“Great job, Grant. Dan, that’s fuckin’ terrible.”
Chuck swished his way downstream to me and held out his hand, in which I put the Orvis fly-fishing rod. A gentle wind swayed the branches of the red Vermont Maples lining the stream.
“Too much wrist. You want your whole upper body involved. Like this”, Chuck cast the fly out and let it drift, dangling the brown squirrel-hair lure in front of the rock crags where the rainbow trout were spawning.
“Just like that. You don’t got to hammer it, Jesus Christ, you just got to throw it like a baseball. Here.”
He put the rod back in my hand, turned, and swished back to Grant to continue telling him about his favorite fish. Grant, who fished for years growing up, had a lot to say about kinds of fish, their weight, and their length. Me being a first timer, I had little to offer. But that was all about to change, once I caught my trophy rainbow trout, which I could just feel swimming on the other side of the stream.
I cast one more time and let it drift. And then, a tug. The bob dove underneath the surface and I pulled up hard. I ripped the line in my right hand before tugging the rod back again with my left. And I felt the fish fight, swimming hard in the opposite direction. And I pulled again, line still taught, and again, until, all of a sudden, the line went slack. The bob resurfaced and continued to drift downstream.
“I almost had one!” I shouted up at Grant and Chuck.
Chuck yelled back, “Probably just a rock!”