Fantastic (magazine)/Volume 8/Number 1/Fish Talk

by Winston K. Marks

FISH TALK

By WINSTON K. MARKS

Some fishermen are always complaining about the one that got away. Our hero in this hilarious spoof has more than that to gripe about. His fish not only gets away, but shoots his mouth off about it.

You know, everybody in Southern Oregon claims that the Rogue River is lousy with salmon, steelhead and rainbow. I'll agree that it's got some mighty pretty fishing holes, only I've never been able to pick the ones that the fish do.

That's why I designed this fish-spotter, a rig I dreamed up when I was a Sonar-Radar technician in the navy. Much as I enjoy fishing, I like catching one once in a while even better. I figured that if I could test out these beautiful holes beforehand, my weekend trips might get me something more than fresh air and exercise.

So I headed up-river toward Union Creek Camp this particular Sunday morning with my newly finished spotter beside me in my quivering jalopy, a song in my heart and a scientific gleam in my eye. No more of this hit-or-miss stuff for me.

It was a full, beautiful dawn when I picked out a section of sugar pine forest and drove off into the bushes where no one would likely see the car and follow me. I wanted to be alone.

One thing about the Rogue, almost anywhere you hit it, it looks fabulously fishable. It's full of riffles and eddies and rugged rapids and pleasant little falls with deep pools and interesting backwaters.

Well, I broke out of the brush right over a honey of a little fall where the river had cut a gorge, and the pool at the bottom looked deep. Some forty feet downstream it shallowed out into choppy rapids.

I scrambled down the bank to the stony shore and stood there breathing in the early morning dewey smell and the drifting spray from the bubbling white water at the foot of the fall. In spite of a thousand disillusionments, these moments are the high points of my life. You know the saying, about anticipation and realization?

There just had to be fish in this hole!

I put on my earphones, turned on the gear, which hung from my neck like a Brownie camera, and chucked the sounding knob out to the end of its ten feet of cable. It sank into the clear, green water, and I upped the volume control.

Nothing but a faint hash in my phones!

I just couldn't believe that this piscatorial paradise was that deserted, so I stuck together my fly-rod, tied a gray-hackle on the end of a half-pound-test leader and was quite ready to make a liar out of my own fish-detector, when a steelhead long as my arm did it all by himself.

He erupted from the surface practically at my feet, danced on his tail while he looked me over and then smashed back like a log, spattering my waders with the splash.

Men and fish are perverse.

I knew he'd seen me. I knew I had the wrong kind of a fly on for a steelhead. I knew that the half-pound leader holding that fly was meant for a trout, not a lunker of a steelhead. And I could visualize the sad wreck he could make of my slender wisp of bamboo if I hooked him.

So, breaking all the rules, I cast out anyway. And the mammoth steelhead, defying all common fish sense, split the surface instantly and gobbled the puny little gray-hackle.

Down he went, some 200 feet to the bottom with no argument from me. In the excitement of my incredible luck I'd forgotten about the earphones on my head and was tensing up on my rod, trying to coax in a little line when someone said very distinctly:

"I'll be a son-of-sucker! Hooked again!"

I was so startled I almost dropped my rod, twisting around to look behind me. Nothing but the brush and trees and boulders as far as I could see down-stream. The falls blocked my view to my right.

In wrenching around like this I fouled my reel in the cable of the fish-spotter. I said aloud, nervously, "Dammit!"

Instantly the voice came again, "Dammit, yourself! This wasn't my idea." And my rod bent down so hard that the tip dipped into the water before I could release line.

It's a wonder he didn't break loose right then. A steelhead is a clever as well as powerful fish, and I was throughly befuddled. An extremely silly notion persisted in my head. That steelhead had sworn at me!

I fumbled for a remark that wouldn't sound too foolish to someone hidden in the bushes. I yelled down into the pool, "Come up here, you big lunker!"

I have known fishermen to talk to their fish, but I have never heard of a fish talking back. This one did. I was listening carefully with the earphones slipped off my right ear and the left one on.

The voice came back, "Come down and get me, you great big lard!" and my line sliced a huge oval around the pool.

The voice had come out of the left earphone!

I quit looking around for people and started peering down into the pool with forgivable curiosity. There were so many ripples and bubbles I couldn't see more than a few feet deep. But he was down there, all right, keeping a dead strain on my rod as if I had ahold of the bottom.

This wasn't going to tire him out, so I pulled a trick an old timer had shown me. I dug out my jack-knife and rapped it smartly on the base of my rod. The vibrations were supposed to travel down the line and wiggle the hook in the fish's mouth making him become active. You can't wear out a quiet fish.

My left earphone said, "Ouch," and sure enough, up he came, geysering clean out of the water and staring me right in the eye. That hateful look he gave me shook me up a little, but I managed to whip up my long rod fast enough to keep a taut line on him. He hit the surface like an egg-beater, then, unaccountably, he sounded for the bottom again.

"Give it up," he said. "You can't horse me in with light gear like that. Go catch a trout somewhere!"

"Who wants to horse you in?" I said, suddenly realizing that I was actually talking to a fish. Before I could dwell on it, however, the argument was on.

"Well, if you think I'm going to cooperate, you're gonna be here a long time, bud."

"Come up," I commanded, and I rapped hard on my rod with my jack-knife.

"Stop that," he yelled in anguish.

"Then come up and make like a fish," I said.

