The Final Chapter - Costa Rica

Ok, I gotta warn you, I was reading a lot of Hemingway before I wrote this so it´s not my usual blog style. Like him, I tend to get a little lost in the proes and it goes on for a while. So I won´t be offended if you don´t read the whole thing.

The Young Man and the River

A frigid mountain breeze blew across the valley. In the east, the sun made it´s slow accent above the Talamanca Mountains. As the first rays of light petered down the valley they created a thick sizzling haze as the met the crisp alpine air.

The young man zipped up his nylon jacket and checked to make sure he had everything. Satisfied, he walked up the loose gravel driveway from the Pensón and met up with the old man.

¨Sure is a beautiful day,¨ the young boy said.

¨Yeah, its always like this in the morning,¨ the old man replied. ¨Clouds will come over the pass after lunch, but with any luck, their won´t be any rain.¨

They set out down the road. They walked slowly, the old man´s legs stiff and heavy in the morning chill. The young man was eager to get to the river, but out of respect for the old man, he made sure to keep a slow pace. They descended down the Savegre valley following the winding river along a dirt road. There were no cars. Just a quite lane that linked the spartan collection of houses and Pensóns before it came to an end at the park entrance a few kilometers further down.

The old man was especially slow this morning. He was coughing a lot too. He was always coughing on account of all the cigarettes he smoked. He would go through a pack a day, more if he could get them, which was hard to do here. It would be a least an hour before they got down to the park where the good pools where. But, it was a bright, clear Costa Rican morning, filled with a radiant sun and a fresh forest breeze. It made for a nice walk. The Bellbirds could be heard in the apple orchards.

The young man was happy. He´d been here three days and had already caught over 30 fish. He had spent the last two weeks looking for them, moving from town to town trying to find trophy trout, but there had been nothing to show for it. Every town had been fished out, or the water had been too low to support them.

Then he met the old man in a hostel in Orosi and he had told him about the Rio Savegre, far back in the mountains, on the other side of the 3491 meter high Cerro de la Muerte (mountain of death) and the scores of trout holding in its limitless pools. The young man followed him up here, to the small fruit growing town of San Gerardo de Dota. It wasn´t even really a town, it lacked everything that a town would have, a store, a restaurant, or a bar. Yet, that was its charm and the young boy liked it very much. He would have to leave in the morning to catch a flight in San Jose, but he wasn´t thinking about that now, only of fishing.

They split up when they reached the bottom. The old man preferred to fish the more easily accessible water near the road while the young man walked further down along the broken trail hugging the river bank to less pressured waters where the fish weren´t as skittish.

¨I´ll probably stay near the road today,¨ the old man said before he left. ¨Leg´s bothering me again.¨

¨Ok, I´m heading down toward the waterfall,¨the young man replied. ¨But I´ll be back before the evening rise.¨

He could have stayed back with the old man and still caught a lot of fish. It wouldn´t have mattered this early in the morning, when the fish, docile during the coldness of night, are warmed with the sun and become active again. But in truth, he wanted to fish alone today. He liked being alone here, it was peaceful and he could think. He liked to stare at the olive green mountain tops that towered over the narrow alpine valley, watching the cloud forest sway with the prevailing wind. It was quite too, with no sounds but the gentle rushing of water over granite and the Questals singing in the Pine trees. He could think without interruption.

Now he was thinking of how to fish this stretch of the river. He had tried many different things and each seemed to be equally fruitful. He had used a spinning lure in the deep fast moving pools and that had produced fish. He had used dry flies that he had snipped down so they would sink and floated them in the ripples and tail outs with a bobber and that had enticed a few strikes. When all else failed or he thought there might be a big fish under a bank or in a deep slow moving pocket he would use bait. Either worms he dug up along the trail or yellow cheese rubbed with flower to make it hold the hook, and that would always get him a fish.

He approached his pool. He had spotted it the day before on his way back up from the waterfall, but it was dark then and the old man was waiting for him at the road. He had thought about it all night, trying to visualize the pool in his mind, how the water moved through it and where the fish would be holding. It was hard to remember it clearly because he spotted it from a distance, already behind him down the river and had of only paused for a moment, squinting in the fading evening light to try and see it better.

Now, standing beside it, it was exactly like he remembered. A small cascade cut through a dyke of boulders at its mouth and dropped to a foamy white torrent below. On the southern side, backed by moss covered Evergreens and Ceder trees, a large boulder protruded out into the water and dulled the torrent down creating and a small eddie, water that seamed to be circling in on itself. That fed a deep slow moving pool that sped up again as it tailed out into ripples at its back end. He knew the fish would be holding at the front of the pool just inside the eddie snaping at any small morsels that fed out of the white wash. But he also knew that those were the younger, inexperienced fish with more stamina and moxie and that the bigger, wiser fish. They would be be holding near the tail out, content to sway in the gentle currant and pick and choose what they ate.

He would use his lure and fish from the big rock. He set his backpack down beside a ceder and pulled out his collapsible spinning rod. He had picked it up a few weeks back in a hardware store in Panama and it had quickly become one of his most prized possessions. He quickly assembled its parts and crept along the bank careful not to let his shadow or footsteps alert the fish to his presence. He came to the far side of the rock and set his rod on top and then slowly pulled himself up. From the top he could peer down into the cold, clear water and see the dark shapes swaying like seaweed in the currant. Trout. They all seemed pretty small but he remembered the age old angler´s motto, ´where there´s small fish, there´s big fish.´

He found a spot at the end of the tail out to cast his line without scaring the fish. Having had much time on small rivers with this rod, he knew how to control it and he hit his mark on the first cast. He began his slow retrieve in the back currant and then sped up when he entered the murky purple deepness of the hole. It passed through without a strike but he continued his retrieve, slowing down as he entered the eddie swinging his rod around to the other side and pulling the lure sideways through the rough water. Nothing. He was too shallow, the lure wasn´t able to sink down to the bottom and tap against the rocky bottom. That´s what induced the trout to strike.

