Memory embraces both occasion and emotion. An event solely defined by the setting, the characters and the action, is largely unremarkable until it yields insight, fashioned by what you felt or perhaps by what you learned. Did you discover something about the world, or about yourself for having experienced it? Did it move you somehow? Was the sunset sublime or did the view take your breath away. Instead, did it have an impact someone else who was with you?
These insights or responses require presence and the willingness to be open to receive. To be in touch, and to notice the changes or shifts occurring within yourself. Such opportunities occur around us all day long. So why do we notice some and not others? Why do some people seem more ready to engage with them than others? Can we articulate these reactions or express them in some way either internally or to others that fully encompasses them?
There’s an assumption that memories are old. That they require the passage of time. And sure, some memories are things you carry around your whole life and may come upon you unexpectedly or reprised during some other experience. I’m not saying they don’t mature as they rattle around in our heads, as we turn them over and compare them to other comparable occurrences, but sometimes you recognize a memory as it is being formulated in the moment.
Catching a fish is like this for me. It’s something you repeat (with luck) more times than you can count. Still, when you hook and land some fish, it can have the elements of a unique memory. And there are times that as you release the fish, you know immediately it will be one that you will remember.
Late in the afternoon at the Jupiter River on Anticosti Island, the three of us returned to a clear emerald pool we had scoped from the cliffside road above it earlier. There was a dozen or so Atlantic Salmon hovering in the current aligned facing upstream shifting lazily back and forth conserving their energy for the next leg of their spawning journey. The pool was just a few miles up from the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the fish were ghostly pale.
Our guide had little confidence we could raise a fish. These fish, he said, typically didn’t respond. They were too deep, too fussy, too something. It would be our last chance of the day, but we still had time to give it a try. There was a staircase down to the water below the run. We crossed the river and walked up the far bank. At his insistence we swung a few casts through the water on the bend above the fish without any response.
What the heck, he said, cast right to them. My fishing partner offered me the first shot. I approached cautiously and I could see the torpedo shapes in the river. When you see a fish in the river, it’s sometimes difficult to judge their size, and I didn’t feel particularly intimidated by them. I reached as far out as I could with a cast and let the fly sink as the current swept it towards the salmon. The line hesitated and I lifted the rod. It came tight on a fish. When this happens when you are not expecting it, there are always a few seconds of panic. The guide scrambled back to where we had left his net. Soon the fish was landed. It all seemed to happen so quickly as to be almost anti-climactic. It was a nice fish, no record-breaker, but one that I remember with remarkable detail. The circumstances, the beauty of the place, were certainly notable, but it was the feeling of having accomplished something that another – more experienced – person had concluded was not likely to happen. It was a lesson in confidence. Whether the fish were really that sulky, or he was just anxious to get back to lodge and wasn’t keen on making the walk to a spot, where he was not convinced that we were competent enough to fish, I can never know.
I look at the picture of that fish and all these recollections flood back. The one unmistakable thing in the image, that I don’t know I noticed at the time is the grin on the guide’s face. He was as happy as I was to have landed that fish.
Even when you have your own memory, it can be amplified when you hear another person’s recollection of the same fish. There’s something reaffirming that it rose to the level of memory for them. Why they remember it, and the things that moved them or they learned are likely quite different.
I caught a large Brown Trout on the Bow River in Alberta from the drift boat of Aaron Caldwell. I had enough time on the river to know a good-sized fish when I saw one, and this was a solid brown. My friend Dave started a tradition of christening browns over 24 inches with names that started with the letter “b”. The first one I saw with him was Buford. This one we called Bruce, since we had been talking about Springsteen when we came into him. We hooked it on a streamer in a generous swirling bucket tight to the bank. Aaron netted the fish and left it in the water as he parked the drift boat on the bank. He had made a device from a length of plastic rain gutter, with a cap on one end that he could use to measure fish and keep them wet. Along the length of the tube, he had marked inches starting at 20. From beak to tip of the tail this fish was right on 24.
I would never describe a fish as a football, or maybe I’ve never caught one worthy of this description, but laid upright in the trough, the trout was broad and certainly chunky. The well-developed kype and sagging jowls under his gills confirmed this was an old soul.
Later that same Fall (2016) I was reunited with Aaron at Babine Norlakes and one night hanging around the guide shack he was recalling his past season on the Bow. He pointed at me and said, Andy caught my biggest brown this year. He could remember exactly where, what the water was like and on what fly. Now that is not particularly astounding – it’s how he makes his living. This was valuable intel since it would not be uncommon to return to that pool and find the same trout in residence. But what hit me was that he remembered details that I had failed to notice or didn’t think relevant. That’s how he learned. I was just dropping in on his world and getting the benefit of all hours he had spent on the river.
Some of my most cherished memories of fishing are linked to the friends I was with. Hitting pools on the Heber with Seipio, just about anywhere with Imbach and of course, many trips with Harper.
I have a few memorable fish that I caught, landed and tried wretchedly to photograph on my own. A steelhead on the Babine caught in a run where I had been dropped and fished alone out of sight with only a bear-banger and instructions to use if I found myself in trouble.
The corridor of the Babine has more grizzlies per mile that just about any other river. Trouble most-likely meant a bear-human interaction. Sharing a long run upriver from the lodge with Harper, a bear split the distance between us on the gravel bar and crossed over the river. We both saw it but felt comfortable in the bear’s disinterest. I never needed to scare off a bear, but I did use a banger once to call a guide to help me land a fish and he was not amused. I had received advice on landing a big fish and that person’s conviction that the fish would never leave the pool. So, when it did, and I could see no path to follow it down river, I pulled the bright orange pen from my waders and fired off a blank. I like to think I was still hooked up when the jet boat turned the corner and headed my way. If it was, it didn’t stay that way for long. I don’t know what I expected, would Darren get me on board and follow the fish into the next pool? Would he try to net it long-distance?
A big wild steelhead on a remote BC river was something precious for me. For him it was another fish that got away. Later that night as Billy visited each of the anglers at their dinner tables, he took a survey of the fish hooked and landed. He apologized when I told him I hooked two and landed one. For an angler who has spent days fruitlessly searching for these fish, I could only say, every day here beats my best day steelheading any other time in any other place. A statement that says as much about me as an angler as it does about the river I was on.
Harper and I were fishing with Miles Larose in Venice south from New Orleans. We spent the day poling flats looking for tailing redfish and we had some good luck. Miles told me to put away my eight weight and rigged up a twelve for me. We were out of the tight channels in a wider lake-like spot. Ahead of us Miles could see some Jack Crevalle cruising fast. We had been fixated on redfish and drum all day and these fish were rockets in comparison. At the time, he had not had much luck hooking them. I watched a big wake crossing ahead of me and I cast to intercept. It didn’t even look like the fish slowed down as it ate but the pull of line off the spool confirmed it was hooked. That’s when reality set it. You’re never going to stop that fish. Harper prompts Miles to pole the boat in the direction of the fish and I start to gather line back onto the reel. We land the fish. And now having convinced ourselves it was possible we go hook another.
The photo shows me with a big ugly Jack that prompts people to ask what it is. Marsh Tuna is what they call them down here. As if they needed another reason, this confirms to people that I am bonkers. Crazy but happy. That’s the memory I hope I leave them with.