The fly skipped across the water, one, two, three times and settled, tail first because that’s where the weight was, its gossamer wings shimmering in the early morning light. Barely had the ripple of water died away when a maelstrom of churning , frothing water exploded from below it, obliterating its dimmly glowing eye. The fish inhaled it, prepared for a desperate lunging flight to escape ingestion on the part of the fly. It’s beautiful pearly scales exposed in a brief flash the fish settled again below the waves, to swim away, grinding it’s meal slowly down its gullet. However something was wrong, the fish didn’t know what, but it could feel that the fly was not behaving as an eaten fly should. No squirming, wonderful, tasty explosion of gastronomic delight; no this fly felt like a dead thing, all tones of metal and feathery unalive lump. The fish turned and prepared to spit the fly back to what ever horrible undead place it had come from, but before it could, a sharp tug exposed a line leading from its mouth. The fish redoubled its efforts to expectorate the unseemly bug, but it seemed stuck on one of its krill. This was all an insufferable state of affairs to the fish and it turned and exploded away from the area in a powerful lash of it tail. It ran in a straight line for a long time until, tiring, it slowed and considered its new surroundings. No bigger fish around, no danger, it slowed and began chewing at the line that still hung from its mouth. The line tautened and it and the fish began to be towed slowly back in the direction from which it had just come. After an hour of this alternate towing and swimming away again the fish was hauled from the water in a net.

As I reached down and, unhooked the fish to place it in my kip for the hike back its glassy eye rolled up at me and I paused. We spoke, big fish to bigger fish over the network of all living things.It told me about its life in the river chasing flies and grubs and settling in the lazy pools to digest them while the never ending current whished by outside.I thanked it and thought about living for one more day that the fish had made possible.Then began the trek over the mountain to the camp for morning breakfast.