
The Driftboat at Hendricks
I’m scared of fish; terrified, in fact. I know that this is a source of skeptical amusement for lots of people, and also that dating a fishing guide requires me to confront this issue to some extent. Karl is a passionate defender of the wild trout species native to the McKenzie river, and though the prospect of handing a live critter of the Piscean breed sends me over in shudders, I know him to be a conscientious and intelligent person. His opinions make sense to me in pretty much every other situation, so it seemed reasonable that maybe I could gain some perspective on this issue by virtue of his well-informed and considered view. I saw it as an opportunity; maybe if I was exposed to fishes, I could gain some kind of appreciation for them, learn to conquer my irrational fears, and failing that, he was probably well-equipped to protect me should one of the buggers prove all my worst suspicions true and move in for the kill.
We went out on Karl’s drift boat on the Lower McKenzie. We put in at Hendricks Landing at about 1pm on a day of high overcast and temperatures that wavered somewhere between “brisk†and “it’s MAY, goddammit.†Karl chose this section of the river because it is part of a study being conducted by the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife in cooperation with the McKenzie River Fly Fishers and Trout Unlimited. The objective is to try and track the native trout in the portion of the river set aside for their habitat and help determine a course of management for the waters that best serve the future of the McKenzie and the communities it touches.
Our aim was to capture, tag, and document the statistics of any native trout, known as the McKenzie Redside, that we encountered. Though he had put a rod in my incredulous but willing hands once before, and I’d practiced casting in the front yard to his encouraging refrain “You’re pretty good for a first-timer,†I was extremely skeptical that I would catch any actual fish. This was, I admit, skepticism with a tinge of hope… but I digress.
I sat in front casting into whatever waters Karl pointed me toward, marveling at the way one needs to read a river in order to be both safe and successful out on the water. There are eddies, jams, backflows, rocks, and still calm pools, all with their own kind of beauty and danger. I got to enjoy the course we set, while he had to be constantly vigilant not only for what might trip the boat, or catch my flies on a snag, but also for where the fish might be lying in wait.

He was busy making sure I caught something
After about an hour we anchored in a bend near a gravel bar that looked likely and I took up a dry fly casting rig. I’d been using a nymph and bobber, but it was a somewhat heavier setup and I was getting a little tired casting constantly. K kept pointing to “fish†in the water, but I could never quite see what he was trying to convey. As soon as he wasn’t busy with oars, he cast out himself. Almost at once he had a fish on. Once I saw the motion that indicated the presence of a fish, I couldn’t unsee it. He hauled in a smolt which he plucked off the line, plopped back in the river, and had recast with barely a pause.
His next hit was much harder. His pole bent at a far more dramatic pitch and he worked the fish far longer before getting it close enough to the boat to net it up. He hauled a large and lustrous native out of the river and held it out for my inspection. The fish was undeniably beautiful, but it was also thrashing in a desperate bid for freedom that sent me reeling a few inches back (there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to go in the limited confines of the driftboat) torn between honest admiration and utter terror. We tagged (#721) and measured the trout at 436mm (about 17.5 inches)Â before we put him back in the water to scamper(?) off along his merry way.

#721
I did briefly reach into the cooler where we had him confined to touch the fish while Karl took his notes and recorded his stats. I realized that it wasn’t the slime on the fish that bothered me, so much as the unadulterated muscularity of the beast. These are creatures made entirely of motive force. They are remarkably strong for their size, and this is what I find so intimidating; they are much smaller than I am, but would totally give me a run for my money in an arm wrestling match. If they had arms. Or could breathe out of water. I mean, that would be a tough match to set up. The fish in a tank… me in some kind of articulated sleeve. A fish with arms…
Wait, what was I talking about?
After that catch, I had a clearer sense of what to look for in the river if I wanted to lay the fly down in a place where the fish might see it. I took to spooling the line out further and making an arc wider around the boat just past the rim of the shallows where we were anchored and into the deeps just beyond. After about 3 minutes of riding the arc, pulling the lure, and recasting the fly, I had a hard hit on the end of my line.
“I think you got a good one!â€
I started pulling back on the rod to set the hook and was stunned at just how much force the fish was exerting against my tugging. Karl told me to let him run a bit, but my line was jammed and wouldn’t spool out so I just hauled on him with all my strength. In retrospect, it seems clear it was something of a miracle I didn’t lose him with my clumsy angling, but I did in fact reel him in close enough to the boat for Karl to scoop him into the net and bring him aboard.
“That, is a nice trout.â€
His deadpan delivery was probably more convincing than any more effusive display would have been. We tagged and measured my fishy opponent and good old #723 came in shy of Karl’s redside, but not by a whole lot. He measured 428mm and was declared a nicer fish than most people land after years of trying, let alone their first go round fly-fishing. I credit the skill of my guide, wholly, for this outcome. I decided after some consideration, that I needed to record this victory, both over the trout and my own terror, by grasping the fish for the customary grinning-fish-gripping photo opportunity. This of course meant, I would have to touch the fish.
Heaving a deep breath, and steeling myself as best I was able, I took hold of the trout and hoisted him out of the cooler. He promptly thrashed with such force that he slipped my grasp and crashed to the floor of the boat. Chagrined, and not wanting him to hurt himself, I scooped him up again and took a firmer grip. Doing so, I managed to hold on, but it also more effectively communicated the strength I had found so shocking in competition with my flyrod; this was a strong fish.

This is happiness. Combined with terror. The kind that makes you think you might poop yourself.
Karl snapped a few photos, and we slipped him back into the river, tagged and ready for fishy action. We had a few more bites, but nothing else quite so dramatic. As we neared the pull-out, Karl let me row the boat for a bit, and I found that my capacity to do so with some facility pleased me almost as much as landing the trout had. And touching the oars was lots less distressing.
It was really a fine and wonderful day on the river. I expected to enjoy myself in the company of the boy I like, but there was something more fundamentally gratifying about the experience. I was cold and surprisingly tired after we were finished. Not least of all, I was slightly sore from having done battle with my first Redside. Doing so, I learned something about the water, and about myself. I pushed past the borders of my assumptions and saw something that was indeed powerful, and intimidating in it’s way, but also beautiful, and singular to this place we live in. It made me care profoundly about protecting something that nonetheless scares me.
Some of the proponents of the continuing presence of hatchery trout in the McKenzie river watershed make the claim that inexperienced fisherfolk, (read here: tourists) can’t land a native. That they are too elusive, strong, and wily to be caught by anything other than a relative expert fisherman. That without these planters, who are slow, weak, easy to catch, and who compromise the habitat for other wild species, the tourist fishing industry on the McKenzie will collapse. I submit the following rebuttal: if a person who is utterly inexperienced, generally uncoordinated, and nervous about fish such that she is not even entirely sure she wants to catch one lest it be in the same boat as she, can catch a native, and on her first time out, anyone can.