Reflections: Freezing is Overrated

I admit to lapses in judgment in my younger days. Among those I can talk about would include going afield in cold weather. Growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we often had cold spells that would last long enough for cabin fever to set in and the cold to seem less foreboding than the inside walls.

On one February morning, I set out to pursue trout on my favorite stream. The temperature as I put on my waders was in the low teens and my waders were frozen stiffer than stale jerky. Spikes of ice stood like stalagmites around the puddles by my car. By northern standards, this may sound balmy but when water temperatures make the mercury in my stream thermometer shiver, my feet tend to mutiny.

I decided to fish with my fiberglass ultralight and bait this morning as the thought of dragging a wet fly line across my fingers would have made me question my own sanity. Besides, fly lines pick up so much water that the eyes on the rod freeze shut after just a couple casts. My vision of spending the morning blowing on rod eyes to defrost them made the choice easy.

Easing down the bank, I slid on the frost all the way to the water’s edge. Except for a few small rocks that I went over, the ride wasn’t bad and once my feet hit the water I was able to stop. Standing and rubbing my backside, I looked around for the best place to cross without taking a dunking.

I waded slowly across a riffle, taking care not to step on top of round stones. These tend to be slicker than goose grease and always more plentiful than places a foot can get a good grip. I tried to find small pockets of sand to step on, and when that failed, I wedged my feet between rocks.

Given the conditions, I picked a sunny place to stand. The stream looked devoid of fish as I figured they were hunkered down out of the current behind rocks. I’m always impressed that fish can disappear in clear water without a hint of where they are hiding. No signs of aquatic life could be seen as I dug through the cup for a nightcrawler.

My breath froze on my mustache and soon I looked like something abominable if not the snowman. My fingerless wool gloves were incompetent if their job was to keep my hands warm.

Perhaps the cold was to blame, but I made an errant cast and sent my nightcrawler into the overhanging limbs of an alder on the far bank. Since the river was too deep to cross at this point and I had more nightcrawlers, I gave my line a tug with my rod tip, expecting the line to break. Instead, my fiberglass rod, likely fragile from being frozen, snapped in the middle. Oddly enough, the jolt caused the alder to release my bait, so I reeled it in.

At this point, I figured the morning trip an exercise in tomfoolery and wondered whether I should wade back to get my spare rod. I had no desire to admit defeat so readily, but will admit the cold was nudging me heavily in favor of quitting. The thought of holding a warm mug of coffee to warm my hands hovered in my mind while I pondered my choices.

As I plodded downstream to the car, a flash on the river bottom caught my eye. Pausing, I watched and it happened again. A fish was feeding beside a rock, and judging by the size of the flash, it was a good one. But here I stood with a two-piece rod that had just made that transition from a one-piece rod.

Considering my situation without foresight, I took the top half of the rod in my right hand and opened the bail on my reel. Then, I flipped the frozen nightcrawler upstream of the fish and waited, holding the two rod pieces together in the middle.

The nightcrawler drifted along the bottom, stopping abruptly about where the fish had been. Reeling in my slack line, I tucked the rod handle into the top of my waders, held the two pieces together in one hand and the reel handle in the other. Then I leaned back to set the hook.

This is the point in most stories where the fish explodes through the surface, walks on its tail across the water, and makes a mad dash downstream with the fisherman in tow. Splashing with great enthusiasm in pursuit, the angler follows trying to retrieve line, whooping all the way.

But that’s not what happened to me. My trout seemed, well, grumpy.

Slowly, it rose in the water column, coming to the top and holding in the current. It appeared to grow as it came up, and as it broke through the surface, its dorsal fin left a wake in the current. The fish looked deep in the belly and wide behind the head as if it had shoulders.

My bait was out of sight in the gullet of the trout and his gnarled lower lip matched his attitude. Had a half-chewed stogie stuck from the corner of his mouth it would have looked fashionable.

The trout was golden brown, its colors magnified by the clear winter water. Dark spots stood out on its side and I knew that if I landed it, the fish might be measured in pounds rather than inches. This river had a reputation for big brown trout and I was onto one of them.

We stood in this stalemate for what seemed like minutes. I held my broken rod together, hand on the reel ready to retrieve line. The brown was treading water like it was out for a Sunday stroll. I braced for a mad dash downstream. It never came.

It occurred to me that the brown trout might be too cold to fight so perhaps it wouldn’t mind being led into a net. I leaned back on my rod, carefully as it was still frozen, and tried to guide the fish out of the current. It seemed to resent my suggestion and retaliated by shaking its head from side to side.

Slowly, it yanked its head back and forth without moving in the stream. My rod tip bounced slightly with each motion of the trout’s head, never so hard that it felt like a jerk, just a steady throb, more like it was shaking a fist at me.

This bulldogging went on long enough that the teeth on those jaws eventually filed my line in two. Clearly, the old fish had used this trick before and saved himself a lot of dashing about in the cold water. As my line swung limply downstream, the brown simply sank back to the bottom and disappeared.

I looked around for witnesses because I questioned what I had just seen. I tend to judge the size of a fish relative to the water it’s in and that would have made this a trophy. Even on bigger water it would have been a good fish.

So, I plodded back to the car, feet numb from the cold water, the fiberglass on my rod frayed where it snapped, and the monofilament still rough from teeth marks of an old brown trout. Nothing was thawing as the sun offered light without heat. I decided that cabin fever was at least curable, though I wondered whether the illness or the cure was worse.

Freezing, as an antidote for cabin fever, might be overrated.

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Jim Mize sometimes wonders if he’s been preserved by cold temperatures. You can find his award-winning books on Amazon or purchase autographed copies acreektricklesthroughit.com.

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