“That fish is happy.”
I looked over at Doug with the kind of puzzled expression that one would make if the definition of a recently heard word was elusive. But I knew what fish were. And I knew what happy was. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how these two terms had any relation to each other such that Doug would order them together in a sentence the way he did.
While I later came to the conclusion that he did not utter this sentence with the sole intention of getting a rise out of me, he did quickly perceive my bewilderment. Probably because I didn’t talk. I usually talk.
“Look at it. That is a happy trout.”
We had been fishing the small limestone stream for the better part of the day. Fish were caught; none so remarkable as to remember. It was the kind of day that comes with a certain frequency of fishing. An average day. But a good day. The late spring conditions proved ideal for any kind of angling a person would want to engage in. Trout took streamers, nymphs, and dry flies. They weren’t taking them with reckless abandon. In fact, they manifestly spurned any presentations that were reckless.
Reckless presentations are often the result of desperation as much as they are the product of some deficiency in skill. In such instances defined by the former, the best solution involves a reset. You must stop in order to stop doing what you’re doing that you’re doing poorly. Otherwise your fishing will be as convoluted as that last sentence.
A prime method for stopping is to sit and eat something. Some men bring a flask. Some men smoke a pipe. Doug had a sandwich. For all the health risks that some bureaucratic agency prints on the side of alcohol and tobacco, one would assume that they were riskier than an egg salad sandwich that had been in a vest pocket for the past nine hours. This position sidesteps the FDA entirely and is untenable. Yet Doug munched on.
It was in this parlous state that I came upon Doug. As he maneuvered his egg salad on white, he was watching a fish fin in the current. It looked to be a brown trout of about 14 inches. Based upon the experiences of the day so far, and judging by the movement of the trout, it was eating emerging insects. It was flitting back and forth across an area of about a square meter. It’s deliberate nosing of the surface gave the impression that it was typing a message on an invisible keyboard, hunting and pecking using its snout.
“Yes. That trout is happy.”
The third time he made his pronouncement, Doug seemed content to just let his piscatorial psychoanalysis hang in the air and drift downstream. He folded the wax paper that had held his egg salad into a tight little origami opuscule and placed it in a vest pocket. He picked up his rod. Smiling, he watched the trout for a few more seconds. Then, without making a single cast to the admirably-sized specimen he had been observing, he set off upstream.
Trout can’t be happy. But fishermen can be. It doesn’t require breathtaking scenery or spectacular exploits. It can be in stopping. It can be observations of the glorious minutiae. On that day, especially in that moment, Doug was a happy fisherman.