The haunting of late fall didn’t come from ghoulish goblins, horror houses or a second-rate slasher flick. This haunting wasn’t even a part of Halloween, but was instead a few weeks after, in mid-November.
The day’s awakening brought the ghastly remains of Lake Michigan Chinook salmon to view near a boat launch upstream of Newaygo, Michigan. The remains of some, picked over by gulls. Others lodged against the shore, waiting for prop wash to brush away their decaying flesh. They die throughout the river, without rhyme or reason, as there is no specific salmon graveyard. Salmon die in their own time and place. Their cemetery is the Muskegon River. Her gravel bars, deep pools, rifflely runs, her sandy islands and boat launches are all mass graves. Discreet ones give up in solitude, flamboyant ones die within view of swinging children in public parks.
We were drifting downstream not for the scene of this mortality but for the vitality of fall-run steelhead. Migratory rainbow trout that begin in the Muskegon, mature in Lake Michigan and return to spawn, dine along the way on the salmon eggs. Steelhead are carnivores, relishing king salmon caviar over larva, nymphs and baitfish upon their return. They follow the salmon upstream to not only nourish their bodies for the winter ahead, but to rid the river of a competitive species. Try as they might, the Chinooks continue to survive. Each fall, a new class of Chinooks return to spawn and die and litter the river with their morose carcasses.
I’m nurturing a coffee as we float past the swimming dead and expired kings. Nurturing more than drinking, the metal cup is warming my hands, its steam filling my head not only with aroma, but moist heat. The sun will not peak for a while and although its smile would negate the morning’s damp chill, I want the day to remain dark, dismal. Steelhead fishing, like duck hunting, seems best when the light is low and the day is dank.
We anchor and the boat slides around to a stop. The rigging process begins, feeding cold fly line through enlarged guides with numb fingers. Plucking a fly from a box full of multi-colored patterns is the next step. “A leech or sculpin?” “Sized medium or mammoth?” “Natural hues or Christmas bright?”—these are the questions I ponder. Twisting my tippet, snugging the loop knot tight to allow the fly to swim, I begin the redundant routine of swinging flies, when the haunting begins.
I am not to be haunted by steelhead on this day, not the memory of an epic battle of a fish that breaks off, or worse, comes unpinned near the boat, not of the moment when your fly stops suddenly and your elbow feels as if it has been pulled out of joint, only to feel emptiness after an aggressive swipe. I have experienced those; this was worse.
My streamer splashed into the river. The sinking line pulled the leech under as I spotted the whitetail moving down the bank. It was a small deer, most likely this year’s fawn.
I quietly told my boat mates that we had a visitor and pointed toward the deer.
“Does it have horns?”one asked.
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
“Little deer,” the other said.
“Yes,” I whispered as I didn’t want to spook either the deer or the fish. As it angled down the bank, I cast again. My fly landed, I mended and began leading my fly with the rod tip, continuing to watch the deer. Squinting to see horns, focusing on the deer, I let my fly dangle a dozen seconds or more before lifting to form the next cast.
It was then I noticed its gait was not right. The deer moved into the water, walked to an eroded portion of the bank and turned around, facing the way it had come. My drift had ended, but I was focused only on the deer, not my line. I searched hard for an arrow wound or visual sign of harm. The light allowed me to see no horns. The doe just stood there, hock deep, her back hunched, but square on all fours. She stood, I cast and watched. My eyes wouldn’t leave her, pondering the cause of her distress.
The sound of the anchor being pulled brought me back to fishing. Swinging through new water and new fish was to no avail. I continued watching her. I mentioned to my partners that she “wasn’t right.”
“No deer is going to stand like that in the water,” I said.
“And you’re going to miss any fish that eats while not paying attention to your swing,” barked our guide.
I watched her, not my line, and she fell. Collapsed is a better adjective. One second she was up and the next, lying in the river. Along the bank, head high not straining, ears perked and rigid.
“She’s dying,” I said.
“Probably a bad arrow,” was the next thing I heard.
“Or a car,” our guide stated.
My companions’ voices were distant, although we were all in the same boat. They chatted about fish and lines, rods and reels and the other small talk between angler and guide. I made a half-hearted cast, wanting not a strike but for my truck gun, a little Savage .22/20 gauge that was upstream in the back of my Ford. One shot and she would be dead. I, too, would be out of this misery.
Why was I so consumed with watching this deer? I’ve viewed many deer expire, as well as grouse and woodcock, pheasant and ducks. For that matter, dogs and horses as well. Our guide lifted the anchor and we drifted 10 feet downstream to begin the process of prospecting unswung water.
