Fencerows: Trout Journalism
By John Luthens
A not-so-common entry: An actual trout is added to the pages of the author’s trout journal.
I’ve long kept a scribbled manifesto of my trout-fishing journey. From frozen, steelhead blizzards to humid summer evenings with rings of rising brook trout breaking the reflection of the setting sun; Every detail is written down in stunning prose, dripping with the blood of battle and dripping with the blood of a thousand hook barbs lodged in my fingers.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about getting a new journal, one that’s worthy of the places I’ve been and the trout I’ve captured. I’ve kept a watchful eye on some real beauties, soft leather bindings with etchings of leaping trout and finely-crafted flies on the covers. I have even crossed the line and caressed a few of those lovely testaments in high-end booksellers and fly shops.
Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis, but I’ve been yearning to start my chronicles over upon the pages of something classier. As it currently stands, my trout history is kept in a beat-up, spiral-bound notebook in the bottom of my fishing pack. The pages are coffee stained and covered with sooty grime from hunching over campfires at the end of the day and trying to write some sense into what I have seen.
I can pinpoint a particularly hard rain by the condition of the pages and the blurred ink. If a half-page is torn out, it meant I was desperate to find dry kindling for a fire. If the remaining half is filled with obscenities, it meant my fire attempts were unsuccessful and I crawled into my sleeping bag cold and wet.
I’ll admit there isn’t a hidden trove of trout knowledge in the margins. No one will find an abridged edition of my work sitting next to legends such as Lee Wulf and Dan Bailey. And when it comes to philosophical wisdom, Norman Maclean, Brad Pitt, and the intricate simplicity of A River Runs through It have nothing to fear from my script writing or movie, roll-casting ability, not to mention my ability to actually perform a solid roll cast.
My journal won’t win any Pulitzer Prizes for in-depth reporting, either, but it does follow up all trout leads with the youthful abandon of a cub reporter on his first assignment. Every logging road and fisherman’s path is carefully highlighted. I’ve sketched maps and hypothesized on short-cuts to hot sections of water. I know by the tone of my writing how those corner-cutting expeditions panned out: “Cut through the swamp and squelched through mud up to my eyeballs. The stream is on the other side of that wild grape tangle…should be right over the next set of deadfalls…must be flowing water somewhere…I swear it was early morning when I started, can’t be getting dark already?”
I do manage to stumble off the banks and fall into a run of trout now and then. And when I do, my journal transforms into an intricate play-by-play that would make a research scientist jealous:
“Turned over a rock in mid-current and was delighted to find spent, black husks. I had just the ticket. Fished size # 18 stonefly nymphs downstream and landed 5 beautiful browns. Missed my calling in life, should have been a professional guide. Ah, I see the by the moss on those alders that the river must have looped north. Guess I was too busy catching fish to notice. Hah, not even lunch time, but I think I’ll call it a day. Don’t want my esteemed colleagues to think that I’m a fish hog. I’ll just scoot up that ridge and catch a faint deer trail that my eagle-eyes have picked out. Much quicker than slogging back upstream…How can it be getting dark already?”
I guess the more I ponder, the more I come to the realization that it is too late. I’m already chest-deep in the wild currents of life and struggling for a crossing to the opposite bank. A shiny, new journal might pull me under for good.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com