photo credit: heycountryboy via creative commons license

MY BROTHER SIDLED UP TO THE OLD MAN PEERING THROUGH BINOCULARS, CLEARED HIS THROAT, and asked, “Excuse me, does the hatch come off here?”

“Oh, yes! Yes, indeed it does. You can set your watch by it – 8:55, no sooner, and it last twenty minutes; right out there…” He swept the red dirt shoreline directly in front of us with a broad stroke of his arm. “They show up like magic!” His eyes jumped with excitement as he began gesturing; his clenched fists alternately opening and closing, releasing imaginary bugs from upturned palms, covering us with his conjured-up insects. He paused to offer us a handshake and introduced himself as Bill, past-president of a local fly fishers club. We’d stumbled upon their Hexagenia Conclave, attended with annual devotion by himself and his non-angling spouse for over forty years.

He returned to spying on a small semi-circle of pontoon boats and float tubes that sat about a hundred yards offshore in water stippled by the evening breeze. “Ray’s caught another one. Looks to be about five or six pounds.” He was talking to his wife, who was reading a book by the vanity light in their truck. She was not interested. We, on the other hand, went on point.

“You fish the nymph until they come to the surface and then change over to the dry. Our club is out there now working around the spring. All you have to do is work the area in front of the beach, not too far out. Where you boys from?”

I was nearly speechless with excitement, barely able to keep from bolting straight to the truck without so much as an “adios”, but managed a polite response while we backed away. “Thanks Bill. We’re going to get our waders on and get busy.”

He touched two fingers to his forehead and dismissed us with a little salute and a knowing grin, which I understood to be his blessing.

Now, without the restraint of civility, the race was on! We stripped madly; shoes and jeans tossed into the truck’s bed as we pulled on our waders, rigged the rods, and tip-toed over bits of shale and rust-colored clay with float tubes clasped around our waists.

Backing into the water, peacefulness countered my adrenaline overdose as I kicked slowly away from shore, getting comfortable in my favorite chair. I was facing west, where the sun had been. Its light was now reduced to liquid gold, squeezed onto the lake’s surface by twilight’s advance. A mother Grebe sliced a dark cut through it in front of me, three peeping miniatures in tow. Insects swarmed in spiraling columns; caddis of different makes and models, mosquitoes, and little Pale Evening duns, going about their business. I watched a pair of tiny black caddis use my line tray for their nuptial consummation.

The luminescent face of my watch said 8:50. I turned toward the whooping behind me as my brother landed a nice smallmouth, which he held up for my approval. As I spun back around, the silhouette of a large mayfly skittered about in a complete circle ten feet away, then broke free from the surface. I looked at the watch: 8:55. I whispered out-loud, “It’s starting.” I meant to tell my brother but was stopped by a profile at water’s edge throwing perfect loops. It was Bill. A few others were spaced evenly on either side of him, casting their prayers in graceful syncopation.

The surface was bubbling with life, its film a portal from one existence to another as the nymphs reached their goal and burst forth, random sprinklings of bright yellow wonder. They would rest a moment, wet wings unfurling to stand erect and quiver. Their fluttering propelled them in brief, circuitous paths; circles and “figure-eights”, then they would leap, up and away, all of them flying east into darkness. Bats and swallows skimmed inches above the water feasting, their wingtips occasionally nicking the surface, now a burnished purple.

“Is this amazing!?” My brother’s face was lit with the violet reflection, his voice filled with admiration at witnessing birth after birth. I wanted to touch them and began reaching out, bringing them close, turning on my headlamp to study their color and shape, burning the moment deep into memory. I placed one on the arm of the tube and watched it flex, its back arched, its new wings stretched, twin-tails a graceful accent to perfect design; and away it flew to an urgent appointment.

Gradually, the births slowed, and then stopped. Twenty minutes. The little armada made for land under headlamps and flashlights. Laughter was muted; discussions were serious among the compact groups gathered in the parking lot. I touched bottom, regained my footing and eased on to shore. “Amazing!” was uttered several times between us as if it was the only word we knew. We dropped our tubes and high-five’d.

It was remarkably quiet while we drove. It was as if we couldn’t talk, our faces paralyzed by grins. Neither of us cast more than half-dozen times, nor did we mind that we hadn’t caught a trout. We’d spent twenty minutes in a theater of such drama and delicate beauty that we were completely sated.

When we rolled into camp, the wives asked how it was. Rick had managed to snare a cripple and put it in his fly box. As we attempted to explain the event we’d just experienced, he revealed the mayfly, now perched on his fingertip. The firelight made it appear pale, its partially unfurled wings quivered weakly, an anemic show-and-tell.

“That’s it?” they asked.

The realization struck us simultaneously. We looked at one another, smiled, and said, “That’s it.”

There must be something good in northern California’s drinking water as Mike is one of the few writers who can write about high-fiving- and make it work.