Sanctum

A FB post about trout in NJ sparked me to remember this piece. It was written way back in the 1980's and is in my book Cat Came Back and Other Stories. It was also in the South African sport journal The Fishing and Hunting Journal (June 2007).

SANCTUM

It had been a lousy day, but then, many days are. I got home from work, didn’t bother to shower, just packed what groceries I’d bought into the fridge, grabbed my rod and my few flies, and was off down the river road early on that summer evening. The spot I was headed for was maybe ten miles south of the little Delaware River town I was living in. It was a nice drive, no towns and few houses from Frenchtown to Stockton - just the green hills and the Delaware pumping along next to you. The low sun cast an orange stripe across the rippled water and the warm evening wind filled your nostrils with the smell of the grasses, the trees, and the pungent odor of river mud.

                I knew of a place.

                A little creek, barely more than a brook, cascading down the slopes into the Delaware through a lovely little canyon, a secret spot.

                You couldn’t see much sign of a creek from the road. It disappeared in dense brush back from the road, then went under the road, and couldn’t be seen below the road as it made its final dive into the big river. A little trail, not much used, led up through little willows and berry bushes into a sudden silence, shade, and sanctum.

                It always felt like a discovery.

                The steep V-shaped walls blocked the sun out most of the day. Overhead I could see a patch of crimson gold sky. I was missing a beautiful sunset. Small maples grew by the banks, hanging out over the water.

                There was silence. That shrouded, muffled silence that you find in tiny little life systems like this one. There were a few birds, not many, an occasional ruffle of leaves, a squirrel, and the water. The constant tumbling and dripping and popping and clunking and slurping of that little creek running down to the Delaware from the Lokatong, not more than a mile upstream.

                You had to walk only a hundred yards before you came to the first and biggest pool; a deep oval cup of clear water, eight feet deep, with huge tumbled boulders holding the water.

                There was always a trout in there, sometimes two, but always at least one. I had taken a few out of there to bring home for dinner and was always excited to see another one had taken its place.

                It was tough fishing in there. It would probably be tough for someone who was good. I’m not that good and in those days I was less so. You had to be stealthy, cunning, and very quiet. You absolutely could not let that trout catch a glimpse of you or it was all over. You could try again on the way down. Casting was impossible with all the undergrowth, the canyon walls themselves right at your back. You didn’t backcast, but just kind of flung the fly out there, or went upstream and let it go down with the current to tumble into the big pool like so many real insects did. I usually caught that fish, and then sometimes I spooked his stubborn self and didn’t see it again, even an hour and a half later on the way down. Sometimes I killed the fish to enjoy with salsa soaked hash browns and beer, other times let it go, no doubt to get fat and ornery out there in the Delaware, if it could survive that river.

                There was really only one other good pool in the entire creek but I always found fish in tiny little scoops and pockets, stops on their route down this ladder. I’d perch on a rock above a small pool and just watch the trout darting for its food, or lurking in the shadow of a rock, sometimes just patrolling its tiny realm. I’d catch these by dapping, just patting the fly (invariably an Adams) on top of the water, letting it eddy over to the trout’s rock. I could see every movement of the fish including that twitch of the tail that told me it would strike, almost like a cat.

                Up at the top of the hill was another pool, not so deep as the lower one, but much wider across. There was a six or seven foot falls below it and when you got up on the lip you could look back down the creek and canyon and see the water jumping down through the cool, mossy stillness. I stood there awhile, catching my breath and enjoying the presence of this place.

                I saw three trout in the pool, two holding under an overhanging rock across and to my left, one under a fallen snag, across and to my right.

                I amazed myself by casting once, twice, three times without snagging on anything. The third cast caught one of the trout under the overhanging rock. It darted out from under the rock as the fly drifted past, and fought all over the pool to free itself. After five minutes I slid it out onto the burnished granite, unhooked the fly from its jaw, and decided that trout for dinner sounded good. I killed the fish and placed him off to the side. There was no sense in casting again so soon after all the ruckus so I contented myself by sitting still, listening to the few sounds, feeling the cooler but still warm evening’s air, feeling better and better every minute, tuning in to the lifeline.

                Against my expectations I caught the trout holding under the snag on my first cast. It didn’t put up quite such a fight, and soon my meal was complete – minus the hash browns and beer.

                It was getting dark as I made my way down, rock to rock, leapfrogging along the creek, exhilarated as I pushed through the brush back to my car.

                A secret unknown place where I always caught fish, and I always caught peace. It felt like a wild place, though I knew there was a farm not one hundred yards from my second pool, the highway below, and I knew the trout were not native but planters who’d made their way down from the Lokatong.

                I wheeled the car around and headed back home.

                It had been a lousy day, but the future looked bright.