I’m quite aware that Richard Brautigan has written a novel called Trout Fishing in America that deals thoroughly with trout fishing and its kaleidoscope of environments, so I’m a little embarrassed to try something in the same theme, but I’m going to go ahead because this is a story that I have to tell.

I used to go fishing on the Long Tom River way back in the mountains where the river in parts wasn’t much wider than a coffee table with a best seller sitting on it.

The trout were little cut-throats between six and ten inches long and a lot of fun to catch. I really got good at fishing the Long Tom and could take my limit of ten fish in little over an hour if I had any kind of luck at all.

The Long Tom River was forty miles away. I usually hitch-hiked there late in the afternoon and would leave in the twilight to hitch-hike the forty miles back home.

A few times I hitch-hiked there in the rain and fished in the rain and hitch-hiked back in the rain. I travelled eighty miles in a wet circle.

I’d get out at a bridge across the Long Tom and fish down half a mile to another bridge across the river. It was a wooden bridge that looked like an angel. The river was sort of murky. It was gentle fishing between the bridges, down through a lazy dripping landscape.

Below the second bridge, which looked like a white wooden angel, the Long Tom River flowed into very strange ways. It was dark and haunting and went something like this: Every hundred yards or so there was a large open swamp-like pool and then the river flowed out of the pool into a fast shallow run covered over closely with trees like a shadowy knitted tunnel until it reached the next swampy pool and very seldom did I let the Long Tom River call me down into there.

But late one August afternoon I had fished down to the angel bridge and the fishing hadn’t been very good. I only had four or five trout.

It was raining and very warm up there in the mountains and edging towards sundown and actually it may have been early twilight. I couldn’t tell exactly what time it was because of the rain.

Anyway: I was taken by some goofy kid reason to try a little fishing down below the bridge into those knitted river tunnels and big swampy open pools.

It was really too late to go down into there and I should have just turned around and got out of there and hitch-hiked the forty miles back home through the rain.

I should have let well enough alone.