanderers of summertime but more like the chilled vodka they put in expensive Martinis.

This past summer I got rooked, on account of being best man in my kid brother’s wedding, out of my usual week-long respite on Silver Lake along with its daily jaunts to the Boardman and Platte. So much for all that weepy heart growing fonder nonsense because by September, at the latest, I had developed a full on jones for my home streams.

Since I used the term "home stream," this seems as good a place as any to address this current home stream silliness where the mossbacks and bushwhackers criticize city folk for adopting a home stream that is a couple of hundred miles from where they actually live their lives. Well, being city folk, I’m invoking the old saw that "home is where the heart is." I may live three blocks from the White House, but I’ll lay odds that most days my heart is within shouting distance of the meadow on the Boardman unless, of course, it's at the flowerpot pool on the Platte or . . . .

Anyway, I did get to fish a lot (for a young lawyer in the big city) this summer and did get on a ton of new water. Each time I wet a line, I had high hopes of quashing that Up North jones, but wound up only increasing my longing for Michigan. Even worse, thoughts of those new streams began to crowd from my mind's eye visions of things like the bend in the Boardman where the Hex hatch always seems to last a couple of extra weeks.

This, fair reader, is the emotional baggage that I toted along with a vest full of fly boxes, neoprene waders, a fly rod and all manner of cold and foul weather gear on my December 21^st flight. While I worked north with this load, Mr. Jet Stream schlepped an Alberta Clipper southward. We met at Traverse City.

It was only December so it wasn’t that chilly. The first day I hit the river the mercury surged, if mercury can, in fact, surge, all the way up to 8 degrees. Now, if you are beginning to feel at all sorry for me save your pity for the foolish man accompanying me to the stream. He is retired, lives Up North and fishes only when he feels like it or when the fish are really biting. He, I’m pretty certain, lives a jones-free existence. I said I’d be perfectly happy to fish alone, but he’d hear none of it. So a young fool and an old softy donned uniforms that not only warmed us but cost enough to keep several DuPont and Dow scions warm as they, most assuredly, lounged in front of drawing room fires or on exclusive beaches.

Gore-Tex, check. Polartec, check. Neoprene, check. Capilene, check. Polypropylene, check went the pre-fish checklist that came dangerously close to morphing into some 60's-style novelty song. I even slipped a can of Pam spray out of mom’s pantry. It’s supposed to keep the rod guides ice-free. Hint, at 8 degrees, it doesn’t work. (Note to self--I am writing this while sitting on the tarmac waiting to fly home--make friends with someone in the airline industry and see if you can get a hold of some wing de-icer or, on second thought, maybe getting Up North a little more often would render this entire silly drill unnecessary.)

Anyway, dressed and rigged, we waddled clumsily to the river. Always remember, even if it’s zero, you’re convinced nothing lives below the river’s surface and fingers resemble the Vienna sausages discovered during the last icebox defrosting, winter rivers are often beautiful. They are usually well behaved and, if snow-shrouded and hemmed in by a pewter sky, look classy, respectable and proper. I know, take a picture, go home and sit in front of the fire with a drink--no need to stand knee-deep waving an infantile rod for three or four hours.

So we waded in and, thanks to layers of scientific marvels, I felt no sensation save a slight press of the current against my legs. I sprayed the Pam on the rod guides and made a few practice casts to gauge the tactileness of the ski gloves. "Nice and steady," I thought. I didn’t want to make a clumsy cast and spook the steelhead I knew were holding around the bend in the next pool under the downed cedar (I know, I should have been thinking "just don't fall in you big idiot," but I'm not quite that seasoned yet). "A couple of more warm-ups near the brush pile" I thought and I’d be ready to go. And then "Eureka!" a little rainbow took my egg pattern (read: fishing lingo for orange yarn tied to hook). "Look out Platte, look out Pards, look out winter ‘cause golly I’m hot today" or something along those lines flashed through my adrenaline-greased brain. Whatever heat I had quickly dissipated through my big old head and that was the last fish I saw. No more hookups, no more takes, no steelies in the holes, nothing.

Pards' reel froze so he went back to the car to read a book. I fished for another hour and got nothing unless you count the head cold that showed up on Christmas Eve. Silly, stupid, no-account fishing. They (whoever they are) say you feel warm just before you freeze to death and just as I couldn’t stand the cold anymore, my wind-addled brain lurched into a summer fishing reverie complete with shirt sleeves, a nice hatch, three more hours of daylight and a couple of cold ones chilling near the car.

A bottom snag mistaken for a strike broke that thought and possibly saved my life. I, not one to look too many gift horses in the mouth, decided then and there to head back to the car, which I found, thankfully, warmed and occupied by a dozing Pards. "Do anything?" he asked skeptically as he watched chunks of ice crackle off the layers I peeled away. The very layers I had so hopefully donned hours earlier. As we drove off, Pards slipped into a monologue that sounded familiar yet distant. I finally recognized it as the "we'll get'em next time" talk that followed so many ball games as a kid. That speech segued into plans to explore new sections of our favorite streams and an idea to make a U.P. trip next summer.

Lost now in conversation and putting my face dangerously near the car's heat vents, I began a slow return to rationality. Finally, the returning clarity spawned the following thought: "I'm certainly glad that's out of my system . . . . . . now I can start planning how we can do better next Christmas."

"I finally recognized it as the "we'll get'em next time" talk that followed so many ball games as a kid."