Relentless (2/15/11)

I stood there motionless, the rain beating down on me, relentlessly trying to penetrate my rain coat. It slammed against my hood with enough force and frequency that it sounded like I was surrounded in machine gun fire. The dark clouds, releasing their moisture, looked angry, almost impenetrable. The rain washed over my face as I looked skyward. I was positioned atop an old beaver dam where only the summer before the water backed up for almost a quarter mile. Now there was a large hole in its right side, a battle wound that allowed the water to rage downstream. The water, still backed up slightly, was beginning to rise from the torrent being released from above. It was only a matter of time before the water would be unfishable and as dark as chocolate milk. The wind, for its part, was silent… almost too silent. I had the sense that something was coming, bearing down on me like a wolf on a rabbit. The hair on my arms stood as the sky was torn apart. ZZZZZZT! BOOM! A bolt of lightning crashed to earth somewhere close. “Let’s go Ryan!” I heard Donny P yell from somewhere behind me. Staring down into the water in front of the beaver dam I whispered, “Not yet.”

I stood there motionless, certain that there was a large trout somewhere below me in the tangled mess of tree branches. An apex predator was waiting for something to show weakness, waiting for something to be forced within its range, waiting for the raising water to bring it something to eat. The rain ran off of the hood of my raincoat in streams like someone was dumping an endless bucket of water over my head. Starring into the water, looking for movement, I whispered, “Where are you?”

Much like a general with a map lay before him in wartime, I planned my attack. Ignoring the obvious choice to cast to the right towards the water rushing through the whole torn in the dam, I cast to the left. Holding my rod tip out as far as I could to prevent snagging a branch I reeled slowly. The spinner blade turned and fluttered in front of the beaver dam. For a moment nothing else existed, the relentless rain, the ominous clouds, the pressing storm… all gone. I could feel the spinner working, pulsing like it was alive, and then there was pressure. I pulled back on the ultra-light rod and all hell broke loose. The water exploded as the tail of a large brown trout sent water flying across the small stream. The pressure the trout was able to exert on the small diameter monofilament wound around my reel was intense and forced me to relinquish some pressure. In an instant I knew that if I was going to land this fish I would need to be upstream in order to prevent it from returning back to the depths under the dam. Like a scene out of a ninja movie I launched off of the log I was perched on turning 180 degrees while in the air. Keeping pressure on the fish I splashed down into the river, one leg finding solid ground and the other sinking to the knee. Awkward as I was, I stayed upright. Pulling back on the rod in earnest, knowing that the line would hold at this new angle, I turned the large brown trout. The fish, almost seeming to sense that it was beaten, came to hand. Hoisting the trout out of the water I admired its dark black back and bright golden belly that seemed to radiate even in the gloom of the day. A moment later I returned the trout back to the stream from where it had come, but not before taking one last look and uttering, “I win.” And I did win, at least that day anyway.