Last Cast
“Last cast!” my date called as the tide turned, threatening to leave the skiff stranded on the rocky beach and us with it. Trout fishing on a beautiful, isolated river accessible only at high tide was his idea of a perfect first date—and it was.
After ten more last casts, we wrestled the heavy skiff across the barnacle-encrusted rocks to the ebbing tidewater and shoved off. It may not have been the typical first date dinner at a fancy restaurant, but fishing, just the two of us, turned into a forty-year romance.
We fished rivers and lakes throughout Alaska, reluctantly sharing the riverbank with hungry bears during salmon season, or finding our string of pike left to cool in the water—stolen, sight unseen, by stealthy martins.
In Mexico, we chased the same school of fleeing tuna as a pod of hungry porpoises, the sea around us churning with the flash and splash of predator and prey.
While trolling for marlin in Panama, wily dolphins stole the bait right off our hooks.
On a clear, sunny day in Belize, our skiff capsized a mile from shore in rough water on our way to fish the reef.
Off Admiralty Island in Alaska, a pod of orcas surrounded our small skiff, their breeching scaring me so badly I bit teeth marks in my rubber rain gear.
Never, in all those years, was the last cast really the last cast, but rather, the prelude to a series of last casts.
In all that time, in all those places, we always, always, ate what we caught. In our early years, we ate tasteless grayling because we couldn’t afford meat. Later, we filled our freezer with salmon, halibut, cod, trout, char, you name it. In New Zealand, we feasted on brown trout roasted over an open fire. In Tahiti, we picnicked on tropical fish we’d speared, washed down with milk from fresh coconuts. In Mexico, we cleaned bonitos and sailfish in the shower of our budget pensione because they were too large for the tiny sink. In nicer hotels, the restaurant chef would happily turn our catch into a scrumptious meal seasoned with cilantro and slices of mango: some for us, some for the other guests.
All this to say, my husband was not a catch-and-release fisherman.
Four decades after that first “last cast,” I checked my husband out of the memory care home and took him on an expensive charter trip to catch steelhead in Idaho; a bid to relive old times, I suppose. On the long drive there, he jabbered incoherently about past fishing exploits and how great a meal of fresh steelhead would taste. At least, I like to think that’s what he said. We spent the night in a nearby hotel, where he obsessively checked and rechecked his tackle box filled with rusty hooks, dented bobbers, and lures collected from around the world: the life-like barbed mouse for fishing in the marsh, lethal eight-inch lures from Mexico, pink and green plastic squid, tiny mosquito flies and ugly horsefly-looking things. Glancing over at his hunched form, I thought of an old pirate rummaging through his treasure chest of jewels, unwilling to part with a single diamond or plastic bauble.
The next morning, we found the charter operator waiting on the banks of the Snake River. Aspen leaves on the riverbank were just beginning to turn gold and the water sparkled as sun burned off the fog. Sunny and cool, it was a perfect day for fishing.
The charter operator coached us on the proper technique for catching steelhead, casting downriver into the riffles and then reeling just fast enough against the current so the heavy lure bumped against the rocky bottom but didn’t snag, or at least not often. My husband either didn’t heed or couldn’t comprehend the advice. He spent the morning casting and reeling, casting and reeling, by rote and muscle memory. He didn’t speak, but seemed happy.
As the day wore on, discouragement set in.
Please, I prayed to the river gods, please let him hook into a fish. It’s been so long; it would mean so much to him. Please, just one steelhead to take back.
I saw when the fish struck his line. The tug on the end of the pole, the zing as the strong fish took line and ran. Twice my husband brought the big fish close to the boat, only to have it spook at the metal hull and bolt, heavy monofilament spooling off the reel at warp speed.
Finally, the guide was able to reach over the side of the boat with his long-handled net and scoop the exhausted fish aboard.
“Quick, get a picture,” the guide said. “Before I release it.”
“What?” I asked.
“Take a picture,” he said impatiently.
“But why throw it back?” I asked, confused. “It’s over twenty inches.”
“Wild fish have their fins intact,” he said brusquely. “We can only keep hatchery fish with clipped fins.”
My husband stood in the stern, struggling to hold the heavy, slippery fish while I took a quick photo. Then the guide took the fish, leaned over the side of the skiff, and let it go.
My husband’s eyes, which earlier were the color of a turquoise river on a sunny day, turned dull, like the bright tropical fish whose iridescent scales turn muddy two minutes after being pulled from the water.
There was no announcement, no call for the last cast. My husband just set his pole down and turned his back to the river. After all those years of last casts which weren’t, I wasn’t prepared when this one was.
