The Streak

by Jeff Metcalf

 

 

When Baltimore Orioles’ third baseman Cal Ripken voluntarily placed himself on the bench after 16 years and 2,632 consecutive games, the longest streak in baseball’s history ended.  Baseball pundits were taken by surprise, fans were shocked but Ripken understood it and so did I.  The time was right.

I don’t pretend to have anything else in common with Ripken other than a streak, but I understood him when he said, “...there have been times during the streak when the emphasis was on the streak instead of the game. It was time to move the focus back to the team.”

For the past 30 years I have fly fished the great trout waters of the West, enjoying all of it; days of heavy trout, days without a bump, evening sunsets with colors so rich in hue I could taste them on my tongue...every moment on the water a gift. But then, I slipped. I made a mistake.

It wasn’t intentional.  I rendezvoused, as I have every year for the past umpteen years, in West Yellowstone, with a group of fellow fly fishing junkies who come together to wet a line, touch base with each other, and just stay in the loop of each others’ lives. For all of us, this ritual, this journey has become sacred.  And because it has survived the other world, the world of failed marriages, hostile corporate takeovers, births and deaths, we guard it with great care.     

We’d just finished fishing a stretch of the Firehole River and returned to Willie’s cabin for dinner when the subject turned from food back to the topic of fishing. Several stories were recounted with great celebration, stories worth telling and retelling because we had all shared in them.  Like Willie’s afternoon on Buffalo Flats where he’d hooked into a beautiful plump trout when a pelican dropped out of the sky, trailed along behind the trout and snatched it out of the water and disappeared back into the cerulean blue sky. We all saw the event, Willie holding his rod up in the air, not knowing quite what to do, the line whizzing into the backing before the tippet snapped. And when he came over to where we were fishing and began to tell us the story, we gave him the look...like it was a bit early to be hitting the flask. It drove Willie crazy. 

Or the night Charle Brooks wandered over to the cabin, already half in the bag and joined us for dinner.  Willie had invited a friend whom he thought Charle might enjoy meeting.  The man was a chef,  a wonderful character about Charle’s age who had been in the Air Force during WWII and who had flown “The Hump” which Charle claimed he had done during the war.  It was supposed to be one of those great meetings, carefully orchestrated so that two people with similar stories could turn out to be lifelong friends.  But it wasn’t...it was disastrous. 

Charle weaved  wild stories, soaked in scotch and played them out before the chef like a fat trout. Each tale got taller until the cabin was alive with the smell and taste of air battles, the intoxicating flavor of curried food from a crowded Indian bazaar and the exotic perfumed scent of mysterious dark skinned women enamored by Charle’s heroics.  

Following each story, the chef would declare that Charle was full of shit. He would challenge the authenticity of large and small details and when Charlie didn’t bite, the chef would storm off and fix himself another stiff drink mumbling under his breath. But the chef wasn’t a fisherman and Charle was. For Charle, the truth never stood in the way of a good story.  We understood this about Charle because we understood this about ourselves. They were fine stories.

So on this particular evening, after we’d brought out and pumped life into our own favorite fishing stories Wells asked me how many times I’d fished on the year.  I’m fortunate to live close to one of the great trout rivers in the west so I fish a great number of days each year. 

“124 days.”

“You fishing slut!” 

“It’s been a good year”

Then Specs, an architect who journeys from the east coast every year to join us asked a very simple question. “Been skunked yet?”

“Probably.” To be honest though, a specific time didn’t come to mind. 

“You could find out couldn’t you?”

“I’d just have to look in my journal.”

“You ought to do it.  Just to know.”

“You know what happens to guys that have streaks going, don’t you?”

“What?”

“They lose their sense of humor.  It screws them up...in the head.”  I thumped my fishing hat for emphasis.

“Bullshit.”

“Come on, think about it.  Maris and Mantle. Remember?  Maris’ hair started falling out...I don’t want to know.....I don’t want to lose my hair.”

“Too late!”

“What little I have.”

And so it went.  But the seed had been planted and that night, against my better judgement, I checked my journal.

At breakfast, Specs had forgotten our conversation about the streak. I should have, but I couldn’t resist. I knew before I opened my mouth that nothing good could come of this.

“Nope,” I said.

“Nope, what?”

