I guess it was the early nineties. That guy I kept running into on Todds Fork(Senger) said he was going to West Virginia for a few days flyfishing and did I want to tag along. We started in the wee hours of the morning to be there early or at least I thought so. But come day break he pulled into the gravel parking lot of a little mom and pop restaurant mumbling something about breakfast. He had the wooden screen door about half opened then turned and said, "Don't fall in love, she's spoken for". Inside was an old man drinking coffee and watching the morning news on a tiny TV up on a shelf and the waitress who was sitting in front of a window fan wraping silverware in napkins. He walked over to a booth and slid in and I followed. The waitress was dressed very primly in a button up blouse and a 1950's looking skirt and sneakers and bobbie socks. She tucked the small cross she was wearing under her apron and said "Hello Spence, what can I get you guys?" She looked exactly like Iris Dement, not a supermodel but a very handsome woman. As we ate breakfast she began puttering around the room singing amazing grace softly to herself in the most beautiful voice I've ever heard. About halfway thru Going Down to the River to Pray, Spence said "aren't you going to eat?" I'd just been sitting there listening. He paid for his breakfast and walked back to the table to leave a tip. Iris asked me, "You guys fishing the Back Fork?"
I said I thought so and she went on. "When we were kids I used to sit on the rocks and watch Spence fish, he was beautiful". I walked back to the table to leave my change and noticed Spence had left a twenty on the table as a tip after his three ninety nine breakfast.
Later that day I got to see just what she meant about the beautiful part. We had been leapfrogging upstream, one fishing a hole or two while the other fished the next one. Well I'd fished about three holes in a row and hadn't seen him. Worried I started back downstream. I found him right where I'd seen him last. Waist deep in a swift deep run with the rod tucked under his arm changing flies.
I sat down on a big rock high above the river where he couldn't see me to watch. What happened next was simply the single most amazing fishing feat I've ever seen. He tucked the little cross he wore inside his shirt, false cast twice hard head high, overpowering the cast for the distance and hooking the leader over almost at a right angle to the fly line. As the line settled in the air he threw a bit of mend in the line right over some braided current and then reached laying the line down upstream over another piece of swift current. The fly hooked around two big rocks and just sat there drag free. And a 21 inch rainbow came up and ate it just like he had been lying there his whole life just waiting for someone to make a cast just like that.
The next morning I was up and out on the water early fishing a parachute adams in pocket water. I could hear thunder rumbling high in the mountains all morning but it never rained where I was. I must have caught a dozen trout when I noticed the water was looking a bit dirty. I also noticed I was hungry and started wading back to camp. In the twenty minutes it took to get back to camp, water that was ankle deep a half hour ago was knee deep and rising fast. Spence had the tent broke down and was stuffing it in its nylon bag when I got there. Skipping breakfast I just started packing things up. I guess we spent another 15 minutes getting it all loaded up. I'm not sure about now, but in those days you could camp anywhere you wanted along the Back Fork of the Elk. We were camped in a little wide spot in the road about twenty five feet from the river and about four feet higher. As we threw the last of our stuff in his truck and started down the gravel road that ran along the river there was about two inches of muddy water already covering half the road. A few hours later we would drive out and check the last little bridge we crossed going into Webster Springs and would find a raging torrent lacking only an inch or two of reaching the bottom of the bridge. I remember thinking If we had slept in he might have lost his truck. Or worse.
Back in the little restaurant we took stock while in the background Iris sang The Old Crossroads...
"One leads down to destruction, the other to the pearly gates"
We settled on the Cranberry River a couple drainages south. A few hours we pulled into sight of the river holding our breath. The river was perfect. It was a catch and release section and I learned the hard way the next couple days just how sharp trout that have been fished over a bit can get. One day at lunch I was telling Spence about this fish I couldn't catch. It was tucked in an eddy with two braided currents between us and a high cliff bank on the other side. After lunch we walked down to have a look. We both waded in and were standing there knee deep in the crystal clear water watching the fish tip up every now and then and take something off the surface. Then this brown trout comes gliding by about for or five feet from the two of us and swims off upstream. In the glass clear water you could see every detail and spot. I've seen and caught larger fish like shovelheads or buffalo but it was and is still the "biggest" fish I ever saw. It was an impossibly big brown as long as my leg. Nine pounds? Ten pounds? Twelve? I looked over at Spence who had flyfished here his whole life and his eyes were as big as saucers. Nobody said a word. In the distance we heard a rumble of thunder. Looking behind us we could see dark clouds coming over the mountains. This time the river only came up only an inch or two and stained just a bit. I fished a streamer dreaming of a monster brown. The rising water turned on the trout and I must have caught ten nice rainbows on a Mickey Finn. I remember thinking on the ride home Id seen the best fisherman I'd ever saw, heard the best most angelic voice I'd ever heard and saw the biggest scariest fish I'd ever seen. All on my first trip to West Virginia. I was pretty sure it wouldn't be the last.
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