Then, suddenly, I see him. The next cast is perfect and I watch the shiny leader turn over in the sun, flashing (not a good thing, but what the hell, it's out there isn't it?), then settling gently to the water. The cicada indicator dry fly drifts down with the size eighteen Passenger Caddis Nymph tied on 5x tippet following closely behind. I wonder which one he'll take. He's just to the side of the rock, over there by the shadow. I see him. He's lifting, and I'm ready to hit him.

Then Tim stands and makes the reel-em-up gesture with his right hand.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"Your cast was ten feet too long. He's gone. You lined him. I told you he was by the brown rock, next to the green bush."

The next trout took only ten minutes to find. A large fish rose with a shouldering splash just at the head of a shallow pool, in full sunlight next to a drop-off where the water ran like lime soda. Then a second trout surged on the other side, rolling over small cobblestones with the weight of his body, blowing open a muddy hole in the riffle as he turned to collect his harvest of nymphs. He was so big I instinctively thought "steelhead."

This time Larsen was up, thank God. He was already in position and maneuvering to attack, apparently with nerves of steel, his head and shoulders invisible in a cloud of cigar smoke as he puffed and double-hauled at the same time.

I wondered how he could see anything. He had no head, legs or torso-just arms. Four feet of gin-clear water and his fuming Cuban had erased everything else. Each haul and each puff added another five feet to the length of line he had in the air until I thought he would line these two fish and have a decent shot at one in the next pool upstream.

"NOW!" Tim shouted.

I didn't see what happened when he let go of the cast. The polarizing filter for my camera had fallen down inside my waders and I had to urinate. When I looked up again, Larsen was reeling in and there was nothing on the end of his line. I think he shrugged, but I couldn't be sure; there was so much smoke out there.

Later, while we were eating lunch, I got to thinking about Tim and everything he had to go through to make his living. I had to ask.

"Tim?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you have the same nightmare every night, with only the faces changing?"

"You're close."

"What changes?"

"The boot size."

At $600 a day U.S., fishing success or failure becomes a serious business — not so much because of economics (who gives a damn? it's only money) but because of ego and because the hour is growing late and this could be it for another year. That's the stuff of nightmares.

So that afternoon, after lunch, old Larsen and I did our best to help Tim get a good night's sleep. But after eight more pools, twenty-seven fly changes over ten truly large fish that refused fifty decent presentations, and six more kilometers of walking, I no longer gave a shit who hooked one of the bastards, as long as one of us did. The bigger the better.

How about a twenty-pounder? They were in here, weren't they?

I guess the same idea hit Dick about the time his third Esplendido wore out. We started walking closer together and talking. Now that I think about it, maybe the conversation meant more than our fishing. All I knew then was that we had walked a very long way and made dozens of casts without a strike.

A half hour later, when it was my turn to be up again, I went for it, hip-deep in water, with my life and reputation fully exposed, trying my best to just make it, just make the frigging cast. Everything else could go to hell.

Are you kidding? There was nothing else.

I knew the fish was a good one because Tim hadn't said anything about its size. I was nervous enough already. Even at forty feet, and from a crouched position, I could see the trout moving back and forth like a fighter plane, gliding up and down in currents as clear as air while I just tried to keep from falling down and drowning in its liquid sky.

He or she swam from right to left, then right again, then up and over a rock that went in and out of focus as I prayed for no wind and a good loop. The trout looked like a chinook salmon, all shoulders and heavy flanks. It looked black in the clear water and for a moment I thought Tim had blown it and I was casting to the fattest eel in New Zealand.

I made the cast, several in fact, but they weren't quite right and my would-be trophy would have none of it. When we left the pool, Tim looked away. "Too bad," he offered. "That was a nice one. You didn't do anything wrong." But I knew better.

"How big?" I asked. "Maybe twelve or thirteen. A brown."

On Dick's next turn, we cut through a shrubby plateau to find Tim down on his knees, staring at the river. He asked me if I had seen the big brown at the head of the pool. I looked, and if I fish another seventy years I won't forget what I saw. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I had seen it even before he pointed it out, but I thought it was a log.

Three smaller fish lay just downstream from the log — one a rainbow of perhaps eleven pounds and a couple of others that appeared to be around eight or nine.

