Fencerows: Breath of the Brule
Breath of the Brule River.
I was tired. The long miles into the heart of the Brule River in Douglas County never shrink. Rolling down the window and rubbing my eyes, ignoring the horn-blast hurry and burnt-rubber smells of interstate life, I sucked in a deep breath northward. Faintly…faintly, I could smell its breath. I pounded the accelerator until the rusty quarter panels shook. I was suddenly more awake than I’d been in a long time.
There are closer places; Urban waters with higher fishing odds and easier access. But they wouldn’t be the Brule. They wouldn’t run in white pine valleys where cell towers and smart phones can’t quite find enough signal to make a go of it; a place where connected technology is buried in far-removed bends, and the simple calls of wind in the towering boughs and water arguing on the rocks are all there is.
My mind drifted into shadowed pools as I veered onward. I’ve taken countless breaths since my grandfather first dropped me off so long ago, pointing down a worn deer trail one morning and showing me the way to the river, telling me to catch a trout for breakfast. I’ve since moved on into the mainstream world of fly rods and thermal waders, but it was a cane pole with a worm on its end and an old pair of jeans back then. The Brule hasn’t changed. It still breathes with the memories of my grandfather and memories of the old ways.
That’s not to say the dynamics of the water remain static. A trout river parallels life itself. Brush holes and leaning logs come and go. A heavy spring rain can cut the banks clean, or a dry summer may suck the spring-fed river down to a shallow string. I’m drawn every year to see for myself, otherwise, its like running into a long-lost, childhood friend at a reunion. A vague recognition might still exist, but the passing years will have wrought gray and mysterious changes.
And the trout…ah, the Brule River trout themselves remain locked in deep and remote time capsules. Patience and a well-placed cast are the only virtues they value, and patient breathing is the gold-medal standard of the Brule. One step is safely knee-high, and the next, the river sucks you in and you’re trying to keep your hat from floating away. No frantic rushing and jumping from hole to hole. Twisting ropes of grape-vine tangles, spears of beaver-cut saplings, thorn-apple daggers; all manners of undertow stick monsters waiting with sharpened talons on every bend. My grandfather told me that a fisherman is only a ghost passing along the eternal banks of the Brule, but the mortal blood of his leaking waders shall forever remember the journey.
Years of imparted wisdom and patient learning; I remembered much and was properly thankful as I sputtered once more beneath the hallowed banks of pine. Urban life and city traffic melted into shelves of drifting sand as I slid in to add yet another whisper to the never-ending breath of the Brule.
I struck my first fish while belly-deep in a bank of bog grass that was shot through with purple and white flowers. The trout tried to dart for cover beneath the floating flower garden, unaware that I was waiting above its very door step. It flopped up cold and small in a tangle of weeds and petals, and was released quickly back into the flow. The simple size of a trout never seems to matter in the grand scheme of the Brule River.
Brule River brown trout.
I was luckier downstream, parting my rod through the bank side brush and drifting line beneath an overhung tunnel of green. The best spots on the Brule are always deep in the undercut junk where the fish can lie and laugh at you. These holes are hard enough to get into without losing half the flies in your box, but the real trouble starts when you hook into a fighter. I didn’t see the fish hit, but the screaming line told the story.
There was no way to avoid splashing through the brush and spilling into the hole. The good ones will break you off in a heartbeat unless you wallow in after them. Line tangled in multiple snags above, and the fish tangled around a good one below. I finally landed the beast with my rod in my teeth, my net pulling up a pile of sticks and 16 inches of dime-spotted brown trout from the swirling battlefield below.
I climbed the bank and sat beneath a leaning balsam, wondering to myself how one pine could overshadow every known problem in the modern world. Only one trout, but the butterfly feeling never gets old.
The sun was setting above the valley and a cool fog began swirling on the pools. The rising ropes danced like spirits, and they smelled of wet life. It was the very breath of the Brule itself. I sat and composed myself, watching the mist tail above the water and breathing right along with it.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. This story is an excerpt from his upcoming book, Writing Wild: Tales and Trails of an Outdoor Journalist. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com