I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.
Taylor Caldwell
Jack Hoffen arrived at the river access parking lot in the dark of early morning, rigged up and donned his waders and heavy outer clothing, and then hiked a half mile through thigh-deep snow. Once riverside, he looked down-stream in the faint light of dawn and took solace in the view. The silver lining in the dark cloud that followed him that morning was that he was the only angler on his favorite Great Lakes tributary.
It felt good to be fishing, especially without the typical crowds, but most of all because fishing always lightened his emotional load. During his most trying times he had made a point of going fishing despite the weather or conditions, as he knew he would end the day with a fresh perspective on a problem or at least with the will to face it on his feet. Today, especially, he needed to get away from his troubles, for it was Christmas Day.
The morning dawned bright with a clear sky and the sun gave Jack some relief from the bitter cold. But as morning turned to afternoon, snow squalls swept in and darkened the sky, coating the ground with yet another layer of lake-borne snow. Fringed in the white of the woods, the river ran quietly by, its sounds deadened to a soft murmur.
Jack had fished a broad riffle and deep run all morning and early afternoon without as much as a touch from a fish and decided to make a move to a choke point upriver where big boulders had been placed to protect a high bank from erosion. He watched the swirling waters of the eddy that the boulders formed and thought how similar his emotions had been lately. The spot had been good to him in the past but now, absent anglers, he could fish it more effectively than he ever had. None of the egg patterns he used earlier that day had worked and it was bothering him. He had adjusted leader length, weight, tippet size, and changed later to an indicator set-up with no luck. Even the Salmon River Gift, a favorite pattern for killing the skunk, was not drawing strikes. It was as if the steelhead and brown trout had taken the holiday off.
Jack opened his sling pack, searching for answers. Digging deep into his bag, he pulled out a box of woolly buggers. He had not opened the box since the spring when black sparkle buggers had been the ticket for dropback steelhead. The woolly buggers were arranged in tight, orderly rows in the box, much like the sardines he had wolfed down for lunch. He grew sad thinking about the spring of the year and its excellent dropback fishing and how a great day on the river had ended so badly. He remembered returning home that evening and finding the note. He grew sadder still thinking about where his life had taken him: a cold tin of sardines on a lonely river on Christmas Day.
Emotions welled up while Jack looked at the box. Reality bit as hard as the tug of a steelhead taking a fly on the swing. His eyes clouded up with tears, several of which dropped into the box and onto the flies in their neat rows. And that is when Jack noticed a different color bugger emerge that had, until then, lay hidden by its black, brown and olive box-mates. Pulling the fly out, he recognized it as a pattern a guide had him fish on the Bighorn River many years ago, in happier times. The pattern was called “The Grinch”, and for good reason: it was dressed in glorious Christmas colors; a red and green sparkle chenille body, red wire counter-wrap, and an olive marabou tail accented with red flash. Maybe, he thought, this pattern was different enough to rouse a strike. Darkness was approaching as he tied on this last hope of a fly. He decided to fish it dead drift off an indicator, letting it swing as it tailed out downstream.
Jack lobbed the rig up above the river chute and high-sticked it, watching the white indicator as it bobbed down the fast water of the chute and into the run below. Once it had swung out, he let it hang briefly in the current and repeated the process like any good steelheader would do. After a dozen drag-free drifts, he changed his cast so the rig would drift closer to the large boulder that formed the choke point in the river. The indicator rode the heavy water, then shot underwater as it ran along the seam the eddy formed off the boulder. Jack immediately swept-set the take and felt the heavy sponginess of a good fish. It was all he could do to recover the slack caused by the fish as it immediately reversed course and rocketed down the river. At last, the line came tight, and the drag brought the fight to the fore. A lengthy battle ensued up and down the pool.
Jack beached the fish on the smooth gravel at the tail of the pool. The buck steelhead laid there looking almost as dark as the water, with the Grinch prominently adorning the crook of its jaw. He removed the fly, briefly admired the fish, and then held the big steelhead in the current to revive it. Slowly its strength came back and then it was gone, back to its icy black world.
Day’s end neared: the sun dropped behind the hills to the west and Jack began to think about the long hike ahead of him through the deep snow of the woods. He wished he had brought his snowshoes. Before leaving the river, in a moment of charity that belied his troubles, Jack clipped the Grinch off and left it hanging from a small tree, near the pool tail-out, much like a Christmas ornament. ‘The Grinch may have stolen Christmas, but this Grinch gave it back’, he thought to himself. Perhaps some lonely, discouraged angler, like himself, would discover it. And maybe too, it would do more than catch a steelhead on an otherwise luckless day, as it had for him.
Jack hiked back to his truck in much deeper snow now, and he labored against it, breathing heavily as he lifted his legs high to move forward with each step. The sky had cleared again, and the wind had dropped. He could see the stars overhead, bright pinpricks that winked at him amidst an inky black canopy. The woods were beautifully silent and still.
Jack thought about the steelhead and the fly that saved his day. The fly reminded him of characters of Christmas stories whose lives – sad, destitute or seemingly doomed – had been saved: the Grinch’s heart had grown three sizes larger, Ebeneezer Scrooge had changed to keep Christmas better than any man alive, and George Bailey discovered that one who had friends had no troubles to fear in life. Jack could not be sure his wife would ever forgive him or even return to him, nor could he bet that his children would ever open their hearts to him again. But for the first time in a long time, Jack Hoffen looked forward to the future, as dim as it might be. Hope, ultimately, had finally come to him in the form of a fly. He had a lot of Grinches to tie before this Christmas day ended.
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