A Fishing Funk

Weak Sauce at Gunn's Camp, broken down the day after we got her

Invercargill! The place to come if you want to see raucous teens racing their obnoxiously loud Subarus and Hondas down the main strip or 60-year-old women dancing wild at a Drum and Base club at 2AM. It's not all bad though, it has crosswalks that actually change when you hit the button and plenty of shows to go and see at night. We came here from Te Anau, stopping to journey through a limestone cave network, made more interesting with two shared fading lights and several narrow passageways that required sick contortions of our bodies to squeeze through. We saw some interesting caverns though, many covered with scattered glow worms and involving treacherous sprints around the edge of deep, surely bottomless puddles. We made it though! We also stopped at Dusty's Bar, the lone tavern in a small town of Clifden, and had the best seafood platter of the trip, along with "the best Speights beer on tap in New Zealand," according to one elderly local, the sole customer other than us. After arriving at Invercargill, we decided to stay here through the weekend before venturing to Stewart Island. Between the Aqua Center, Jordan sleeping under a bush in just his sleeping bag, and Julie and Katie dancing to the hypnotic beat of a drum-and-base DJ and finally convincing Jordan and I to join, it's been quite an enjoyable few days here. We even took a few Subarus and Hondas in Weak Sauce! (our Toyota van, for those who missed the first blog entry). I think we ended up at about .500 in our short-lived racing stint, and the phrase "You've Been Sauced!" was coined in our victorious moments. We also just bought tickets to a reggae show featuring DJ Jahred, Irie Eyes Soundsystem, and Koile to check out tonight before taking off early tomorrow to catch the 9AM ferry. Good fun.

A recent event did occur that I've been struggling with, one that some will find silly or scoff at maybe, but I'm going to tell you about it anyhow for personal remedy for the guilt...


Weak Sauce rolled to a halt on the gravel shoulder of the Riverton-Wallacetown Highway, giving a final lurch, sputter, and sigh before we settled just yards from the Oreti River.
"Ahh, the elusive fishing access." I pointed out a small trail that dropped over a steep bank, winding under the bridge. Two days before, Jordan and I had driven around for hours looking for a mythical access sign. New Zealand, land of phantom rivers and dyslexic cartographers, ended up besting us and we wound up spending the day in quaint-yet-artsy downtown Gore, visiting a few museums and nearly weeping every time I saw the sign procalaiming the town "The Brown Trout Capital of the World," posted under a huge sculpture of a brown striking a fly.

"Looks like we're gonna get some fishing done today!" I'm one of the rare few who get an actual adrenaline rush as something as simple as the thought of trout fishing. Hopefully I don't find myself in an assisted living facility someday dancing on the table when I win on multiple cards at Bingo night. However, the prospect of fishing this esteemed river in the trout fishing Mecca of the world had me glowing as it may any trout enthusiast.

After giving Jordan a once-over of the basics, I set down the river. The sluggish Oreti spat and burbled in front of me as I began peppering eddies and troughs with my lure. The day was comfortably overcast; amongst the murky current, soft dark of the day and trace amounts of water seeping into my shoes from the spongy grass lining the bank, I felt right at home. I've gotten to know many a river in Montana on these terms, with the sun flickering through high soft spots in the stratus, flashing off of the water just seconds at a time. It's like a candlelight supper where your date just sparkles, stares back, and doesn't speak. Perfect.

I navigated the bank for about an hour, cutting away behind the tall, gnarly brush to the nearby pasture and back, casting when I could but producing no results, just a few costly hang-ups on the unpredictable submerged timber. Eventually the steep bank gave way to sheer cliff, forcing me back upstream. On my way, another snag left me with one hand-made silver spoon, tarnished with rust but retaining its action well enough. It's hard not to let frustration destroy a day like I was having, but I tried my best to mold it into some sort of resolve and convinced myself that just one fish would be adequate for my first full day out. I trekked back to the most promising spot I had seen, a turnout swirling above several boulders and a short, sloping rapid.

My first cast and I was hung up. Just as a guttural curse escaped my lips it morphed into a high-pitched whoop in the same breath; I'd felt a tug. Logs don't tug. Ten feet out I saw the flashy yellow-brown and spots of a monstrous brown trout. Logs don't look like monstrous brown trout. As the fish ran with a power intensified by the current and that far outstripped that of any fish I'd had on a line in Montana, I reached an overwhelming ecstasy that I've seldom experienced. Cars must have whizzed past on the nearby highway. At some point Julie and Jordan must have come running, I vaguely remember barking at Julie to grab the camera and somewhat cruelly yelling at Jordan to "get the hell out of the way." All I could focus on was the beast I had on, tugging and flipping as my line wildly etched out our struggle on the surface of the glossy pool. I had a battle on my hands.