He quickly reeled in and added a split shot about a half meter above the lure, it was a bit heavy for this river, but if he sped up his retrieve a bit it might flow nicely through the water. He recast, this time not as accurately as the first and the rig splashed in at the upper end of the ripples and he knew he wasn´t going to get any strikes there. He reeled quickly to the deep part of the pool and then then let the lure sink a bit, jigging it to see if he could raise the predatory instincts of the fish. Again, nothing, but he continued through the pool penetrating the far side of the currant. He got a bite, a fish hitting it hard as it snapped at it. He gave a swift tug on the line trying to set the hook, but there was no weight on the other end and he knew it was gone. It was probably too small to mouth the hook anyway.

He reeled in again. Rather then risk another miscast and scaring off the big fish for good, he decided to change his bait and put on a wet fly. He set up a bubble rig, with the fly about two feet below the bobber and some small split shot to get it down. He would drop it in the current at the top of the pool and let it float down to the tail out, making it look natural long before it reached the big fish. He lowered it into the end of the foam, immediately the bobber dropped below the surface and he gave another quick jerk, this time there was a jerk back and a small juvenile jumped clear of the water trying to shake the hook. The young man kept the line taunt and played the fish out of the fast current and into the shallows.

He came down off the rock and landed the fish in a rocky alcove along the bank. He wet his hands and picked it up out of the water to inspect it. It was a rainbow, a small one at that, only 7 inches. It glistened in the sunlight. Its torso was metallic sliver, its head and back a dark moonstone grey. These colors indicated it was a farm trout. There were several trout raising farms in the area and often times, a few would escape into the river. It was only lightly hooked in the side of its mouth and he pulled it out gently and laid the fish back in the water. After regaining its senses, it lurched forward and darted back into the eddie.

The young man returned to the rock and recast, this time a little beyond the eddie. He had had enough small farm fish , he wanted a Tico Trout. His eyes never strayed as the bobber twirled along in the currant, waiting for any slight twitch or pause that might indicated a fish. He leaned his weight forward on his toes as it entered the tail currant, ready to set the hook if a fish took it. But it just rolled out into the backwash.

He pulled the line in and threw it back, this time a little further toward the opposite bank. He waited for the fly to reach the tail out again and then he held his line causing the fly to cross back across the river in front of the ripples as it rose toward the surface, imitating a nymph rising.

It came quick and hard, he felt the line tighten between his thumb and forefinger and he saw a splash at the bottom of the tail out almost in the backwash. A large fish breached the surface. He didn´t even have to set the hook, the fish had done that for him.

Now it took off in a run up the river. He reeled quickly making sure not to give the fish any slack and a chance to throw the fly. Then the fished jumped again, this time almost right in front of the rock. He saw a rosie pink flash as it re-entered the water and he knew it was a Tico, only the natives had that color. The fish ran all the way to the cascade, cutting through the fast water with ease. Then it reversed directions and made a run down stream. The young man let out some line so it wouldn´t break off, but made sure to keep it tight as well. The fish jumped again and then tried to seek shelter under some underlying brush on the far bank, but the young man turned his rod and, with it, the fish´s direction and brought him back into the deep water.

He jumped off the rock and played the fish back and forth in the pool until he could feel it beginning to tire, not contorting its body every time the young man turned him. Eventually, he guided him into the shallows and came down to meet his prize. He was a fine fish indeed, about 15 inches, not the biggest fish he´d ever caught, but a good size for a Tico. It was similar to the rainbow but with a blood red colored line that ran down its sides that radiated into a soft pink, salmon colored midsection. The rest of the body was a spekeled silver and gray with black and gold dots bridging it´s top section.

He quickly turned the fish upside down, this immediately pacified it, putting it into a trance. This allowed the young man to try and remove the hook without having to fight the fish at the same time. The hook was deep, deeper then it should have been for a fly. He pulled out his needle nose pliers and grabbed a hold of the end of the hook. The fish twitched and squirmed, the feeling of metal in its mouth overpowering its transcendental state. The young man worked quickly, he would have to get it out soon if he wanted to keep the fish alive.

Finally, he was able to get a good hold on the hook and push it out of its crevasse. He quickly turned the fish over and began to push it back and forth in the currant, coaxing it to swim away. It laid motionless and began to tilt back onto its back, belly up. This was not good.

The young man pulled the fish from the water and quickly ran up the bank toward the cascade and the fast moving water. He lowered it in in the currant and allowed the water to pump oxygen rich water through its gills. It began to stir and sway its head back and forth, the young man pulled the fish back from the currant and back into slow moving water, still rocking it back and forth. The fish flexed its gills and laboriously started to pull away. It made a slow decent into the dark recesses of the pool, the young man watched as the last traces of its trail where washed away in the currant.

He sat with his back against the big rock, under the shade of a Almond tree and stared up at the crested peaks of the Talamanc. Heavy clouds were coming in from the north. The old man had been right. But the warm sun was still on his shoulders and he was happy. He listened to the water as it rushed against the granite.