The North Fork - A search for balance
Fiction

The long downward arc of the exit typically marked where he would begin to fully shrug off the day's stress. But for Dale Lassen, it seemed the tension in his frame would last longer than normal. Things had not be going well at work. Too much was changing. Change was the new buzzword around the office.

For Dale, work had become just that, work. Hiring on for some quick summer cash in the machine shop nearly 36 years ago, Kowalski and Sons never seemed like a place to make a career.

At the end of his sophomore year in high school he expected to do the same 89 days and out his older brother Danny had done the past five years. Kowalski’s was a union shop that would bring in high school and college students during the summer months to spell the normal crew. The regular employees were an experienced, veteran bunch and with all the accumulated vacation time, the extra help was needed to keep production up. At 90 days, the union regulations required workers to join up. It was part of the work agreement. His uncle Keith had been with Kowalski’s for years and was the shipping department head. Like most other temporary help, you had to be related to someone to get in. Kowalski’s was, after all, a family business.

Summer wore on and Dale’s father’s health faltered. A life long smoker, his two pack a day habit caught up with him. Emphysema laid him low and he was no longer able to work.   Danny was close to graduating from college – a first for the Lassen family – so, Dale made the hard decision to drop out of school and help support his parents – his mom never picking up many skills outside of the home to contribute much financially. Dale stayed on at Kowalski’s.

As the years passed he steadily moved up and into new jobs. And with the exception of a tour in Vietnam, life was good. Never really pursuing promotions, he would rather wait for the senior Kowalski or one of his two sons to pull him into an office for a talk. The older son, Pete, liked to make a big deal out it, asking Dale if he was “ready for a new job, a new role with new responsibilities.” Dale always replied he was ready as long as they felt he was the best man for the job.

Dale’s attitude served him well. Leaving the union ranks, he was still respected by the members, and thought of highly by the family. When the senior Kowalski passed away, Dale moved into one of the top three positions in the company. Pete was the new president; his brother Ted was in charge of finance and Dale took over manufacturing.

Work continued on like this for six years. During that time the company continued its ever-steady growth. While other custom metal fabrication shops were closing down, Kolwaski’s maintained – in part thanks to their relationships with suppliers and customers. Following the business plan laid down by their father, Pete and Ted were honest to a fault.

That changed about two years ago. Dale was unaware Ted was going through a divorce. With a strong lawyer, Ted’s wife was making a grab for every last penny. The stress got to Ted. He and Pete decided to sell the company - in part to keep Ted’s soon to be ex-wife away from it.

Kowalski’s had a history of making solid profits year in and year out. It wasn’t on the block long. A large customer swooped in with a big check and very quickly Kowalski’s was a wholly owned subsidiary of Standard-Strasberg Industries.

SSI incorporated Kowalski’s. They kept Dale on as head of manufacturing and brought in two younger men to serve as president and the head of finance, or CEO and CFO, as their crisp new business cards noted. With their arrival, the atmosphere changed. The yearly negotiations with the union turned difficult. New payment schedules irritated suppliers and customers. Production demands grew as they began to export product to new markets overseas. For Dale the work environment could be summed up with one word – cutthroat.

Ironic he thought as he turned up the North Fork logging road. Cutthroat was his quarry this day. The North Fork held native cutthroats that always seemed open to a well-presented caddis or mayfly imitation.

The road gained elevation and Dale’s spirits began to lift. The sun was fighting through the growing fall overcast and occasionally beamed down a ray that infused the forest canopy with light. Stopping to take a photo near the old washed-out bridge that was lit in a ray, he heard a buzzing in the distance. Too far from the interstate to be highway noise, it began to grow louder. Suddenly three young boys on all-terrain quads rounded the bend and raced by, single file, kicking up gravel and dust. Through the choking dust cloud Dale was surprised to see rod cases strapped to the rear basket on the last quad. Dale climbed back into his truck and continued up the road.

