Dead in the Water
What happens to a fly-fishing writer when he no longer enjoys fly fishing?
Print Excerpt: The Spring Issue
Author: David N. McIlvaney
“Now the river is the unborn, and the sudden fish is just the newborn — whole, entire, complete, individual, and universal.” — Henry Bugbee
I last went fishing in February in Mexico, and it’s now the end of summer.
To be fair, I’ve spent more days not catching fish than catching them — which is probably why I write about fishing — so a lack of enthusiasm to get out isn’t new. Lately, though, it’s gotten worse. My home is minutes from the storied Catskill waters where Theodore Gordon first floated a fly, Lee Wulff proved he could swim in water-filled waders, and Art Flick sat and cleverly watched the bugs instead of the fish. Yet these days, I turn my head away when I drive by a river. My flies sit in boxes crammed into a cupboard drawer, their hooks dull and rusty. A dozen rods lie carelessly strewn in the corner of my porch, setting bends I will never straighten. And my waders have hung on a wall hook for so long that the elastic suspenders have given out, leaving the feet brushing the floor.
Given enough time, I think they would fuse to the ground — like me.
I’ll admit this was part of a larger malaise. I went through a hell of a year, sitting on the back deck of my cabin and staring into the woods, disinterested in anything but another whisky, my life and marriage collapsing around me. Fishing was simply the easiest thing to let go.
In August, my fishing buddy, Mike, reached out about our annual trip to the Farmington River in Connecticut. I immediately said no. Then yes. Then no again for a week. On the Wednesday before the trip, I did a psilocybin therapy session. Deep in the medicine, I suddenly sat up and told my trip sitter, “My life is out there.” I pointed at the woods beyond my cabin’s open doorway.
The next day, I called Mike to say I was coming.
Dries, nymphs, and wets all work on this tailwater, but a few years earlier, we discovered midnight mousing and never looked back. My biggest brown trout in North America came from the last trip, and if anything could jolt me out of complacency, it would be catching another huge brown on a mouse-shaped ball of fur and rubber.
After a three-hour drive, I pitched my tent at the Austin Hawes campground — 29 forested sites spread out along a productive section of river amidst the Connecticut-perfect homes of the small villages that line the banks. Fishable year round, it is perfect summer angling when New York stream temperatures are too high. With areas of narrow, braided riffles tight against the scrub banks of little islands, "graveyard" stretches of bouldered fields on flat water, and deep pools of promise at the bottom of every run, it’s a trout angler’s dream. I greeted the other guys along for the trip. Mike and I grabbed our rods and drove to an upper stretch of the river that fishes like a freestone — wild and fast with rocky pocket water.
He went downstream and I headed up to fish a small run shaded by dark hemlocks and black birch that had always produced. If my will wavered, I hoped my body’s muscle memory would snap me straight into a morning of fishing. By the first cast, I knew I was in trouble. The rod felt like a broomstick and my line collapsed on the water — underpowered and poorly executed. I didn’t care how the current ruined my drift, as I barely had the energy to lift my line for a mend. The fish rightly stayed down; it would have been embarrassing for them to take my fly. I lasted 15 minutes.
Reeling in, I walked downstream and sat on a stump watching Mike fish for an hour before letting him know I was there.
So began a day of the same. We traveled to our favorite spots, my feet heavy at every pull-off. By the time we returned to camp, I lacked the strength to fish the evening hatch in the small pool alongside our camp. Instead, I sat by the fire and poked it with a stick.
Poking shit with a stick is the most underrated pastime for men. Stare into a fire and you’re a madman; poke it with a stick and you’re an accomplished woodsman. Occasionally, there are answers in the glowing coals. That night, just ash.
At 10:00 p.m., a few of the new anglers looked at me. As the one who caught the big brown last time, I was in charge. We walked down to a large pool and I shared what little I knew about how to mouse: make noise, slap the mouse down on the water, strip it back in mousy moves. Leaving them for a quiet spot to cast, I threw out my line to watch it puddle on the water. I unconsciously sabotaged myself by tying on a 9-foot 3x leader at camp, much too long to handle the heavy fly at the end. I couldn’t muster the effort to fix the setup.
I was the first back to camp. More fire poking. More ash.
Mike walked up a few hours later and poured himself a whisky from the bottle I was doing my best to kill.
“That wasn’t good.”
He didn’t mean the fishing. We talked late into the night about my mental breakdown that year and how I was trying to rebuild myself, or maybe just my sense of self. He listened in the quiet way friends do when their pal needs to unburden. I mentioned the “my life is out there” insight from my psilocybin therapy, but scoffed a little as I said it. He came back with something that stopped me.
“Why don’t you believe that? You recall we met on this river.”
I left at that and crawled into my tent. I’m not sure I slept that night.
The next morning, I was ready to pack it in when Mike walked over with my rod in his hand. “Cut the fucking leader short tonight or I will.” I rely on friends for many things, but fishing for me isn’t one of them. I changed the leader to 5 feet of butt and retied the mouse, resting the rig on a hemlock beside my tent.
