Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/787068
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 171 I could tell immediately he was an old trout, for his tactics and maneuvers were measured and deliberate, not the sudden, panicked antics of a young fish in its prime, but the willful and controlled turn of a wise old veteran that took him rapidly upriver. Then he abruptly changed direction and charged straight at me. His sides and gill plates flashed copper and crimson as he powered downstream. Now he had the advantage of the current, and I began working toward him, the icy raindrops peppering my bare face and hands. He must have divined my intentions, for he bore deep into the heart of the run until he was directly across the river from me. Minute by minute and move by move we contended with one another, until I could sense the fight beginning to take a toll on him, as it was on me, both of us seeking to extend and enrich our respective lives while the river flowed around us like Time itself. Eventually we came to a tacit understanding, and I knelt there in the edge of the current and brought my last trout from Patagonia to hand. I could hear Mark circling behind me, his camera firing away as I eased the fly from the old fish's jaw and held him deep events of my life, and I knew that soon I would be longing for this place and all these new friends I was leaving behind. And then I saw it . . . that subtle, almost imperceptible rise a foot off the bank 50 feet upstream, and I replied to Mark, "Okay . . . one last cast." It was a good cast—as good a cast as I have ever made, a far better cast than I am capable of making, the weight-forward line and 13-foot, hand-tied, hand-tapered leader unrolling low and evenly beneath the underbelly of the wind in a perfect, tight loop that laid my twin flies a foot off the bank and eight feet above the rise I had just seen. For a moment I wondered if my trailing fly had actually landed onshore. I watched anxiously as the uppermost dry fly began edging down the current, but only for a foot or so before it went under, as though the dropper had hung up on some submerged twig or blade of grass. But still I struck, more out of hope than conviction, and my line came tight. I saw him as he swirled—long and beautiful, deeply colored, big-headed and hook-jawed, a foot off the steep bank and just inches beneath the surface. rise 30 feet downstream and laid a cast ten feet above it. The take was so subtle that I almost mistook it for just another drop of rain. But when I struck, I set solidly on a 20-inch rainbow. I dipped my rod to the left to counter her direction as she tore away across the river, and she paused for an instant before bolting back upstream. At the top of the run, she leapt high into the air, then leapt again before burrowing back into the current, where I was eventually able to gain position and subdue her. The next half-hour yielded two more brown trout and one more rainbow as the steadily lowering clouds continued to darken. I didn't know if the dimming skies were the result of further deteriorating weather or simply the lateness of the day. It was Mark who answered the question as he reappeared from the mist 70 yards upriver and called, "About ready to go, Mike? It'll be dark soon." My South American sojourn was drawing to an end. From those first blissful days back at Tres Rios fishing the Chimehuin and the Collón Curá, to the time we'd invested here at San Huberto with the Olsen family, experiencing Patagonia had been one of the pinnacle