I did find just the type of water I was looking for, a deep, black, slow hole that, in my mind, could hide a whole school of salmon. Big fish, deep water, right? I also knew that in the first week in september, the Toutle also held sea-run cuts and summer steelhead. So I started at the head of the hole and cast across the river and let the fly sink and swing through the deepest and slowest part of the hole. The sun went behind the ridge, the air cooled, and the whole pool was as quiet and lifeless, while my mind was frantically wrenching out my deepest, most innermost emotions and fantasies, 'cause I would see this person in two weeks when we both got back to our respective schools. Nothing was happening, fishing-wise. I imagined my typewriter back at the truck starting to glow. I methodically worked through the whole hundred feet of the dead water, and as I got to the tail, where the current started to quicken and the the depth to shallow, I knew I was done. A fine evening of casting and fantasy. Time to write, then make dinner, then sleep and dream some more, then REALLY fish tomorrow morning, when the salmon would be active. So, when I could finally see hints of bottom structure all the way across the tail of the pool, I started stripping in line to leave. But the alternate stripping in line and reeling in the slack was just tangling the loose line and wrapping the line around the tip-top, so I cast the whole thing out across the tail-out, turned around and marched out of the water up the steep, muddy bank, reeling blindly over my shoulder as fast as I could, on an unstoppable beacon with my typewriter and my love. I made it to the steepest part. The next moment the line stopped reeling, the rod pulled me straight over backwards, and I landed in a lump, head down in three feet of water. But this time I still had the rod in my hand, in one piece, with leader intact, and one bright, 6 pound Coho at the other end. I can only imagine what it must have looked like with the fly jumping and ripping across the surface. Having slam-dunked me, the only existentially consistent ending would be that I would land that fish, which I I cast across the tailout again, and caught the then biggest trout of my life, a sea-run Cut. Ten feet downstream, where the water was really shallow and moving, about five feet deep or so, something big pulled hard and broke the leader. It was still light. I still had another fly. I was soaking wet but I was not cold. But I was finished and I knew it. I slogged and squished my way back to the camper, dried out and warmed up, ate dinner, and proceeded to write a letter that was all about.....fishing. I know when to requit, existentially speaking that is. Trump Doyle, McKenzie Flyfffishers , February 1989
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