Waiting

 

The half-moon bounced the sun’s light down to the river valley only to have the light bounce right back off the surface of the river. The moon hung by an invisible force directly overhead, surrounded by a crown of stars. The moon’s craters nearly shimmered and the leaves of the trees on the far bank were illuminated in the soft glow of ghosts. The barren ash trees – destroyed by an invasive beetle – played the role of skeletons guarding the river as we waited our chance to catch a different invasive species – Pacific Salmon.

What We Were Waiting For

No artificial lights marred nature’s display. We were miles from a road and much farther from anything resembling civilization. Frogs and crickets added a vocal track to the river’s acoustical riff as it hurried its way to the great lake called Michigan. Yesterday’s owl declined to join the chorus. And the cedars, pines and hardwoods stood silent.

Salmon splashing in the downstream riffle ended any doubt of whether fish would be moving through this stretch. We had arrived at this bank more than an hour before first light. More youthful, aggressive anglers were wading in the dark downstream run, occasionally hooking into a chinook headed east to the gravel beds. We didn’t know how early the other anglers had arrived. We beat their peers, or perhaps them, to the spot the day before. We had resigned ourselves the night before to the reality that we wouldn’t be the first ones on the river again today. We were all in our sixth or seventh decade, so we valued our sleep a bit more than being first and were prepared to pay the price. That price included waiting for light before risking crossing the high flowing river to access an upstream hole that promised to hold fish throughout the sunny day to follow.

We could cross in the dark, and had the water dropped a bit more overnight we might have risked it. But caution, or perhaps wisdom, comes with age. We waited.

We weren’t in a hurry. We planned to fish all day and had the water bottles, lunches and snacks to sustain us. Once the sun cleared the trees and pierced the river’s tannic-colored water the salmon’s migration for the day would halt and they would hunker into the deep hole patiently waiting for the sun to slide back behind the trees so they resume their journey and swim through the shallow, sandy riffle around the next bend. A fresh pod of salmon waiting out the sun in a hole could keep a pod of six anglers busy all day long.

At least that is what we were hoping would happen. It was a hope based on experience. But we also had experience fishing the hole when it appeared to be barren of salmon

We had reasons to be optimistic and patient. The far bank was quiet. No headlamps flashed through the dark forest. There was no way to access the far side of the river that didn’t entail a river crossing. And there was nowhere else to cross the river nearby. We knew this because we had checked out alternate crossing points before reluctantly agreeing that this section was our best bet. So we waited in the moonlight, listened to river and thought of friends and fish.