Restless Waters: Steelie

Restless Waters: Steelie

The coastal bluffs are rocked by fierce, icy headland winds blasting in on a huge surf. I’m on my back listening to each crashing wave while my tent threatens to blow away. With no moon to either placate fear or play on it by casting shadows, I try to reassure myself that the stormy seas can’t reach my camp. Phwump! Another collision of water on the cliffs. I’m wide awake now, and not so certain that I’m all that safe. High tides, rogue waves, tsunamis. I recall a huge log perched 60 vertical feet up a sea wall at the river’s mouth. Forget sleeping!

Groping for my watch, and flashlight, I wonder if I should just get up. It’s not like I’m going to get any rest. 4:10 a.m. Could be worse. Maybe I did sleep a little after all, and I’m just edgy, knowing that there is a 6 foot-plus tide at 4:45 a.m., and that the river has good flow and color. Maybe it’s just wanting to be first, wanting to hook a fish, wanting to break the drought. I have to go back to the magnificent 10-11 pound hen that took my marabou leech in the tidewater five years ago. Hell, has it been that long? It can’t be! Five years between fish is tough. I rationalize; 3-4 days per season, but it still adds up to 15-20 days on the river. That is a drought. I remember all the times I’ve heard people say they fished for steelhead for years, never hooked one, and gave it up as a cruel joke. I’ve been lucky. Why doesn’t that make the waiting more bearable?

The dampness on the coast is the toughest part of camping. No matter how many layers I wear, the frigid Alaskan current’s sea-spray penetrates to the bone. Sitting up in the tent, picturing sterling silver fish slipping past sea lions, I decide it’s not too early to get started. A small fire helps, more reassurance than warmth, and coffee would certainly be welcome. I can just make out the fantastic and grotesque shapes of the Cypress trees that are supposed to be my windbreak. They seem to be leaning over, scolding me. Way down the coast, I see the intermittent beam of the lighthouse obscured by fog.

Coffee slides down my throat, its heat spreading toward my limbs. In the lantern light, I make up a new leader on the picnic table, working it down to 0x tippet where I will attach a glo-bug. No subtlety here, but these fish are freight trains. Hooking one may be a moral victory, but that cannot suffice, will not suffice, for landing one. I’ll just release it, yes, but the meeting links me to a mystery as vast as the night sky, yet more palpable.

Long before it’s time, I’m on my way. I feel, more than see, the sandy trail between the low, wind-beaten foliage that seems to grow and ferment simultaneously on this harsh, salty edge between land and sea. At an extreme bend in the river, where the water seems momentarily uncertain which way to go, I sit on a massive redwood stump and wait while the faint glow to the east builds above the Coast Range. Just as the fish I hope to see, hope to wrestle, hope to touch, return, so do I. Since I tied into that first splendid steelie so long ago, I wonder if I’ve had any choice.