The fish shot for the rapids just feet downstream. I tightened the drag to control the line that was now whizzing out of my reel, but inevitably the fish flopped over a boulder into the rapid below. Hopping over a log to avoid an uphill battle, I repositioned while the fish settled in a large eddy and lugged at my line like a scrumming rugby player, giving me a good five or six seconds to settle my footing and loosen the drag on my tensed line. The fish gained a few feet and shot up a chute between two of the boulders, almost snagging the line as I threw my rod into the air and then yanked it back down, giving him a few more feet to run to the top of the pool I had originally hooked him in. When he finally ran toward me, I spun the reel to catch up the slack, gaining the first inches of a battle where my inches were dwarfed by the seeming miles of line required to give a fish this size, especially on 7 lb test line.

Inches mattered. The fish's next run toward rapid water I was able to cut short, coercing it out into the more open water where I again gave it more line but at least cut its advantage to a minimum. We struggled a few more minutes in the open river and finally the trout's stamina began to fade, but not after greatest game of give-and- (mostly) take I had ever played.
Time in these matters becomes irrelevant, and I think this is partially responsible for the euphoric feeling. It's man and nature, nothing else. The fish has nowhere to be but free. Man has nothing to do but best the fish. The whole concept of time, a creation of man, is flushed away in nature downstream of all concern. I don't know a single angler who would quit the battle with the fish I had on for anything, be it a child's birthday, business meeting, or even his own wedding. Shouldn't an angler's wife be understanding of the infatuation that most fishermen find in the beauty of nature and its inhabitants? If not, it's a doomed marriage anyhow. I was in the middle of the most beautiful, wordly and unworldly experience that I know of, something so natural and wild that your periphery melts away and the narrow tunnel that is one event in an eventful life expands to be your everything. Then I ruined it.

Finally more tired than I, the trout became cumbersome. No longer were its darts for freedom so fierce and defiant. Where it formerly lunged it now just rolled, flashing its bulging white belly as a tired but powerful tail propelled it away from the bank till the line pulled taught, forcing it to circle around and do it all again. It was close enough that I could tell it was hooked well. Three barbs flexed through its tough, thick skin, two from the tough upper area behind the nostrils and one through the tongue and jaw. The rusty spoon dangled, periodically spinning a loop as I pulled my prize closer and closer to shore.

My conservative and self-servingly pessimistic estimate of the fish is 26 inches. A fat 26 inches. A gigantic 26 inches. It was a fish some live their whole lives to even glimpse. I've met many an angler who have spent thousands of dollars and years of dedication in pursuit of this exact fish, the beautiful creature that now ended up resting in a pool at the feet of a penniless 24-year-old with only one rusty lure left in his cheap plastic tackle box. To relive the next few moments is and will be horrible for me for my entire life.

I had no net. My New Zealand budget doesn't allow for a net. I didn't need a net-the fish was hooked, exhausted, and resting just feet below me. I slowly slid my rod back with one hand and reached for the head of the lure, going gently for the left gill with the other. Seeing my approaching hands the fish gave one more desperate, powerful flop. I reached for my rod, looking to give it just a bit more slack, grasped it, and picked it up. Or I tried. Focusing on the fish while I had slid it behind me, I had stuck the reel under a taught vine. My tip raised in the air but my caught rod didn't give. The snap may have been the most sickening sound I've heard in my life.

Still the fight wasn't lost though. The spent fish just sat there, even after I leapt off of the foot-high bank into the knee-deep water beside it. The river curled around me as I reached under the fish's belly and tried the double bear-paw to scoop it onto the bank. It was too heavy. Too slippery. The last lethargic, instinctive wiggle was enough to send its enormous mass plopping back into the water and careening down the rapids. I could see it for a good few seconds as the fish slipped out of my life. At least physically. I still suffer mental anguish from one particular fish from my past, anguish that will surely be dwarfed by this event.

It may be self-indulgent to dwell on a fish. So many worse things can and surely will occur throughout the course of my life. Fishing, and more particularly a single fish at a single place on a single day, is just a sliver of life. However, for me the portion has grown throughout my years in Montana, possibly second only to New Zealand for trout fishing. My love for the sport and respect for the fish I go after has grown exponentially. They are beautiful. They are mysterious and quirky, and on any given day you are just as likely to be tricked by the fish as you are to trick them. They are great eating. I've killed many a fish before, but I do not regret any and have made use of all I have killed.

One of the most respected fish I've landed I killed pointlessly with a stupid mistake. The trout, if it even survives the exhaustion I fought it to, will have a period of rest and then will have to feed to replenish. With a mouth pinned shut by three barbed prongs, it won't be able to. Numerous random event between the courses of two lives resulted in a beautiful moment where our paths crossed and I got the pleausure to grapple with an amazing feat of nature. I fought it perfectly, with the exception of one moment of carlessness. Not only did I lose perhaps the largest brown I will ever catch, but I killed one of the most beautiful creatures I've come across in my life.