Gun Play

Dave was a country lawyer and a trout fisherman and a friend of my father. I had recently learned to cast, and my dad arranged for him to take along me and a buddy. Dave had permission from a dairy farmer to fish a small stream that cut through his pastures. The stream held wild brown trout.

We pulled off a back road in the hills of Central New York into a muddy lot in front of a barn. Muck covered our shoes before we could switch into waders. Dave wore old-fashioned hip boots and carried a fly rod and an ultra-light spinner rigged with a Mepps. Before he closed his trunk he reached into a leather case and pulled out a pouch of Red Man and a .38.

“Snapping turles,” he said and holstered the pistol on his belt.

The stream ran faster and shallower than I expected and we walked along the bank until Dave stopped at a bend with a pool and made a cast. He quickly hooked into and landed a 14-inch brown trout. I had never seen one and he held it up so we could look at its yellow belly and black and red dots.

“Walk down to the next bend and start casting,” he said. I walked downstream and didn’t really know what to do. I drifted a nymph and hooked bottom. I tied on a streamer and cast cross stream and felt a tug. My first brown trout, barely larger than the palm of my hand.

I walked back up and Dave and my buddy were standing next to the pool. Dave had the pistol in his hand and he raised it and pointed at the water.

I heard Pop, Pop, and he lowered the pistol and stepped into the stream in his hip boots. He held up a snapping turtle by its tail, its shell cracked open.

“You think it’s a rock and then it’s moving and it’ll bite your toes off,” he said and threw it up on the bank. Then he walked ahead along the stream to look for more trout.