Fly
85 Fly Isn’t that thing like hunt ing a tiger with a switch?” “It sure feels like it today.” The river flowed down to the Ore gon coast, the slate-dark pool just above its mouth ringed with spin fish er men. Their cast ing was so in tent they ap peared obliv i ous to the waves crash ing onto the beach barely a stone’s throw dis tant be hind a thin, wind swept spit of sand. The fly fish er man was from the Mid west. An alien. His short stab bing casts fell im po tently among the doz ens of lines that an gled past and some times across each other from the op po site shore lines. Back lit by the eve ning sun, they glinted like a giant web spun out of mono fil a ment. In such tight quar ters, the nine-foot rod might as well have been a switch in his hand. The edgy ques tion was the first thing the griz zled man on his left had said to him in hours. His throat tight en ing with ir ri ta tion, he cast the roe-colored fly a few inches far ther, watched it slap the water less than twenty feet past his rod tip and slowly van ish into the pool. “Fish on!” Re flex ively, he reeled in at the cry—let his en vi ous gaze hold on the lucky fish er man across the river only after the tiny ball of yarn was safely back in his hand. More than once, in sim i lar mob scenes on Lake Mich i gan, he’d seen what could hap pen in the ab sence of this un spoken proto col. Com bat fish ing. A clot of men cast ing in con di tions all of them hated but were forced to tol er ate be cause the sal mon were in and every fisher within five hun dred miles who gave a damn had got ten wind of it. 86 Fly In ev i ta bly, sooner or later, some one hooked up and twenty yards down the shore line an other fish er man, clue less or bel lig er ent, ig nored the cour tesy and kept on cast ing—cast until the mo ment his hook snagged the plan ing line and both men were play ing the same fish: the guy who had ac tu ally hooked it still un a ware; the other hon estly, or feign ing, the same. Ten or twenty sec onds would pass, maybe a min ute, both rods still bent and throb bing. Then the fish was abruptly off and the lines went slack as the first an gler reeled in curs ing his luck and found the other guy’s hook snared across his own. He had once seen a man so in censed at the rec og ni tion, a con struc tion worker from Mil wau kee with a thick east ern Eu ro pean ac cent, he’d chased the of fender a hun dred yards up the shore line bran dish ing his “priest”—a foot-long chunk of iron pipe used to ad min is ter the last rites to a landed sal mon. The pur suit ended only when both fish er men were so winded they stag gered to some gasp ing, curse-filled stand off in the dark. The fly fish er man wanted none of that here. He’d grown up with con flict—it was a way of life in his part of the city—and it al ways made him ner vous. Mer ci fully, since his awk ward ar ri val at the crowded pool five hours ear lier, things had stayed cool. The men beside and across from him all did as he had done, how ever grudg ingly— reeled in and stood watch ing im pa tiently, say ing lit tle or noth ing, until the hooked sal mon was played out and the fist-pumping fish er man dragged it flop ping onto the sand. Still, de spite the ab sence of any ap par ent red necks, the con di tions were such that every few min utes a pair of lines got snagged. No one else felt obliged to reel in then. Their own lines re mained in the water until the next tri um...
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