Books That Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal by Melissa Goldthwaite

Author:Melissa Goldthwaite [Goldthwaite, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2014-07-31T22:00:00+00:00

Even for those of us who live here, plying the rivers for browns over the course of a Montana summer is no way to keep steady meat on our tables or healthy egos on our ids. Brown trout are delicious—to my palate, the tastiest species of my legal local four. But of the local trout species, they wear the most perfect camouflage, have the teeth most likely to cut through a leader, prefer the snaggiest lairs, and almost invariably, when hooked, head for the nearest sunken tree. They have the keenest eyesight and the greatest paranoia about what’s going on up onshore. They’re often nocturnally voracious but uncatchably ascetic by day. Upon achieving trophy size they turn cannibalistic, nearly immunizing them to the efforts of us insect-imitating fly-slingers. And when they are rising, they have the subtlest of rise-forms, making them the most difficult trout to locate and stalk. As a result, those who would consistently catch browns must own more than a pedestrian itch to wet a line. Of fly fishers especially, these fish demand not just interest but obsession. Not a pretty obsession, either. In order to become one of the rare maestros who can deceive these beasts at will, one must immerse oneself for years and to the eyeballs in the sort of obsessive fish-speak I’ve been scribbling this whole past paragraph—

Unless one happens to know a wicked secret: even the oldest and most sagacious of browns grow temporarily crazed—by sex. No fooling. Every mature brown trout that swims makes a spawning run in fall. This seasonal change of metabolic and existential purpose transforms the Coyote of Trout into the most imbecilic of impulse shoppers. It’s a tragic but all-American malady: you can sell a spawn-minded brown damned near anything.

I’d heard stories, before moving to Montana, about how aggressive browns grow in October. Being from the Northwest coast, I imagined a belligerence akin to that of salmon, who purposefully stand guard, after arriving at the spawning grounds, around their redds. There is no similarity. Like all but the kinkiest humans, a brown wants no other species of creature in its bed of love except other browns. Unlike most humans, the brown considers its entire visible world to be this private bed, remains open-eyed and armed (to the teeth) round the clock, and at the sight of trespassers aims to kill. It’s a strange behavior to transpose into human terms. If my wife and I were to become the sexual equivalents of brown trout tonight, our foreplay would consist of attacking and swallowing seven pet chickens, five goldfish, a guinea pig, a Dalmatian, a pony, and a horse. Vive la difference!

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