companion is widely known as a superb angler. He is not a member of the club and is inclined to bridle around tournament casters. They remind him of something more housebroken than fishing, and he doesn’t like it. He thinks their equipment is too good, and of course it is, largely. When they talk about fly lines and shooting heads, getting fussy over fractions of grains of weight, he instinctively feels the tail’s wagging the dog. Nevertheless, the fisherman has something to be grateful for. Shooting-head lines, now standard steelhead gear, modern techniques of power-casting,and, in fact, much contemporary thinking about rod design—actions and tapers—have arisen at this small, circumscribed anglers’ enclave. Still, it is difficult to imagine a tournament caster who would confess to having no interest at all in fishing, though that is exactly the case with some of them. Ritualistically, they continue to refer their activities to practical streamcraft.
My companion typifies something, too, something anti-imperial in style. Frayed lines and throwaway tackle, a reel with a crude painting on the side of it, brutalized from being dropped on riverside rocks. His rod is missing guides and has been reinforced at butt and ferrule with electricians’ tape that, in turn, has achieved a greenish corruption of its own. He is a powerful caster whose special effects are all toward fishing in bad wind and weather. He admits few fishermen into his angling pantheon and, without mercy, divides the duffers into “bait soakers,” “yucks,” and other categories of opprobrium. Good anglers are “red-hots.” His solutions to the problems of deteriorating fishing habitat incline toward the clean gestures of the assassin.
I sit on one of the spectators’ benches and chat with a steelhead fisherman about the Skeena drainage in British Columbia. He’s been all over that country, caught summer-run fish miles inland that were still bright from salt water. The conversation lags. Another member sits on the bench. “Was anybody ever really held up here?” I ask rather warily.
“Sure was,” says the man next to me, and turns to the new fellow on the end of the bench. “Who was that?”
“Guy that got stuck up?”
“Yeah, who was that?”
“There were three of them, at different times.”
The man next to me turns to me. “It was this guy from Oakland.”
The man at the end of the bench isn’t interested. The fellow next to me asks him, “Didn’t he get pistol-whipped or something?”
“Who’s this?”
“The guy from Oakland.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The man next to me turns to me again. “I’m not positive,” he sayswith exaggerated care, “but the dry-fly man from Oakland got pistol-whipped unless I’ve got my signals real crossed.”
“Did they take his rod?” I ask somewhat aimlessly.
“No.”
“His reel or anything?”
“No,” he says, “just glommed the wallet and cleared out. It was pretty crummy.”
I excuse myself. With a new Winston tarpon and billfish fly rod I’m anxious to try, I go down to the last pool, where a handful of members are casting. I am a little sleepy from the gigantic breakfast they’ve given me. The elevation of the club drops off abruptly behind this last pool and a path leads down through the heavy tree roots to a little space that looks like the banks of a streambed. As I strip line from my reel, I notice that three people are undulating beneath the trees down there. One is a girl wearing Levi’s and an Esther Williams total sunblock hat with mirrors hanging from its edges on strings. One of the men seems to be a Lapp. The other is dressed as Buffalo Bill and is more frenzied than his companions. Occasionally he adjusts his enormous cowboy hat with one hand, somehow finding the hat as it goes by on a weird parabolic course of its own. I wonder if he has seen the buffalo paddock.
Presently a girl in ballet costume leads an attractive
My companion typifies something, too, something anti-imperial in style. Frayed lines and throwaway tackle, a reel with a crude painting on the side of it, brutalized from being dropped on riverside rocks. His rod is missing guides and has been reinforced at butt and ferrule with electricians’ tape that, in turn, has achieved a greenish corruption of its own. He is a powerful caster whose special effects are all toward fishing in bad wind and weather. He admits few fishermen into his angling pantheon and, without mercy, divides the duffers into “bait soakers,” “yucks,” and other categories of opprobrium. Good anglers are “red-hots.” His solutions to the problems of deteriorating fishing habitat incline toward the clean gestures of the assassin.
I sit on one of the spectators’ benches and chat with a steelhead fisherman about the Skeena drainage in British Columbia. He’s been all over that country, caught summer-run fish miles inland that were still bright from salt water. The conversation lags. Another member sits on the bench. “Was anybody ever really held up here?” I ask rather warily.
“Sure was,” says the man next to me, and turns to the new fellow on the end of the bench. “Who was that?”
“Guy that got stuck up?”
“Yeah, who was that?”
“There were three of them, at different times.”
The man next to me turns to me. “It was this guy from Oakland.”
The man at the end of the bench isn’t interested. The fellow next to me asks him, “Didn’t he get pistol-whipped or something?”
“Who’s this?”
“The guy from Oakland.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The man next to me turns to me again. “I’m not positive,” he sayswith exaggerated care, “but the dry-fly man from Oakland got pistol-whipped unless I’ve got my signals real crossed.”
“Did they take his rod?” I ask somewhat aimlessly.
“No.”
“His reel or anything?”
“No,” he says, “just glommed the wallet and cleared out. It was pretty crummy.”
I excuse myself. With a new Winston tarpon and billfish fly rod I’m anxious to try, I go down to the last pool, where a handful of members are casting. I am a little sleepy from the gigantic breakfast they’ve given me. The elevation of the club drops off abruptly behind this last pool and a path leads down through the heavy tree roots to a little space that looks like the banks of a streambed. As I strip line from my reel, I notice that three people are undulating beneath the trees down there. One is a girl wearing Levi’s and an Esther Williams total sunblock hat with mirrors hanging from its edges on strings. One of the men seems to be a Lapp. The other is dressed as Buffalo Bill and is more frenzied than his companions. Occasionally he adjusts his enormous cowboy hat with one hand, somehow finding the hat as it goes by on a weird parabolic course of its own. I wonder if he has seen the buffalo paddock.
Presently a girl in ballet costume leads an attractive
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