At a sharp turn near a narrow canyon section, he spied the large riffle section he worked last time out. Covering a good 40 yards and feeding into a nice pool with a few large boulders, it held more than promise. That highly oxygenated water and pool was home to one of the larger cuts he’s seen on the river.

What little heat of day was tapering off, so Dale pulled on a sweater. Never one for waders, he opted to wet wade but wanted to keep his upper body as warm as possible to compensate for the chill of snow melt fed river. Rigging his 3-weight rod, he selected a parachute style sparsely hackled Adams. It rode lower in the water and presented a more realistic outline than the traditional shank-wound hackle style. Also its orange post was much easier to track on the water

Wading in the bone-numbing cold water erased the last thoughts of work. He was here to fish. Playing out 15 or so yards line, he lifted to rod for his first cast. The willows along the banks required deliberate care or you would snag up on the back cast. Dale had always found the North Fork fish were caught relatively close in and never had to work much line through the guides. Distance was overrated, he thought as he executed a nice roll-cast. Accuracy, a drag-free presentation, line control and persistence were the important items. Sure, he could shoot line with the best, but too often he would watch anglers spending so much time casting and getting line out they rarely seemed to be fishing. The more the line is on the water, the better your chances to catch fish.

On his third cast into the tail of the pool, a cutthroat rose, with his snout barely an inch below the surface and gave the fly a look. The trout maintained his position, gently hovering below the fly, drifting slightly back with the slow current.

Dale very lightly pulsed the line and the fly twitched. The cutthroat inhaled it. A quick lift of the rod set the hook into the trout’s upper lip. The fight was on. Dale carefully let the 3-weight work. Even with 4x tippet tied on, he had to be careful. The trout was no monster but if Dale pressed too hard the tippet would snap. After a short but spirited 5-minute fight, Dale brought the trout in close. Reaching down with hemostats, he was able to grasp the fly and keep the trout in the water. With a twist of the wrist, the barbless hook slipped from the trout’s lip and he quickly swam for deeper water.

Pulling out his sharpening stone, he gave the hook point a few quick passes - something he learned from the senior Kowalski during a salmon outing in British Columbia years ago. He could still hear him utter, “A dull hook and a hastily tied knot are the two most common things that’ll ruin your day.”

Moving up stream, he targeted a seam near a large exposed boulder in the middle of the pool. As the fly settled on the water Dale looked up as the whine of the quads entered the canyon. In doing so he missed a splashy strike. A bit too much slack in the line and he lost his fly. The three vehicles whirred into view between some trees farther up the road as Dale pulled in his line. He backpedaled to the bank and sat down in the shade of some willow branches to tie another one.

To his surprise the quads veered off the road and down towards the river. They splashed across the top section of the riffle to the far bank. Shutting the motors down, Dale quietly watched as the three teenagers took their helmets off and two of them rigged up rods. The third unpacked a small video camera from a case on the front rack. While he fiddled with the camera the other two waded into the top of the pool just upstream from where Dale had missed the second trout. Not 20 yards away, in the shadows of the willows, Dale went unnoticed.

On the third boy’s cue one began casting up into the riffle with the other at his seven o’clock directing him as if he was a guide. After three or four casts and drifts they would stop and the camera guy would move to a different vantage point.

Dale continued to sit stone still and watch them.

The caster was very proficient. Using what looked to be a very light seven and a half foot 4-weight rod, he adeptly handled a good amount of line. Casting tight loops he worked the water upstream from his position. After about 20 minutes of this, he lifted the rod and the line went tight.

He turned to the camera and said “Patience is rewarded.” Dale nearly laughed out loud. “It’s taken that long for the churned up silt to clear through and for the trout to settle back into their lies thanks to your quad crossing” he thought.

The boy played the fish for about 5 minutes while being filmed and then handed the rod to his partner who continued to play the fish giving a wooden narrative about fishing in the Cascades. After he finished, he brought the trout to hand. With the fly still imbedded, he walked to the bank so the camera guy could get a close up. They zoomed in, turned the fish around, handed it back and forth and finally released it with a knee high drop back into the water.