He sank deeper instead, to show me who was boss. "Look, let's talk this over," he suggested. "You seem a mite smarter than the other yokels who hooked me. I've cussed out a lot of fishermen in my day, but how come you can understand my lingo?"

Well, I wasn't going to be tricked into tipping him off about the fish-spotter. His contemptuous tone and calm decision to reduce a magnificent battle to a cheap dicker infuriated me.

I pointed out, "You aren't in a position to ask questions and bargain. You are the largest piece of fish-flesh I have ever tied into, and I'm here to fish, not bicker. If you want free, get to work. You'll never get hung up on lighter fishing gear than this." I knocked on the rod some more.

He came up a little with each knock, yelling, "NO, NO! Stop! So okay, it's a light rod. Why knock off the varnish?"

"I'm here for sport, not arguments," I repeated.

"Sport!" he sneered. "You call murder sport?"

Non-fishermen have advanced this point before to no avail, but the steelhead made it sound strangely convincing. "What chance," I demanded defensively, "did you give all those little trout that you ate? Was that sporting?"

"Small fry," he scoffed. "Not worth mentioning." I rapped hard, and he boiled about the surface for a moment, then he sank to the depths again muttering to himself, "Slow down, big boy. Don't be a fool! That's what he wants you to do."

I kept on rapping on the rod, and he finally yelled at me with furious candor. "You're driving me nuts!"

"Looks like you can't take it," I taunted. He eased up to the surface slowlying trying to take the strain off and cussing me every quart of the way.

Darned if he didn't surface, but just beyond my net. Then he swam off a bit and doubled back on me, which forced me to drop my knife and take in line in a hurry to keep from giving him dangerous slack. He moved up almost within reach of my net again, and I didn't like the way he was hooked through the lip. His scarred jaws showed where other hopefuls had snagged him. One good shake of his head with loose line and he'd be off.

He circled away from me again, and back he rushed. Then I realized that this was deliberate strategy to keep me too busy to torture him with the rapping.

"Hah!" he said, "I can do this forever."

"So can I," I lied.

"Don't try to fool an old river fish," he sneered. "You have to clear out an hour after sundown, and you know it."

I said nothing, and he must have sensed that he had me. "Tell you what I'm going to do," he said with a flip of his dorsal fin. "We larger fish generally stick pretty well together, but under the circumstances I think I'm entitled to do a little stooling. After all, it's my life or theirs, maybe."

"Whose life?" I suckered.

"Those trout. Those eighteen-inchers up in the next pool, just above the falls. There are nine of them up there, big fat fellows on their way down to Hell's Gate country. They were the only sizable fish I passed on the way down here. I heard them say they were holing up until dark to wait for the females to catch up to them. The ladies had a little business up-stream and fell behind."

I caught my breath. Eighteen-inch rainbows! I've often dreamed of catching such fish, but a 12-incher has been my top fish in the past. And nine of them!

But I was leery. "Why should I turn loose a 24-inch fish to go after—"

"I'm 26 inches, fellow, and don't you forget it," he interrupted sharply. "And if you were going to pull that old saw about a bird in the hand, don't bother. I've tried to demonstrate that I am not in your hand by a long shot." To prove it he slogged down to the bottom again.

"If I turn you loose," I asked suspiciously, "how do I know you won't swim up there and alert them?"

He rose to the surface, rolled over on his silvery side and gaped open his mouth. "On my gill's honor I won't," he swore solemnly.

 

He gave a little impatient splash and egged me on. "Of course, you aren't going to take them standing here playing tic-tac-toe with me all day. There's a mighty fine afternoon's fishing up there. I'd suggest you make your first cast just below the mossy rock at the lower end of the pool and play them down this way. You might get all of them that way, if you don't make them suspicious. In fact, judging from the shrewd way you have, ah, inconvenienced me, I'd say your chances were excellent."

Well, I guess I got to dreaming too much about those nine rainbow, because I let the bend go out of my rod.

Instantly, he broke water high in the air, got the slack he needed and shook the hook loose. Then he circled right at my feet and sent a splash of cold water all over me with his tremendous tail. "Hah! I told you you couldn't hold me," he gloated gleefully.

I could have sat down and cried, but I didn't let on. "What do you mean?" I said. "You made me a bargain, and being a sportsman I kept my part by letting you off. After all, I did come out here to fish for rainbow. So, thanks for tipping me off about the upper pool," I added with what dignity I could muster.

"Don't mention it," he replied sarcastically.

Well, he'd made up my mind for me, so I stripped off the earphones and the sling attached to the spotter, and I climbed the rocks alongside the falls. There was the pool, just as the steelhead had described it, mossy rock and all.

Then my last hope curdled. The pool was only about two feet deep, and clear as a mill pond. No game fish in his right mind would hesitate in that exposed water for ten seconds.

Mad? I threw down my rod, grabbed up a knobby tree branch for a club and scrambled back to the lower pool with murder in my eyes.

"How's fishing?" the steelhead asked, his gills fluttering with hysteria.

I picked up the fish-spotter, case, earphones and all and heaved it at the big brute, then I swung that tree limb and launched myself out at him.

Naturally, I was no match for him in his own element. My waders filled up and I almost drowned before I managed to struggle down into the shallow rapids where the water was only hip deep. And the damned steelhead kept circling me and slapping water in my face all the way to shore.

The last I saw of him he disappeared around the bend in the river.

I didn't even dive for the fish-spotter. It's still soaking at the bottom of that pool, and it can stay down there for all of me. All it did was prove one thing.

Fish are just as big liars as fishermen.

THE END