It was a quiet day, but we were always in sight of each other. I think Mike kept glancing over as he saw the nagging pressure building inside. After dinner, I caught his eye and quietly slipped away from the campfire to hit the river alone. This is generally ill-advised, as anything can go wrong in the dark when you’re half blind in the water. A slip in fast current and your waders can fill in a minute, dragging you down. A few years earlier, I nearly drowned in California’s Pit River. That memory comes up every time I pull on waders. I chanced this night since I know the stretch well and needed solitude.
Sitting on the moss and rocky bank until the woods turned black with a sliver of moonlight, I considered the water. Rivers are different at night — they force you to be present. Without sight, you have to rely on sound and touch, and those senses overcompensate, so the currents feel stronger and the vibrations from the riffles more haunting when they echo off the trees. If a chipmunk sounds like a bear in the woods at night, a splash on a dark river sounds like a rising leviathan.
But there’s something else. If I can’t poke a fire with a stick to find answers, I’ll let my feet dangle in a river to release questions. Reflecting on the previous night’s conversation, my thoughts cut through the darkness and dissolved into the current.
A splash. Sometimes the river answers.
A large granite wall on the opposite bank perched over a deep hole. It was a good spot for a trout or two to hold and I waded out as far as I felt safe and cast toward the rockface. The fly bounced off and fell into the water as an actual mouse might — slip, splash, stunned. No mend, just slight twitches as the current carried the fly down. On the third cast, a good-sized brown struck and came easily to the net. My first trout of the trip — of the year. Something snapped along my spine, like a chiropractor releasing a jammed disc.
I shifted a few yards downstream to hit the rock at a different angle, allowing me better connection to the mouse’s movement. Five casts later, I heard the strike a moment before my rod doubled over. Something took me deep. If last year’s big brown was a python — sleek and sinew — this one felt like a submarine, metal-heavy and slow to move. Too big for this section of the river. Maybe too big for the whole river. A secret fish.
Dropping my wading staff, I spun up the slack and put the fish on the reel. There was no chaotic fight, just a slow, steady, lazy pull as if the trout was unconcerned about me or its situation. For a moment, I thought I hooked a beaver and slowly backed into the shallows. We moved in concert, weaving back and forth, at first his game, but then I felt his life blood flowing up the rod and into me. My strength returned and we became equals. The softer water allowed a little pressure and I managed to turn his head and direct him. That was enough. I led him upstream, moved directly below, and relaxed the line tension. The current and his surprise carried him directly into my net.
If sounds are amplified on a dark river, so is weight. My net became a dense, black hole, requiring both hands to lift it from the water. I flicked on my headlamp to reveal an aged yellow body like butter left on the counter for too long, red and white spots that shimmered and slid in the water and light like distant stars. Though I had my largest net, he stuck out a few inches on both sides. I unhooked the now-destroyed mouse, my fingers brushing his sharp teeth inside the large hooked kype. I never photograph fish, so I lowered the net and released him into the dark water. He didn’t swim away as much as he just sank back to the depths, his yellow back turning a burnt ochre then a black shadow out of reach of my light.
They are archetypes, these things we fish for. Elemental. Born of water and dreams, longing and folly. Everwas and evermore; they exist in all times and therefore simply are, as am I when I fish. Present and without ego, self dissolves when I stand in a river. I become the river: riffles and stillness, stones and rooted banks. Nothing can be added or taken away to make me less or more angler. I am whole. It is as close to being God as I can get.
Sometimes we fish because we need to remember why we are.
We met on this river. Mike’s words floated into me and I accepted everything they meant. My friend recognized me as an integral part of this place. Of this river.
The sky had given up the last of its light. What seemed like 15 minutes on the water was probably an hour and a half. I did my usual “six final casts” ritual with the chewed-up mouse, but nothing responded. On the final attempt, I snagged the rock face. Pulling the rod straight to snap the line, I reeled in, leaving the mouse to watch over the river. I walked back to camp to find the others pulling on waders, ready to start looking for me.
That night, I left the fire alone and slept.
At home the next day, curiosity got the better of me. I took a tape measure and laid it into the full curve of my net with a few inches sticking out on both ends to replicate the fish. Thirty-two inches. My biggest brown. Anywhere.
I care less about the size of the fish and more that the river said, “I’ll be here.”
I haven’t fished since and I doubt I will for the rest of the year. But my rods are clean, carefully wrapped in their cases. Flies are sharp, reorganized for the hundredth time, and neatly arranged in boxes. Waders are rolled up in bags.
I continue to drink on the back deck — more coffee, less whisky — thinking of my year and the one to come.
Waiting for Mike to call again.
David N. McIlvaney is a writer, angler, hunter, and sentimentalist who lives in an off-the-grid cabin in the Catskill Mountains of New York where he draws water and hews wood while pondering things big and small. Follow David’s work on Medium and Instagram.
This first appeared as a feature in The Westrn’s quarterly newspaper.
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This is truly in my top three fishing stories of all time. Grateful to David for submitting this to our quarterly print newspaper and equally excited to publish it here on the 'stack!