Ripple on the River: Flyfishing Salmon with The Dead on the Pere Marquette

“You mind if I play some music?”  A big part of the reason I enjoy fly fishing so much is the lack of noise—just the sounds of nature. However, I was on the Pere Marquette with two serious Deadheads, in a drift boat plastered with Grateful Dead stickers. Some of the other guides and anglers joked that I probably would end the day with a salmon, but they had concerns I would also sport a couple new tattoos, wear my hat backward, and be singing “Scarlet Begonias.” 

“Sure,” I concede as we drift lazily through the trees.  “Can you keep it low though?”

It’s beautiful here, the river narrower than I expected, banks crowded with overhanging trees. I only knew a handful of the more popular songs, but the music was catching. I was feeling the vibe. There’s no rush—salmon bite when they want to bite. 

I was feeling downright virtuous when something stopped the little stonefly nymph I was bouncing along the bottom of the river.  When I set the hook a fish surged, ripping line off the reel at an alarming rate, like Jerry Garcia and the boys burning up an extended jam. Before I had a chance to react, the fish was already 40 yards downstream looking like a small refrigerator with fins doing airborne cartwheels between log jams.  Evidently Truckin’ was his walkup tune…

It was messy, improvised, chaotic—exactly like the jams my boatmates had been testifyin’ all morning. And when that king finally slid into the net, dark flanks glowing golden in the filtered sunlight, I wanted an encore.

The scene repeats more than once in some form or another throughout the day.  Sometimes it ends tangled up in logs and debris and a broken tippet.  Then sometimes we do nail it, find a happy groove, and after a little baltering we get one of these beasties to hang out for a minute.  What’s baltering?  Yeah, I’m picking up the lingo.

When we pull the boat out the river, the teasing commences immediately. Apart from the standard, “what did you catch,” the next most frequent question “Let’s see those new tattoos”.  My boatmates take the ribbing in stride. I turned my hat around, bill to the back, and walked toward the truck, humming Eyes of The World.