Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 1, 1990 TAG: 9007010281
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Duncan Adams
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
My knees began to shake the instant the fly disappeared in the swirling suck of a strike. I lifted the rod tip, and the trout ran deep. Moments later it burst from the stream like a flying fish, shining silver and spraying water.
The bamboo rod, beautifully handcrafted by Walter Kent of Vinton, held the strain. I held my breath. I was fishing Montana's Clark Fork River, thousands of miles from the Virginia stream where 25 years before I had caught my first trout.
During a split-second lull in the fight, noting my still quivering knees, I thought suddenly of the late Martin P. Burks of Roanoke. I was still a boy when Burks taught me fly fishing could be two parts epiphany, one part sport.
Burks had a habit of using his wristwatch to time sermons on Sunday mornings at St. John's Episcopal Church. Greeting the minister on his way out of church, Burks' critique of that morning's message had more to do with length than content. He was particularly fond of brevity.
A gifted, witty raconteur and a respected attorney, Burks reserved his deepest reverence for the clear tumbling waters of Barbours Creek in Craig County. An hour or two after church, he could be there, pulling on waders and vest.
I realize now how fitting was Burks' painstaking ritual of slowly assembling his gear for the stream. But as an impatient youth, itching for action, I sometimes chafed as he and my father chatted and carefully tied leaders to lines. Sitting on the small screened porch of the fishing cabin, I felt as trapped as the hornets buzzing nearby, eternally seeking a hole in the screen.
But - though he would surely grimace at the reference - Burks' approach to fly fishing was Zen-like. Whether preparing to fish or fishing, he was purely and totally absorbed in the moment. A combination of concentration, skill, experience and reverence made Burks a master fly fisherman.
Bespectacled, clad in a crumpled old fishing cap, khaki vest and pants, with a slight paunch, Burks' appearance, if seen out of context, say, on the corner of Jefferson and Church, might have elicited a guffaw or two. But in his element, wading the roiling mountain waters of Barbours Creek, Burks was dignity and grace personified.
I watched one evening as he stood in the creek's rushing current on the downstream lip of a deep pool. A pine tree's lowest branches barely cleared the pool's deepest hole. Burks believed those sheltered waters held a large and lively trout.
Water lapped at the tops of his hip waders as Burks negotiated the creek's slippery bottom. He leaned slightly forward, bracing against the current. This stretch of Barbours Creek, like many others, was narrow and lined with brush. It afforded little room for casting. And the overhanging pine seemed ready to snag any fly cast its way.
Undaunted, Burks rolled a looping cast that delicately and perfectly presented his small dry fly. It lit, hackles high, on the upstream edge of the targeted hole. In the blink of an eye, a large trout rose from the depths and took the fly. But Burks' line was taut for a second only. The fish had escaped.
"Damn!" Burks cursed (not knowing he would someday be compared to a Zen master).
But instead of bemoaning his loss, Burks withdrew quietly to a rock near the bank and sat down. For 10 or 15 minutes, maybe longer, he and I talked in the hushed tones of churchgoers. I expressed admiration for his cast, which he described as "lucky."
As dark approached and pesky gnats found our eyes and ears, Burks stood for another go at the trout. He played out his line, his reel clicking as it turned.
After a false cast or two, he rolled the line and fly toward the pine. This cast was almost snagged; the fly brushed the needled edges of the tree. He tried again. This cast rolled out and ended with that indescribable denouement that fly fishermen intuitively know spells "strike."
This time, the old Rainbow was well-hooked. The fish's great length and girth were easily seen as it swam in strong fighting runs from pool to riffles and back again. Burks stripped line or let it play out, seeking the balance between too little slack and too much. The trout fought for a long time, diving and leaping, before it finally surrendered to fill Burks' net.
In the quickening cool of the mountain evening, Burks and I, lost in thought and wonder, returned almost wordlessly to the cabin.
Twenty-five years later, in the cold waters of a Montana river, I stripped line or breathlessly played it out as the Brown trout I'd just hooked on a Royal Coachman continued to fight.
Suddenly in reverie again, I remembered the first trout I'd caught on a fly. I was 10 years old, fishing Barbours Creek. It seemed then that I snagged every bush, every loose stick in the stream. I lost fly after fly. My knotless leader slowly accumulated knots. Thrashing around in the creek, I spooked trout in all directions.
On that memorable evening, I was close to tears when a clumsy cast in a shallow stretch of creek teased a somehow unsuspecting trout to take my fly. I don't know how, but I landed that fish. It was no great trophy, but was by law a keeper. And it was the prettiest Rainbow I'd ever seen.
I ran as fast as I could back to the cabin. (Which was not very fast, considering I ran in oversized waders filled to the toe with my father's wool socks.)
My father and Burks, done fishing for the day, were there, sipping highballs on the cabin's slightly tilted porch and watching the sun set over the cold blue mountains.
Standing before them, my words tumbled out in a slippery rush, like trout from a stocking truck. I described every detail of the catch.
At first, Burks just smiled, knowing that more than one creature had been hooked that evening. But when I sheepishly told them how my knees were shaking as I hooked and played that first trout, I saw Burks' expression change. He cleared his throat.
"It will be that way always," Burks said, quietly, looking past me toward the place where the sky and mountains merged.
The Brown trout lay on its side in a grassy patch on the Clark Fork's bank. I gently removed the fly from its mouth, and then moved the fish back and forth in the cold water, helping it breathe again.
Moments later, I took my hands away. The trout tarried briefly in the shallows, then darted home to deep water where it could linger undisturbed until lured again to the surface.
Smiling, I watched it go, and felt my knees still trembling as I, too, turned toward home.
by CNB