From Dale’s position he could see the trout floating slowly near the surface and down the pool before giving a weak tail push for deeper water. He doubted it would survive.

The teenagers packed their gear, jumped on their rides, and this time splashed dead center across the riffle and headed back up hill to the logging road. Peace was restored.

Dale waded back out into the water. He tried to repress the indignation he felt. With no children of his own he had a hard time understanding today’s youth culture. He never bought into this MTV-mindset the college kids at the shop had - always talking on their cells phones, or wearing headphones listening to music, or DVD players in their cars.  They seemed to be going 100 miles a minute and needing a man-made soundtrack to their lives. He bet they would go nuts out here with him. His truck, while not even three years old, only had an AM radio. The guy at the dealership had to order one through the fleet service to get it without all the bells and whistles.

Time on the river was like time in a church. He looked around. All the beauty and wonder, it was his escape from the noise and  the hustle and bustle of the shop. Out here, it was the opposite to all he disliked about the grayness of the city. It was a place to unplug.

His mind held its own back and forth conversation on the ignorance of youth and the teenagers. ‘They don’t know better’ he thought, followed by ‘well, someone ought to show them.’ He continued with all the standard arguments. It wasn’t getting him anywhere. After 30 minutes he realized he hadn’t made another cast and his legs were numb. It was time to go.

He hiked slowly back up to his truck and stowed his gear in the truck bed. Climbing in, the engine turned and caught. He started back down the logging road.

A mile from the washed out bridge he saw an overturned quad in the middle of the road. Pulling up, he hopped out to find the other two quads in a side ditch and two boys hovering over the third at the ditch’s edge. The upright ones looked a bit beat up but okay. The one prone, the boy he first saw casting, was as white as ghost. As Dale got closer he saw why. He had green-sticked the tibia of his right leg. There wasn’t too much blood but he looked close to going into shock.

Dale fished his wader belt out the truck bed. “What happened?” he asked. The answer didn’t surprise him.

“We were bombing along all cool,” said one boy. “Tyler was on the left filming Sean and me. He wasn’t watching the road. Hit a pothole, popped up and went sideways. He came down like that,” pantomiming with his hands, “and nailed Sean and then me. I stayed on the road but him and Sean went in the ditch. Tyler just started screaming.”

“How long ago?”

“Fifteen minutes or so. Our cell phones don’t work here. The drive shaft on that ATV broke,” he said pointing to the one in the road, “And we can’t get the others out.”

“Okay Tyler, this might hurt a bit.” Carefully, Dale used the belt as light tourniquet just above his knee. “Give me a hand getting him into the cab,” Dale said as he got behind Tyler and reached under his arms lifting him. Tyler let out a howl when his friends banged his leg on the door as they opened it. Dale got him into the passenger seat.

Tyler turned his head towards the open door and  vomited a sickly sweet green liquid onto the road and his friends’ shoes.

“Gator Aid?” asked Dale.

 “Mountain Dew,” laughed the one named Sean

“Climb in back. I’ll get you boys to a hospital,” Dale said shaking his head.

Tyler was quiet most of the way – just breathing heavy and gritting his teeth where the road was rough. By his casting skills, Dale could tell someone spent some time teaching the boy on the mechanics of fly-fishing. Dale wanted to give him lecture on ethics, respect and beauty of fly fishing, about slowing down, about the joy of being outdoors but he could see now wasn’t the time.

Dale tried just general conversation with him to get his mind off his leg but didn’t get much more than his home phone number and that the boys were filming a senior project for high school on fishing.

Looking in the rear view Dale watched the other two. Seated with their backs against the tailgate. Sean and the other boy, Dale didn’t get his name, talked the whole way, laughing and making hand motions describing the incident. Once in cell range Dale called ahead to the hospital and Tyler’s home.

