Upstream on the Boardman: A Place for Trout

Fly Fishing the Boardman

by John Pahl

Whenever I cross one of the footbridges over the Boardman where it runs between West Bay and the backside of all the Front Street shops in Traverse City, I think about how different the river is upstream.  In the summer, when our town is visited by so many, I may be one of a score of people on the bridge gazing down at the green waters, ducks aswim, fronds of river weeds trailing like huge fish from the few logs or lumps of concrete here and there.  But whether in the din of Cherry Festival or during a quiet moment behind Horizon Bookstore mid-winter, looking at the river in town gets me thinking of upstream waters.

I'm not thinking of wilderness stretches of the Boardman, because there are none left.  Yes, portions of the North and South Branches above the forks have the feeling of wilderness, and once, on a cold and fruitless trout opener up on the North Branch, I came across a bear track on a sandy bank, scarcely ten miles from the Miracle Mile as a jet flies.  But one bear paw does not a wilderness make.  And, yes, even here and there below the forks, where the river bends far from Brown Bridge Road, where there are a few hundred yards of river without a cottage, I've felt alone with the woods, the rush of water, and the sweet smell of cedars mixed with something else unnamable that is unique to the Boardman.  It is this feeling of being alone with the river that can make up for the fact that its entire watershed, our entire region has long lost the wilderness it once had. 

This solitary feeling reminds me that there is a difference between "wilderness," a concept that must include genuine vastness of landscape within its ostensive meaning, and "wildness."  Wildness can still be found in the untamed, unmanaged, intricate workings of current with remnant native species of vegetation, fish and insects, all flowing together in infinite complexity, unpredictable and ultimately unknowable.

Boardman River Reflections

And that's what is so good about being in the midst of it, alone.  Intuition takes the place of knowledge.  Imagination supplies what the eye can't see but you just sense is there.  Your line passes through a dark pool.  Nothing happens.  But you just feel a big brown lurks deep beneath the surface.

You can see it.  A smooth slab of muscle, it moves slowly in the current just below the pair of dead cedars across the bend upstream.  This fish, like all its kind, is the very embodiment of the river, its color the deep green and brown and iridescent flecks of the gravelly bed, its tail waving in the current like the strand of moss that trails from the log above its patient head.  The gill plates pulse as the river pulses in its descent, which through this bend is not a rapids or shallow run but the sure, solid mass of water rounding rocks and moving limber deadfalls in cadenced bobs that lift and break the river's silence.

The trout moves inside this larger movement, to hold its place, its latent speed saved up for evening spending, when it will rise in a flash for dappling flies, or later still, in the calm stretches, where it will touch the underside of the river's surface and slurp in spent-winged lovers in this night's blackness.

The trout is the river inside, too, its pink flesh the final metamorphosis of the river's insect breeds, its supple spine a paradox of stones, the lime, the invisible calcium, the rocky elements of this liquid realm melded into the lace of ribs, the web of fin and needle teeth.  The river is the trout, the trout the river.

But this big brown will no sooner show itself than the waft of river air will name its ingredients.  Nor can I say when, if ever, I'll catch such a fish, admire it, then let it swim again, anymore than I can say what small insects I've never seen before now flit above me in a Brownian swarm, chaotic but true to their nature.  These wild things still live as they should, for now, upstream on the Boardman.  And this recognition of wildness without wilderness to surround it still remains where I can retrieve it, on a congested bridge in town or a bend in the river where the road is too far off to hear.

Let's all hope that we won't lose our places of wildness as we long ago lost this region's wilderness.

John Pahl is an English and creative writing instructor at NMC and is the literary advisor to the NMC Magazine.

Editor's Note: For more information about the Boardman River and its watershed, visit The Boardman River Project. You may also want to visit the Adams Chapter of Trout Unlimited for information on protecting trout fisheries such as the Boardman River.