Paul awoke to the pink-orange of sunshine on his eyelids. He had fallen asleep on the bank. The gnarled willow tree protected him from the late afternoon sun, but a bare patch in the branches allowed the light to penetrate to where he lay. Just below the branches and just above the horizon. The day was almost over and the day had just begun.
This wasn’t the first time that Paul had fallen asleep on the bank of the small creek. The creek formed one side of his property’s boundary line. He had two human neighbors, a state highway, and a spring creek. He was pleasant to everyone. He was friendliest to the trout in the spring creek. The sounds of their home was his constant companion. The gentle water’s gurgling, occasional trout or muskrat’s splashing, and chorus of birdsong was the background to which he woke and he fell asleep. Even when he was in his bedroom; not streamside.
Falling asleep can happen when you’re laying down and when you’re still and when you’re tired. Paul was always tired. He was rarely still, and thus he didn’t lay down to often. But watching trout feed from the damp streamside grass was a rare exception. Ticks, poison ivy, and muddy clothes were all possibilities. The trout were there and required more urgency. Fish did rise to the stream’s “hatches.” But these intermittent moments brought in countless out of state anglers and really did nothing but put the wiser, larger fish down.
Paul knew there were exceptionally big and remarkably crafty brown trout every twenty five yards or so. The stream historically held abnormally large fish. Angling pressure just made them more selective. He had lived there long enough to read all the magazine articles and pick up the trash left after fits of message board chatter. It was like the fish had heard their about their publicity, too. Some only fed at night. Some moved to spots – culverts, bridges, hollow logs sitting half out of the water – that no drift could reasonably reach. Some fed on a schedule. This was assuming that no beavers, herons, or clumsy people were anywhere remotely close to the water.
The particular pool Paul had dozed off next to was one he could see from his garage. Six days prior, he had parked his old Toyota sedan and walked out to grab the pull chain to close the wooden door. That was when he saw the glimmer and commotion. It wasn’t a large flash or a cacophonous splash. But on a small, still spring creek any deviation from the norm stands out to the angler’s eye. A hundred feet up the hillside and through all the trees, an above average fish had presented itself.
He stood, watched, and confirmed through another subtle rise that he had seen what he thought he saw. He left the rickety garage door open and walked towards the foliage at the edge of the hill. Subconsciously he was timing the rises. There was about two minutes between the first and second so the next should be… right then. Paul knew that seeing one of these elusive fish and timing it’s feeding for one day’s sample size was not quite the same as a full net and a sense of completion. More observation was needed. Where was it holding in the water column? Where did it come from? Was it going to go somewhere different? What was it eating? Not to mention, there would be countless variables to consider regarding his positioning, his casting lane, and the nature of his presentation.
Slinking down the steep bank, he took care to stay behind trees and to keep his silhouette from the view of the trout. He hadn’t made it halfway to the stream from his Corolla when the woods erupted with crashing. Whatever it was was moving towards him, fast.
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