The Northwoods Report - End of a Season

It was an invigoratingly cold morning in mid-October. Two friends, Lois and Nathalie, in my car, I drove down Benson Road under a canopy of gold, red, and bronze. Sun illuminated the foliage like stained glass and streamed down on the fallen leaves carpeting the road. It was my first trip to Young Woman’s this year, and it felt right. For me, this is a stream of emotion as much as it is a stream of water. My senses are sharper when I fish here than anywhere else, and every little occurrence seems to have significance beyond the mundane.

Though I knew I wouldn’t be wading nearly deep enough to need them, I hauled on the chest waders: One more layer between me and the cold air. The three of us shared out gloves, flies, and fishing tips, then split up. There’s plenty of good water on this stretch, which divides and subdivides into a half-dozen channels, most holding trout. Small pools; holes gouged by tree roots, deadfalls, or rocks; Hemlock overhanging runs; Trout cover is everywhere.

It’s rough country, clambering up and down out of these side channels, or former channels now dry, over deadfalls and treacherous rocks hidden by waist-high ferns or grass. But it’s worth it on a golden day like this, surrounded by warm colours in dozens of hues, with the frequent reward of a sudden side channel opening at our feet. The falling cadence of a hawk call punctuated the music of running water, or the tick-tick-tick of a leaf falling and striking its fellows on the way down, reminding us that fishing season was soon to end.

The Yellow Humpy settled perfectly against a slate bank, was swept a bare inch by the current, and was engulfed in a rise. I missed, my second miss of the day, but my smile was as happy as it was rueful. I’d found one more wild trout that had survived the drought of the past few years, and the treacherous drawdowns by the gas companies; one more to reproduce his threatened kind, and provide me with fishing next season. I silently blessed him, as he had just blessed me by rising to my fly.
Shortly I noticed the sunlight was muted, clouds building overhead. The rising humidity tickled my nose, and some atavistic instinct had me thinking more of returning to the car than fishing. I espied Lois, we agreed it was close enough to our rendezvous time, and hiked out together. Nathalie must have had the same idea, for we all met there, sharing our experiences as we shared our snacks: An excellent gruyere I carved with my penknife and handed around, bite by bite; a carefully-divided local apple; and Lois’ home-made biscotti; a lunch embodying autumn, to my taste.

From there we drove onwards, to seek other streams, driving and walking through magnificent autumn scenery, sharing the camaraderie of women who fly fish. But, to me, as always, leaving Young Woman’s meant leaving a sacred space, even after a fishless trip. Sometimes, it’s the place, not the weight of the creel, that’s important. In this case, the place, the people, and the time combined to weave the magic spell.
Twenty-four hours later, I sit in my living room marvelling at six inches of snow on my lawn, at the incongruity of it clinging to leaves still yellowish-green on the trees in my front yard. Who could have predicted that yesterday’s golden idle would be the last trip of the season? Certainly the weatherman had not. But my tackle is still in the car, just in case the combination of an unseasonably warm day and cabin fever allow me to sample the magic just one more time.

--Rabbit Jensen--