Trip Report: Smell and War

*I tried posting this early this afternoon, and if it shows up twice, I
apologize.*

I got a late start Saturday morning, moving leisurely through the
newspaper and packing my vest. I think it was ten thirty or so when I
pulled out of the driveway. The drive is just like any other drive to
go fishing. It takes forty minutes to drive ten miles to the turnpike,
then forty minutes to drive fifty miles to the fishing hole.

When I turned off the exit ramp onto Hellersville Road, "I Walk the
Line" started up randomly. That part of the road has some dilapidated
car dealers and tired diners and a construction site with some vintage
Caterpillar graders, and I like to think that my father went trout
fishing with this exact vibe, Johnny singing through a worn out piece
of road in a ground down town, long before I was born. Orange County
and AM instead of Lehigh County and MP3.

The Saucon runs through a town park there and on a bright sunny day,
the park was starting to get busy. I parked the Jeep and sat at a
picnic table fifteen feet from the water. In a seam, across the stream,
a rise. I am in the right spot, I thought and went back to string up
the rod.

I think this creek has seen a lot of abuse over a long time. Along the
stretch in the park alone, there is a weir, channelization, flumes and
a bridge. Still, the flies hatch, the bottom is clean stone and the
browns are streambred. The access is so good that even though you could
wade, there isn't much point. I didn't even put on my waders.

Sitting at my picnic table, wearing my funny hat and
vest-of-many-pockets, I tied a tiny Adams on a tiny tippet, and I heard
the "barbeque" next to me start. I guess that's what you call six guys,
Busch and a soft tail with tuned pipes. I think, between the RPM spikes
on the Harley, they were watching in a "get a load of this idiot" sort
of way. I must be the only guy to fish there. Dodging the copious goose
****, I took a spot, worked out some line, false cast twice and settled
in for a drift. The coolest thing here would be to say that I took a
trout on the first cast, as if to say, Ha! Take that Hooligans! I may
LOOK like an eejit, but I know what I'm doing!

Instead, after they had lost interest, I hooked one on the second cast.
The little brown thought he was a much bigger fish, dancing through a
riffle, frenetic in and out of the water. With a flick of the
hemostats, he went back. I took two more, exactly like the first, from
the same run. The fight, even from eight-inchers on a fast five weight,
of trout always pulls something bad out of me. After the first fish, it
is like the bleeder valve to the stress tank has been tripped. The
world in general loses its urgency and regains its detail. The gauze
comes off my eyes.

These fish were my first trout of the year, and even though the little
sunfish in the river near home are active and compliant, the carp in
the local lake are finicky and strong, the bass brutal, I don't feel as
though I've really been fishing yet until I catch my first trout. The
only thing that will wash the smell of skunk away is the smell of trout
on my hands.

I worked my way upstream, dodging angry geese, bicyclists, low riders,
joggers, dog walkers and jungle gyms. On a crumbling wall, two black
and brown snakes played Twister. That might be the only game they know
how to play, and I took pictures.

Eventually, I had to stop for risk of sending an Adams into a family
reunion, so I ate my beef jerky and smoked a contemplative Fuente
Cubanito. As I rode back to the interstate, I set the player to
"Understand Your Man," and smelled the trout, just like Dad did.

Interstate 78 took me East to Easton, and the big sign says "Last Exit
Before Goddamn New Jersey," or something to that effect. Dodge through
Easton, a mix of esoteric book shops and coffee joints with defunct
department store and county assistance office, pass the junk yard with
the bicycle sculpture of Atlas and there you are at a stretch of
catch-and-release wild trout water. This time, I put on my waders and
fished the Bushkill's cold water in total solitude.

Here, the "wild" in "wild trout water" refers to the trout, not the
water: this stream suffers through its bed, too. Lined for the length
with factories, manufacturing plants, scrapyards, fueling stations and
wholesale plumbing suppliers, it wanders through a thousand failed
endeavors and as many failiong ones. Old railroad detritus and scrap
shows up frequently. Still, the trout don't know this. The first trout
I caught was in the slack water under a sycamore's roots. It could have
come from the Saucon, an identical eight incher. The second fish,
apropos of this stream, came from an eddy behind an old swivel chair
stuck in the water.

One thing I find marvelous about the Bushkill is the color of the
water: it takes a pellucid green-blue. The big suckers hanging
unperturbed in the current take on an aquamarine color.

I took the long way home, the River Road, to survey the carnage from
the recent floods. At the mouth of the Lehigh, there were a few shad in
the fish ladder, and the floods had scoured the piers of an old
railroad bridge and damaged the raceways for the canal's locks. Looking
at the Lehigh and the Delaware there, where men and rivers wage slow
war, I can see that we're still waiting for an armistice.

Steve