They were met at the ER doors by an orderly with a wheelchair and Tyler’s mother. Dale held Tyler by the shoulders and helped the orderly get the boy into the chair. Tyler looked up and gave him a weak thanks and shook his hand, as did his mother. Sean and the other boy sheepishly echoed the thanks. Turning away as they walked in, Dale heard Tyler comment “Nice truck but a crappy radio.”

Dale just shook his head again and climbed in. It was a nice truck. Nicer still without the whine and whirl of a fancy system. He tuned in the local 24-hour news station to get the traffic report. The reporter said the interstate was backed up with a fender bender. Dale decided to take the back roads home. It would give him a chance to drive by the lower river and see if anyone was hooking up steelheads yet.  It was a bit early for the run, but he heard that a few folks had danced a bright chromer or two.

Parking downstream of the confluence with the Spruce River, there was only one other car on the roadside. He hiked through the brush and at first didn’t see anyone. Scanning the river he saw one fish roll near the surface on the far bank – a good sign. He found a comfortable perch on a nearby log and continued to watch the water.

After ten minutes or so with no more activity, he decided to walk upstream towards where the Spruce dumped in. Right where the two rivers meet a nice back eddy is formed. As he approached he saw a young boy not much more than 12 years old on the bank trying to swing a fly along the seam between the fast and slow water.

From his vantage point he could see the youngster didn’t mend downstream enough on his cast to get the fly down near the bottom where the fish were likely to be holding. But he kept at it. With each cast he seemed to improve or change things. Dale’s experience told him the boy should take a step downstream after each. ‘Just flogging the same water,’ he thought. Still, he stayed back and watched.

The boy finally did take a step and then repeated the pattern of 15 or so casts from that spot before stepping again. After watching him move all of twenty feet he wanted to say something, but didn’t get a chance. After his third cast from his latest position, the boy’s rod bent over hard as a fresh-from-the-salt steelhead crushed his fly.

The boy yelped when the reel handle cracked his knuckles as the steelhead tore off line speeding away. The drag on the reel was set too light and the steelhead quickly had the boy into the backing. The boy started to palm the reel rim and tried to slow the fish down. It was a spirited fight and Dale thought for sure the boy would lose the fish.  It didn’t look like he had got a good hookset. The boy would gain line only to have the steelhead take it right back as it bolted cross current looking for a deep hole to hunker down in.

Finally, the boy did manage to adjust the drag and allow the reel and rod to work together to slow the fish. Still, it was a good half hour before the boy had tired the fish and was able to get it into slack water. As he was reaching down to tail the bright buck, the steelhead surged again and sped downstream for fast water. Caught off guard, he lost his grip on the rod. It fell to the bank and skittered across the rocks as if in pursuit. The boy chased after it. Grasping the rod, he lifted it but found the line was slack. Dejected he started to reel in his line. As he gathered the line, he was rewarded with another knuckle thump and more line ripping. The steelhead was still on and again thrashed for freedom.

However, by this time the fish was pretty well spent. Its fight was gone. After a few minutes of good pressure the boy finally tailed the fish. He removed his chewed fly from the fish’s jaw. Holding him by the tail, he pointed the steelhead upstream and carefully worked the fish back and forth in the water to pump water over its gills. The fish began to revive. He loosened his grip. Sensing an escape, the steelhead kicked its tail, splashing the boy and fled for deeper water.

The boy gathered his line in. Dale walked up to congratulate him.

“Heck of nice fish,” he said. “I thought he had you a few times there.”

“Yeah, that was crazy,” the boy replied trying to shake the pain out of his bruised knuckles. “First time I ever hooked one. I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“Well, it was fun to watch. You got him and did a good job resting him before letting him go. I wish I had my camera with me. I’d have offered to take a picture for you.”

“That’s okay.  I’ve got plenty of pictures right here,” he said tapping his temple with a finger.

- by John F. Comes