Spooked!
A fistful of fly fishing fright in honor of Halloween.
You know that terrible feeling of being lost, the sickly pit-of-the-stomach panic when your senses get twisted and reason evaporates? Or that heart stopping jolt when a branch breaks in the woods and the hair on the back of your neck stands on end? Or maybe something brushes your leg while you’re wading in a deep dark pool?
We all do. It’s the spook.
I love a good scary movie, and revel in recounting close encounters and even closer calls with fishing friends.
Over the years I’ve heard loads of stories about getting spooked on the water: tales of mama grizzlies in the Alaskan bush, water moccasins slithering into kayaks, and waterspouts descending on the salt flats.
There are spooky beats on remote rivers, spooky middle-of-nowhere motels, spooky drives down deserted highways. Turns out, getting spooked while fishing is more common than I thought.
So in the spirit of Halloween, Here are three short stories of spook.
1. Lost in the Gorge
Adam parked his jeep in a dirt DEC parking lot in a remote shoulder of forest. His aim was to fish the Neversink River Unique Area, a deep gorge with little access through which flowed the fabled Neversink River.
In the light of day he traced the impression of a trail downward, switching back here and there using the distant sound of the river as a beacon. After about an hour, he popped out of the woodline onto a strip of grassy bank. It was a nice hike for a seasoned outdoorsman like him, and the water was inviting.
It was late spring and he whiled the day away pulling plump brown trout from one juicy pocket after the next. Before he knew it, the sun had slipped behind the valley’s amphitheater walls and night was coming in. Fast.
Alone, with no map, and only a headlamp, he tracked back along the river looking for the trail. It was gone, swallowed up by the trees and shadows. He tracked along the river until found the rocky bed of a small feeder stream. It must be the same stream he had driven over before he parked, he told himself.
Fully wader-ed and fly rod in hand, he scaled the slippery, moss-covered creek bed. He tried to move thoughtfully, avoiding ankle-breaking maneuvers.
The forest was so thick that his headlamp did little more than turn his vision into a 2-D weave of switches and leaves. “It was completely disorienting,” he told me, “like someone put a magnet under your mental compass.” He climbed for what felt like eons, hoping that his instincts were right. This was no place to be alone, at night.
Some three hours later, he found the gravelly edge of the road, and eventually, his Jeep.
Lost-in-the-woods-alone spook!
2. Swim for It
A few years ago, I ventured to the New Hampshire coastline in search of striped bass with my brother Reuben and our dear friend and angler extraordinaire Jon.
Jon had found a twisting tidal river that cut through a wide marsh the size of a football field. It was the perfect place to fish for stripers who’d rushed up the river with the tide in search of an easy meal.
We strode confidently into the marsh. The brackish water was receding, exposing areas suitable for crossing the river which snaked intricately through the cordgrass.
We wandered upstream, fishing deeper pockets where stripers sometimes get stranded when the tide shifts. So close to the ocean, the tidal change was dramatic. As the water drained the river banks got taller, steeper. Down in the muddy trenches it was easy to get disoriented; the marsh morphed into a sunken, sodden labyrinth six feet below a flat plain of grass.
We all lost track of time, absorbed by the hunt for hungry bass, and hadn’t noticed the tide had switched beneath our feet. The river began flowing backwards, the greasy mud banks disappearing into the incoming tide. When Jon commented flatly that we should make our way back, and started striding toward the car, we followed. Double time.
It didn’t matter. We’d missed our window. The tide had surged over our exit leaving us, as Jon put it, with two choices: wait until 2AM when the tide changed again, or swim for it.
So, we stripped to our briefs and boots, packed everything we hoped to keep dry into the legs of our waders, and took the plunge. Swimming the twenty meters through the pulsing brackish water was challenging and more than a little unnerving.
But when, halfway across, Reuben said something about bull sharks, I sped up my awkward splashy strokes, hoping to out paddle the predators, or at least, my brother.
Bitten-by-a-bull-shark spook!
3. Checkpoint Shakedown
Tom was crossing the border from Finland to Russia to fish 3 Rivers, a trio of coveted Salmon rivers that spill into Barents Sea.
Without explanation, he was pulled aside from the other twenty or so anglers in his group by two Russians. They escorted him out the side door and pushed him into a van while the rest of the guys hopped on their chartered helicopter.
Across the language barrier he tried to chat up the Russians as they drove him out the back of the airport to an abandoned airfield littered with 3-wheel trucks, 50 gallon drums, and one-wing planes.
As a “Yank with cash, an Amex, and a Rolex” Tom wondered, “am I about to get rolled?!”
One of the Russians responded to one of his anxious ‘where are we going’ queries with: “nyet probleme!”
What seemed like hours later, the helicopter flew into the field to pick him up, join the others, and fly into camp.
It was only on the way home when Tom learned why he’d been treated to the armed escort out the back door: His new passport and older visa had differing numbers, and the Russian duo had decided it was easier to sidestep the customs checkpoint – and the Russian military – instead of doing the necessary paperwork..
Ruskies-with-AK-47s spook!
Bonus Spook:
The Ballad of Mount Doogie Dowler
My dear friend Chris Wright introduced me to this tale from Seth Rogen’s Storytime podcast. It’s the true story of a truly scary encounter told in excruciatingly eerie detail.
Bonus Spook:
Creeped Out in Lordville
Think you’re alone? You aren’t. Even the great Tom Rosenbauer feels the spook from time to time. Check out this episode of the Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast from 2019 (skip to 46:00 to get right to the goods).