"The brown might go seventeen or more," Tim whispered. "I have heard of twenty-pounders being taken from this section of river." Then he turned his attention to Larsen and me. "Who's up?" he asked.

Larsen had one eye on me, the other on the huge brown. "Have you ever taken a really big one?" he asked.

"No."

"Go get 'im. He's yours."

"Dick, it isn't my turn. I had the last shot."

"Shut up. Take him. I've got mine."

By this time the brown had turned and was lumbering slowly back down to the tailout. As he passed us I could see his body and his eye. He looked like a brooding shark with the head of a trout. When he took up a new position just above the riffle below the tailout, I began crawling toward him on my hands and knees, praying as I did so.

The forty-five-foot crawling stalk under the cover of forest shadows took fifteen minutes. The casting took a lot less. I had five refusals on five presentations. My five-weight line and .005-inch leader tippet looked like rope in the sun. I did manage three fantasies about taking casting lessons as soon as I returned to California and one promise to never say "fuck" again in public if the damn thing would just bite.

After the fifth cast, I was out of tricks. Tim motioned for me to crawl back up toward the head of the pool. "It's no use, he knows we're here," he said. "Try those rainbow over there." Larsen nodded. approval, pointing at one with his ironwood stick.

I turned for a last look for the brown. It was gone. It hadn't taken, so there was no point keeping my promise about vocabulary. "Fuck him," I said to myself.

Then I changed focus to the rainbows at the head of the pool. The cast looked impossible because there were trees right behind me. The only possibility was to make a twenty-foot backcast almost straight up in the air, then shoot a perfectly straight cast forty feet over the rainbows to a spot about the size of a large serving platter, then mend quickly to avoid drag.

Somehow I made it. The shot was perfect and the fly hit just right, the way they can sometimes. Even Tim liked the cast.

And wouldn't you know? One of those magnificent rainbows saw the fly and quivered. Six desperate human eyes watched intently as the size 14 Royal Wulff wiggled its butt in the meniscus and passed over the trout like a little red ship with white sails. Just for a second I felt like a hero, but then I mended too late and drag set in. The trout dropped to the bottom.

Larsen motioned for me to try the other fish, and my next shot was fired at the big rainbow near the top of the pool. He was twenty feet away and feeding in plain sight and there were no trees anywhere nearby and the wind was perfect, coming in over my left shoulder. It was an easy shot at the trout of a lifetime and I blew the cast so badly that Larsen cleared his throat behind me and Tim just looked at the ground and said nothing.

Finally we reached the last pool of the day — and the trip and the year. Darkness was falling and we'd been walking all day. A ragged brown nymph was hooked in the second snake guide just down from the tip-top of my rod and I reached for it with an odd feeling. 5:30 p.m. This was it, the last chance.

Fatigue and paranoia gathered. I hadn't had a strike all day. I had, however, just fallen in on the last crossing, soaking my Nikon and my ego. I was cold and on edge.

What a way to end it, I thought, shivering. Not one strike.

I wondered what Tim thought of me. And what about Larsen?

The fly was loose from the snake guide and Tim was back at his post, watching like a heron as he had all day, never quitting, never giving up, never showing a sign of impatience or urgency. Larsen is waiting patiently, too, sitting on a sandy bank in the dark shade of wonderful trees and clutching his Masai stick. He is here for the same reason I am: He loves it.

As for me, I'm just a little older and a little tired. But maybe I'm ready for this one.

Tim begins his work. The fish looks good, he says, and she's lying only two feet from an almost sheer wall of lemon-colored stone to my right and up forty feet. Just there by the cut with marbled streaks of black on it.

I look. The water is purple over there. I'll never see her.

"She's feeding heavily," Tim cautions. He says nothing of her size, but it doesn't matter. I've done all I can and the guy back at the lodge was right; I'd rather be skunked here than land twenty in a no-brainer somewhere else.

The line unrolls in the air and I refuse to let it go until I have those words jammed down into the rod and reel and anywhere else I can stick them because they are the truth. Finally I let it go, all thirty feet of it plus fifteen feet of leader and it looks really good as it unfolds in the cooling air like a beautiful arrow going straight to the heart of something I can't explain, but can't live without.