Although we had slid downstream, I was focused upstream. I was casting but only going through the motions, my attention cemented on the doe. She was now lying in the river. Her body submerged, except for her neck and head, facing east, watching toward whatever had caused her malady. Her neck tall, ears stiff, seemingly alert as if she would bound away at any cause of alarm. The thought of her body in the autumn water made me shiver. The sun was now reaching toward the sky, but it wasn’t warm. The sunshine only allowed me to view her more clearly. I was chilled and would remain so throughout the day.
With my next cast, I wanted to fish anyway except swinging flies. Do not misunderstand, I enjoy swinging, and the impulsive take of a fresh-run chrome steelhead, but I longed for a float to watch, a dry fly to view, anything to focus my eyes and mind away from her calm distress. A float would do it, but not a swung fly tethered to a heavy sink tip that disappears into the run, as the current pulls it across the river. I tried watching drifting oak leaves tumbling in the current to no avail. I tried watching the maples and sycamores shedding foliage as they stood watch along the riverbank. It didn’t work—as soon as I cast, I looked back at the doe.
I wished crocodiles were an invasive species in the river, not zebra mussels. I wanted a croc to slip up beside her, explode out of the water and grab her throat ending this drama as I had seen on “National Geographic.” Yes, there would be blood and a violent battle as the croc rolled this deer into the river’s depths, but it would be over in a few harsh seconds—not the slow, painful process that I couldn’t stop watching. A childish wish, understood, but my wish none the less.
Her head was now drooping, her neck soft. I wanted to reel in my line, sit down and watch the horror until the end, but I’m there to fish, so I cast.
Why is this doe my only focus?
Why can’t I let her go?
Is it that I am the closest to her?
Is it that I saw her first?
Is it that I’m helpless, and this bothers me more than the deer?
I cast and watch her, letting my fly bob at the end of the swing, awaiting a strike. Believing it will come sometime soon, just like the doe’s death, just not knowing when. I am in the dark on both counts. I make a long cast into new water and force myself not to look back upstream toward her. Only this swing is long, pushing 80 feet counting the leader, and I sneak a peek over my shoulder halfway through the swing. She is gone.
I frantically look toward where she was and begin scanning upstream and down. She was there, but where is she now? Suddenly, she is in plain view. Her neck jutting out of the river, head shaking as if she were a Labrador, her front legs propped upstream, struggling to hold her weakened haunches. She tries to right herself, only to collapse further into the river’s flow. The doe’s head disappears, but her tail is flagging white, as if she was spooked in a clover field, not drowning in a river. With the current tugging her away from shore, she lurches with her shoulders, trying to drag her hindquarters toward shallow water. She does not succeed. Losing her perch, the doe begins drifting downstream.
I watch as her neck lies flat on the water’s surface. She reminds me of a dead goose floating in the decoys, only she has four hooves thrashing instead of two webbed feet, her tail still flagging alarm. She tries to lift her head, only the movement causes her body to flop, forcing it underwater. She drifts like this for ten yards, maybe more, until she is off the starboard side of the boat. I can’t cast, as she is now floating through our run like an enormous October sedge. Her legs search for solid footing while her nose stretches for air.
The boat is silent. There is not the sound of stripping line or shooting heads being cast. No one says a word. The three of us watch the doe drift downstream, the river pushing her farther and farther away from shore. We watch her flagrantly toss her head, then calmly bob in the current, violently kick her forelegs, knowing she is only expending the last energy her feeble body holds. Again, I wish for my Savage or a crocodile. She is now 50 yards downstream and I attempt a cast. I really don’t want to fish, but need the distraction. My line drags across the run, pulling my leech until it is hanging directly downstream. Looking past my hanging fly I vaguely see the ripples of the doe’s struggles as she drifts beyond the next bend.
Quietly, our guide says, “Let’s give this water another twenty, thirty minutes.”
My partner and I both cast.
The remainder of the float was a typical fall steelhead day. We cast and cast again and again, in the fashion that swinging anglers do, expecting a take on each cast but understanding the likelihood of it happening. We chatted of spring creek fishing and wishful destinations. We discussed gundogs and the world’s problems. Omitted from our banter was her struggle.
Drifting from run to run, we passed more dead and dying salmon, each instantly morphed into the doe. I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to remove from my memory the horror of her thrashing hooves and frothy nose. As my head shook, the images became more violent. Shivering still, I opened my eyes. The river and its banks were colored the muted shades of a late Michigan autumn. The sun was tall and the sky clear, far too bright for productive steelhead fishing, just not enough to blind my conscience.