Among your gourmet set, The Frenchman and Me probably would not be considered one of the world`s great restaurants. It serves nothing in bearnaise sauce. Quiches are absent from the menu. There is no French wine. And not a single sprout is in the salad.
But if a restaurant is judged by how well it delivers what it promises, The Frenchman and Me approaches greatness. The steaks are large and tasty. The soups and the pies are homemade and delicious. There is a wide selection of beer. Best of all, not a single sprout is in the salad.
It`s a good thing The Frenchman and Me (owned by a fellow named Frenchy and his wife, Me, or Sweetpea) offers such solace, because sometimes solace is just what is needed.
When a person stands out in the middle of a cold river all morning, casting vainly into the wind and not catching any trout, his body craves nourishment and his soul demands consolation. In its genius, American culture has created cheeseburgers and beer, thus providing for both.
To some extent, it was possible to rationalize failure. The weather was not helpful. Sometimes it was too cold for the tiny eggs of the trico fly to hatch where they lay at the river`s bottom. Sometimes, when it was warm enough, they hatched, then thronged above the water, only to be blown away by a hot summer wind. Either way, they did not fall on the water by the billions, there to be devoured by the trout, a few of whom might be fooled into thinking that a bit of gray and white fluff tied to a tiny hook was lunch. When trout do not feed on the surface, you cannot catch them with dry flies.
And then, there were too many people. The upper Missouri River has become excessively popular of late. It cries out to become like the place of which Yogi Berra said, ”Nobody ever goes there anymore; it`s too crowded.” So this is a good time to urge all trout fisherpersons to stay away. So many people are fishing that most of the fish have been caught time and again, making them wary, if not downright sophisticated.
(The preceding was tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, but not nonsense. Thanks to less rain and more fishermen, the water levels and the fish population are declining in the upper Missouri, which could use a few years to recoup.)
So difficult was the fishing that one morning, when two amateurs were accompanied by Doug O`Looney-engineer, philosopher, photographer, licensed outfitter and fly-fisher supreme-even he was unable to land a fish. And this is a man who cannot only spot a trout under the surface from 50 feet away, but can also tell you whether it`s a rainbow or a brown and roughly how large it is.
Still, when all the rationalizations were over, the failure remained. What could be worse than returning to a scene of former triumph, expecting even greater success, only to run squarely up against unfavorable conditions and your own inadequacies?
There is, of course, the possibility that this is one of the purposes of fly fishing-to remind us of failure`s power. In a sense, even a successful fishing trip is a failure. No one ever catches as many fish as he wants or lands every fish that is hooked, and no wonder. To land a 14- or 15-inch trout on a tiny hook held by .006 inch of monofilament requires doing several things just right, or at least almost just right. Doing just one of them wrong-a sloppy cast, missing the strike, not giving enough line or giving too much-usually is enough to offset doing everything else just right.
This is a valuable enough lesson, but who needs to go on vacation to learn it? This is the lesson taught by daily life, the avoidance of which is one reason to go fishing. Some failure in the course of a fishing trip is perhaps both inevitable and beneficial. But no good purpose is served when it becomes dominant.
Not that the failure was total. A few fish were caught, some of them good ones. And there was the grand morning when the bank behind one wader was invaded by a fellow with a spinning rod and (may something guard his immortal soul) worms. In an hour and a half, the worm-drowner caught nothing while the wader with his parachute adams flies landed three very nice rainbow. This does not prove, but it may indicate, the presence of a benevolent force in the universe.
Far more frequent, however, were long periods when no fish rose either to natural insects or one angler`s artificials, when the few fish who did rise were unfoolable, when strikes were missed, when a fish well hooked broke the tippet because the line was held too hard or threw the hook because the line had too much slack.
It would be nice to end this with the stirring account of a fine trout caught on the last day, a late success that would demonstrate that one of failure`s roles is to render ultimate success even more satisfying.
Well, the account could be invented. This is, after all, only a fish story. But that way lies perdition. There was one final morning, with acceptable weather and an abundant if short-lived hatch of the tricos, who were gobbled up by the trout.
And finally, there was that barely percepetible tug on the line coexistent with the equally subtle flash of silver in the water. Softly, the hook was set. The fish, a good one, wanted line. He got it. Then he came to the surface and through it. Then he went down again, still straining against the line being held so tautly.
Then he was gone. Who knew why? Maybe the weeds rubbed the hook out of his cheek. Maybe there was just a touch of slack on the line. Maybe there`s a benevolent force in the universe.
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Well, disappointment is a valuable lesson, too. You can`t get everything you want in this world exactly when you want it. Fortunately, in Wolf Creek, you can almost always get a cheeseburger and beer.