"Grrreat shot," Tim whispers. "Let it go, let it go. Oh-oh, wait a minute, she's moved upstream now about five feet and she's right up against the wall. Right next to it. Pick it up and go again. Now!" (They always say that.)

The cast is now fifty-five feet and the fly has to land a foot from the cliff wall or she might not see it. The line lifts off the water like oil, smooth and sweet behind me, and I am begging my wrist and arm to wait and get it right, and I pull just enough with my line hand to gain another ten feet. I've been doing this for fifty years; when will it become automatic, without anxiety and prayers for luck?

When everything lands out there the indicator is almost kissing the rock. But is the leader straight? Where is the fly?

"Perfect," Tim whispers.

Nothing happens for ten years. Then without warning Tim is screaming: "LIFT! DAMMIT, LIFT!"

I look at the indicator. What's this lift stuff? What's he talking about? The indicator hasn't twitched; the drift is as steady as silk, smooth and certain. But I know this: I'm lifting, pal. This guy knows what he's talking about.

I raise the rod and the fish is there. I greet her with another private, very happy vulgarity. I have her. She's on!

I'm not very good at describing fish fights. I wish I were because this one was a beauty. I saw her sailing through canyons of deep water with the light reflecting from her sides and I bit my lip when she shook the line like a dog. I ran downstream and then back upstream four or five times with all the grace of a wounded ostrich, holding my rod up high and winding the reel with my back to the fish so I could see where I was going, and not trip again.

But it was the jumps I most remember. When she came out, she seemed to hang in the air over the dark water like a great balloon, beautiful and silver as the morning sky, and when I saw her girth I didn't think it was possible for a stream resident rainbow trout to grow that large. Not even in New Zealand.

And I remember the look on Tim's face as she finally came on her side into the shallows.

"God, what a horse," he whispered.

Even Larsen was impressed and said something like "Holy shit." Actually, that's exactly what he said and I silently thanked him for the perfect description, because when you get right down to it we are not really vulgar. We are not liars. We're just informal descriptionists.

And then she was in the net, straining against the cord, with her wet tail flopping in the air. She looked like a salmon and I loved her instantly.

Tim whistled as the arrow steadied on the scale. "Thirteen pounds," he gasped excitedly. "A female. What a fatso. That's the biggest trout I've ever landed with a client on any river I've fished." His passion is genuine and threatens to expand my already burgeoning testicles, but the feeling doesn't last long. I couldn't help remembering the rest of the day and all my mistakes.

"How did you know she had taken?" I asked finally. "I didn't see the yarn hesitate."

"It didn't. I saw her lift in the water column. When she peaked I could see her white mouth open. I knew she had it."

Not long after — about fifteen minutes, I guess — and thirty feet around the next curving arc of river, Larsen dropped the last cast of the year on the nose of another humdinger. But he had to fight it without witnesses. That's because I was in a reverie, wandering around on the beach, still trying to find my missing polarizing lens, while Tim was busy writing notes about the thirteen-pounder.

Four times we heard Dick say "I think he's ready, get the net," and four times neither of us responded. Finally he gave up, landed the fish without help and held it as I showed up to get his photo.

My hands are still shaking. I look through the lens at Larsen. He hasn't shaved in ten days. He is not the prominent Washington, D.C., attorney who calls the President by his first name. Not any more. He's a bum. Or a scarecrow. Or a lion.

And so am I. We've been out for almost two blessed weeks. There are weeds and other dirty-looking things stuck to our shirts. Some look like bat droppings. But I don't give a damn, because in the past few minutes the two of us have held a total of nineteen pounds of perfectly formed rainbow trout in our hands, and right now at least, that's all that really matters, isn't it?

This is our reward for eight-and-a-half miles of inhalations and exhalations, for legs that are beginning to cramp, for arms bleeding from bush cuts and sore from endless casting to the mythic shapes of magic trout hanging like torpedoes in water as clear as air, and as I take a final look through the lens I see the white flash of Larsen's flossed teeth. He's holding his Masai walking stick and grinning. "Ironwood, baby" he says. "Ironwood."