“I haven’t been skunked.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

What I had done was underhanded.  I floated the streak in front of Specs and he picked it up and ran with it.  I knew he would and just as certain, I knew it would leave me in a position to feign off like it was no big deal...but still put me at the center of the streak.

Following breakfast we fished Coffee Pot on the Henry’s Fork.  It was cold, overcast and no sooner had we gotten onto the water when it began to snow...then dump on us.  We worked below the surface running all the standard nymphs through our favorite runs.  Nothing.  Not a single bump between the 5 of us. By early afternoon, with no signs of the snow letting up, we threw up a plastic tarp,  tucked under a large tree and feasted on some of Wells’ homemade deer sausage, several cheeses, duck pate, smoked salmon and washed it all down with four  bottles of wine. The weather was relentless. Wind picked up until the snow was horizontal, slashing around us in gusts making it next to impossible to cast. We packed it up and headed back.

Returning to the warmth of the cabin we quickly shed our wet clothes, heaped up the fire, poured some stiff drinks and watched the snow begin to surround the cabin in a blanket of white.

“Too bad about the streak?”

“The night is young.”

“You’d go out in this? This blizzard? You’re nuts!”

“You know what they say? ‘If you don’t like the weather in Montana...wait a few minutes.  It’ll change.”

The weather changed....for the worse.  Against my better judgement I decided to head back to the Henry’s Fork, to a spot by Mac’s Inn where I knew there might be a couple of trout held up beneath the bridge.  Specks joined me and sat in the jeep with the heater running while I climbed into the water.  My second cast produced a plump little rainbow.  I was off the hook. 

The truth was I was disappointed in myself.  The moment I left the cabin, I knew I should have let the day go to the trout.  It was fitting...a perfect unpredictable Montana day, fly fishing with men I greatly admire, spread out along one of the great stretches of trout water, casting into a flurry of snow with the hope of trout.  It should be enough in anybody’s book. 

Upon our return to the cabin, Specks weaved a fine story about me slipping into Henry’s Fork and nailing a trout without missing a beat.  Drinks around and compliments on saving the streak along with several great bottles of wine fortified by a sumptuous dinner of elk steaks, nutted wild rice, baby asparagus and followed up by Anjou pears, several cheeses and port wine gave me the false impression I had accomplished something of measurable weight.

 

***

But the streak owned me.  It was a narcotic.  I fished harder, stayed out longer, waded in spots I shouldn’t have, took risks, developed superstitions, created rituals, became edgy and sullen until I hooked into a trout. Something had to give.

The 171st of the streak put me in the company of the Captain, the owner of a fly fishing guide service out of Ketchum, Idaho.  We rendezvoused  outside Jerome, Idaho to float a lake we knew was capable of producing several rainbows hogs big enough to pull a float tube, strip a line to the backing in the blink of an eye or, and as had happened to the Captain once, snap the joint off a light weight rod in a heart beat.  We fished for 12 hours, catching and releasing more fish than I can remember in a long while.  Since we had to pass by Silver Creek on the way to his house and it was a full moon, we detoured over to a favorite spot and fished for another 4 hours.

After managing to squeeze in a few hours of sleep, we got up early the following morning, drank a couple of pots of coffee, filled up the thermoses, stopped at a convenience store for smokes and whatever we could shove into our vests and did it all over again.  Absolutely childish bliss to be so irresponsible.

In those two days, fishing with the Captain, watching pelicans fill the sky, the colors on the water change from liquid gold to shimmering purple I never thought once about the streak.

I left the following morning in a nasty wind storm and headed south to my home.  Grey clouds rumbled across the sky and it began to rain heavily.  At the cut off to Silver Creek I made a decision and turned my rig off the main highway and headed into the Nature Conservancy.  I rolled over the bridge, drove the long narrow to the cabin and registered at the check-in.  There wasn’t a single person on Silver Creek that day. 

I slid into my waders and boots, rigged up my rod, pulled my foul weather jacket on and stepped into the water. I punched one single cast through the wind and watched as my fly passed untouched over the surface of the water. And I began to laugh, imagining what this might look like to a pair of Silver Creek regulars. I could hear one or the other say, “I think I smell a skunk coming on.”   They’d laugh, staying warm inside their rig, knowing better than to fish in a storm like this. And before leaving, the other would feel compelled to say, “He doesn’t stand a chance in hell of catching anything.”  

He would be right. Absolutely and completely right.  And for the first time, in a very long time, so would I.