The current is surprisingly strong as I wade through the headwaters of the little stream. The water is clear, achingly cold. I can see through to the bottom, which is comprised primarily of cobble and rock that this late in the season are covered with a layer of sunken leaves. The once bright rusts, reds and yellows have faded as the leaves begin to decompose.
Although it’s nearing the end of December, I am hoping to find one last trout willing to rise to a dry fly. I have been casting a Royal Wulff, its body a cheerful combination of red silk and iridescent green peacock hurl, its wing a shock of white calf’s tail. What better fly to bring a Christmas trout to the surface?
It has not yet snowed, but today the air is damp and still; the sky overcast, dull. I am wearing a flannel shirt with a fleece pullover. Enough rain has fallen over the last few weeks to saturate the leaves that crunched under my boots during October and November. This afternoon there is no sound as I make my way through the forest.
I have been hiking along the side of the small stream for the better part of an hour when I spot a brook trout, my first of the afternoon. The six-inch fish is finning in place. At first it’s no more than a shadow, but then I detect movement as it slides an inch to one side, a shadow slipping through shadows. Then there is the white of the fish’s maw as its mouth opens to take a nymph or perhaps a caddis larva drifting in the cold current. I bend closer, about to cast, but the shadow evaporates.
In a way, my life is like this mountain brook, a stream of consciousness hurtling down from the headwaters of my youth. Like water cupped from the current, the moments of a lifetime slip so easily by. Perhaps that is why I fish. For trout, like memories, are elusive; but with skill, some luck and a good deal of patience they can be held, if only briefly, cool and damp before sliding back into the darkness. A poor substitute for stopping time, but I make due.
While searching for my Christmas trout, I have been wading back through my recollections, trying to recall again that first fish that rose to my fly. I remember the huge carp with metallic-like scales that inhaled a dough ball from the muddy bottom of the Saddle River, the stringer of perch taken from the pond behind a restaurant in our town using garden worms and the largemouth bass that chased a Hoola Popper skittered across Lake Sebago; but it’s that first trout taken on an artificial fly that I seek.
Walking beyond a set of shallow riffles, I come upon a short run, deeper than most others this high up the brook. There, in close along the far bank, under the exposed roots of an ancient hemlock, I find the memory that I ho