A True Story

A Story I Will Tell No One

Bad weather in August sends me to the Konkapot River with bug juice, nightcrawlers and 4 pound test. Rainy days have an electricity about them and the negative ions send me into a frenzy until I can hear, smell, and see the swirling deep.

The first cast of the day is loaded with cross-eyed anticipation. My face is ridged thru the forehead. My fingers hold the hovering rod so lightly with the line extending my umbilical desire. With burning concentration I get lost in the dark of the river.

A great blue heron is moving closer to me with a six foot wing span after the ones below. The flying fisherman spots me and throws his long legs out front to air brake. The neck and bill extend up and away piercing thru the jungle canopy.

My fishing line is now hooked underneath the rooted embankment. I break the line with a frustration snap. My right elbow swings into a white-tailed hornets nest woven into the vegetation like an Atwood sculpture. I gallop away from the river and belly dive into the thick green. I play dead. The angry hornets patrol from above like Apache helicopters with radar dysfunctional.

Soon, I’m back to the river seducing the tails below. The hungry mosquitoes as big as humming birds are whining for the taste of me. A night crawler is woven onto a shinny barbed hook aiming to capture and kill. The toss is made. The bait is sucked beneath the drawing current. My breathing stops. I become invisible to the ones below.

The rod tip is suddenly slam-bent to the water with tugs that lean me back with shoulders raised in defense. I don’t “rope a dope” here. I deliver the knockout punch and set the hook with a verbal “Ka-boom!” Because of the surrounding jungle, I move into the middle of the swirling deep to land this fatty.The trout surfaces to shed the hook but can’t . It submerges with a visible frown. I’ve hooked into a big native brookie. I anxiously reach for the fish net but I have left it back in the tall ferns. Thunderous self criticism erupts from my throat. I will loose this fish without the net.

Like a snake in the woods my indigenous uncoils. My index and middle finger goes down the open mouth of the fish with the thumb clinching thru the gill. I pluck the trout out of the white water like an Alaskan grizzly bear.

Trout have pin prick teeth. Seven of these pricks pierce me in the soft section of my fingers between the knuckles. If you try to land a Northern Pike this way you loose two fingers.

I stumble around like a drunk in the river, clenching the flapping trout with my bloody bear paws. I feel the heart beat of the world inside my body like never before.

Up on the embankment in the dense underbrush I let go of my trophy. My fingers look like they’ve been in the jelly jar. The knife comes out of my creel. I look my native brookie not in the eye, but in the stomach. I gut the fish alive by slitting up the length of the underside. More blood than expected flows. I drop to one knee because something is moving. A tiny throbbing heart lay in front of me rippling it’s own anatomy. I’m stunned.

Suddenly it gets a little dark. The tree leaves become restless and turn upside down as a warm, slow, wind starts to blow. The rains of permission begin to fall. I look around me, then pause. I slip the heart of the trout under my tongue. It gently beats five times then stops. I swallow and quiver. Nothing is moving but the river.

Hooking another crawler thru the collar and tossing into the feverish water brings an immediate strike. I open the bail as the line whistles and whirls from my spool. ‘Thumper’ swims the length of the pool before I set the decisive hook with another verbal “KA-BOOM”. A full body jump out of the water arcs the color of the rainbow. My harpoon days are over. This fish barely fits in the net. My knife parts the 22 inch white belly. Record breaking blood and guts slide away from the carcass. With owl eyes I anticipate the pulsating ruby. My fingers squeeze the red gem and under my tongue it goes again. I forget who I am. I suspend all judgment. With cannibalistic perforations on me like makeshift tattoos, I leave the Konkapot River with the gait of Captain Hook and a story I will tell no one.