When the River Whispered Secrets at Dawn

The thermometer read 43°F when my boots crunched on the frost-kissed gravel of the Deschutes River access point. I could taste iron in the air - that metallic tang that always precedes a steelhead's wrath. My fly line hissed through the mist like an angry hornet, carrying streamers to the far bank where shadows danced beneath overhanging alders.

'Just three more casts,' I muttered as numb fingers fumbled with the reel. That's when the water erupted. Not the polite splash of a rising trout, but the primordial thrash of something that belonged in the Pleistocene. My 8-weight rod arched like a question mark, its cork grip groaning under pressure.

For twenty minutes we danced - the steelhead running downstream with my backing line singing through guides, me stumbling over basketball-sized rocks while whispering prayers to fishing gods. When I finally tailed the chrome-bright hen, her crimson gill plates flared in the dawn light like war paint. She vanished with a contemptuous flick of her tail, leaving me knee-deep in liquid silver and foolish grins.

The river doesn't give up its secrets, it turns out. But sometimes, when frost clings to your beard and persistence outweighs sense, it might let you borrow one for a while.