Читать книгу Never Cry Halibut - Bjorn Dihle - Страница 10

FISH TERRORS

“BITE MY FLY!” I woke up screaming. My girlfriend, MC, tried to calm me as I hyperventilated and shook an imaginary rod. Perhaps I inherited fish terrors from my good friend and commercial fishing captain, Joe Craig—while we were at anchor, he’d often wake me screaming about fishing in his sleep—or maybe my subconscious was trying to work through the emotional aftermath of all the fish that had ignored my lures or gotten away.

“Stop!” MC yelled as I nearly hit her. I was mimicking throwing my rod down in disgust. “Calm down. You had a bad dream. Was it the Arctic grayling this time?”

“No, it was that pike again. He just swam there, smiling with his big eyes and teeth, laughing at me as I tried everything I could to catch him.”

“You need to get help. You have a problem.”

“What’s my problem?”

“Something bad. It’s more than just being a lousy fisherman,” she said. She was still proud of the seventy-pound halibut she’d caught with my dad a few weeks prior. Though she’d once been a vegetarian, her Facebook profile picture for the next seven months would be of her and a dead halibut. She even started giving experienced longliners advice on how to catch the big ones. She got even cockier when Troy Leatherman, the editor of Fish Alaska Magazine, asked to use the picture for a cover shot.

That morning, while drinking coffee, I read an article in the most recent issue of Today’s Angler Psychology Magazine that offered a pretty good explanation on why I had fish terrors. It described a recent study that showed 81 percent of fishermen exhibit symptoms of The Fish Or Me (TFOM) syndrome. Doctors say the neurosis results from the feeling that one’s father or boat captain has at one time or another considered murdering them for not setting the hook properly or losing a fish. Those suffering from TFOM often have fishing performance anxiety issues and catch less fish than the 19 percent of the individuals who are deemed healthy. Finally my inability to catch fish made sense. It wasn’t that I lacked skills or commitment, or hadn’t listened to my dad as he painstakingly tried to teach me. It was because of TFOM. Now that I had identified the root of my problem, I felt confident I could be cured.

I traced my fish terrors back to a particular fly-fishing incident with my dad in the mountains above Bozeman. Trembling, I realized I would have likely become a lawyer, doctor, or politician if my life hadn’t been hijacked that day. Instead, I became a degenerate woodsman and a lousy fisherman. The history leading up to the incident is a bit foggy but begins in the summer of 1989 or 1990. My family had driven from our home in Alaska to Montana so my folks could go back to college. We arrived at Bozeman when Robert Redford was filming A River Runs Through It. At a summer camp, I met a boy who claimed his dad was a stunt man in the film.

“What sort of stunts?” I asked. I’d never fly-fished, but it didn’t seem like an activity involving too much danger.

“Fly-fishing stunts,” he said. As soon as Dad put a rod in my hands, I realized the kid was telling the truth. Fly-fishing was dangerous. There were beavers to contend with, crashing brush when I tried to free a fly from a tree, lightning storms, and tangles that couldn’t be untangled. Most of all, there were the consequences of losing a fish in front of my dad.

It was at Hyalite Creek in the mountains above town, while hunting for brook trout, where I credit the birth of my neurosis. After hours of following Dad through thick brush with an impossibly long fly rod snagging on everything possible and tangling my reel as I cried, Dad shoved me into a creek.

A spring king salmon. (Photo courtesy of MC Martin)

“That looks like a good spot for a fish,” he whispered, gesturing at a slow-moving section of the creek. “Cast over there.”

After hooking a tree once and splashing the water twice, I managed to get the fly near where Dad pointed. A few moments later, a fish sucked it down. I was so flattered, I didn’t think to set the hook. The fly floated free, and what sounded like a wounded grizzly bear made me realize that if I didn’t catch this fish, I’d likely be mauled. Awkwardly, I cast again.

“Now!” Dad roared. I pulled the fly out of the fish’s mouth with a violence more fitting for a mixed martial arts match. I was sure now: it was the fish or me. Sobbing and trying to make peace with death, I whipped my fly back into the creek and offered a pathetic prayer to the fish gods. The next moment, the fly was sucked down, my reel zinged out line, and my dad’s inner berserker came out as he yelled, thrashed the water, and howled. A minute or so later, I pulled in a fifteen-inch grayling, a fish I had never seen and had no idea existed in Montana. Its iridescent scales and giant, sail-shaped dorsal fin made me forget how close I came to dying. Dad, knowing how rare Arctic grayling were in Montana, helped me gently release the fish. Watching it swim away, I wasn’t sure if it was the fish or me that was more traumatized from the experience.

I admitted I had a problem and discovered where my neurosis originated. Now I needed to do something to end my fish terrors and become a better fisherman. But what? Should I fly to India, find an ashram, and meditate until fish no longer haunted my dreams? Perhaps there are doctors out there willing to medicate me antifishotics? Or a twelve-step program for fisherman suffering from TFOM?

“Hello, my name is Bjorn Dihle. I’ve not had fish terrors for a week now.”

But what would haunt my dreams in the place of fish? I doubted there was anything out there as satisfying to be haunted by. Nothing as simple and magical as their lives and stories shrouded beneath the water. The dirty truth of the matter was that I cherished my fish demons. I miss fishing in Hyalite Creek, and I think about that first grayling more than is healthy. Waking up screaming is a small price to pay for having been lucky enough to go fishing.