Trout Water

January 15, 2021
A narrative of time spent on a short but challenging river in quest of the ever elusive trout. Trout fishing, writes Gates Au Sable Lodge manager Greenberg, is a decidedly existential enterprise. "When a dog goes missing, you know exactly what you're looking for," he writes. "But when in trout water, I'm not looking for trout so much as the state of being that the pursuit of trout gives me." It's a moment worthy of Jim Harrison, whose home turf lies not far from the Au Sable River, which flows some 140 miles across Michigan. It's there that Greenberg contemplates matters of life and death, the inevitable but unexpected losses of friends and family. But more, he spends time in the precise and near-scientific pursuit of his prey, trying to coax a rising trout to take his fly. The near science comes in understanding fish behavior, for one, and the flow and turbulence and temperature of water, but also in trying to figure out what the fish will deign to accept. Greenberg recounts negotiating with a hard-of-hearing master of fly-tying to find the magic ingredient. "We'd stand in the fly shop and yell at each other," he writes. "Finally, with enough yelling and diagrams, an agreement was reached on what the fly should look like, and how many he should tie." Things were always better on the water yesterday, the old-timers would lament, but that doesn't dissuade Greenberg from striving to "sneak in on those big, inconsistent fish," realizing, upon catching one, that the act "redeemed something I didn't know needed redeeming." Nicely contemplative and featuring plenty of tips for fellow anglers, the author's account takes in other waters besides the Au Sable--e.g., when he writes, in near-mystical appreciation, of the difference in the way the sun glints off the surface there and in faraway New Zealand, where he has to learn how to fish all over again. Every angler will appreciate Greenberg's adventures and misadventures on shining waters.

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