“Just about everything,” Sandy said, laughing. “First of all, relax. You’re snapping the rod instead of swinging it. You just need a little twist on the downstroke. In the second place, you’re not using your thumb right. When the line begins to play out, make your thumb act like a brake. Here, let’s try it again.”
After forty minutes of Sandy’s expert coaching, Mike managed several reasonably accurate casts. “Okay,” Sandy said approvingly. “You’re on your own. I’m going to take the raft and drift downstream a little ways.”
“Watch the current,” Mike warned as he set himself for another cast.
“Like a hawk,” Sandy said, pushing off from shore.
But Sandy had underestimated the treacherous power of Lost River.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Perfect Cast
The first hint that he was in trouble came when Sandy felt his raft give a trembling lurch to one side and swing sharply out into the channel. He had been casting for about fifteen minutes without success, keeping close to the protection of the rocky shore as he searched the water around him for the telltale ripple of a surfacing fish. Once or twice, when he had strayed out toward the middle of the stream in pursuit of a silvery flash, he quickly realized his danger and paddled back to safety. But now he had gone too far. He was nearly ten yards away from the near shore, moving at an ever-increasing rate of speed toward Cutthroat Rapids.
Still, he thought to himself, there was plenty of time to get back. The rapids were a good half mile away and the river was not yet white with lashing foam.
In the end, it was a cutthroat trout that very nearly caused his death. He was a big fellow—at least eighteen inches, Sandy figured—and he chose that particular moment to break through the water with a twisting leap that nearly sent him into Sandy’s lap. The sight of that magnificent fish momentarily drove all thought of danger from Sandy’s head. Just one cast more, he decided, and then he would head back.
But Sandy never had a chance to make that cast. The river, in one of its unpredictable shifts, suddenly grabbed his raft and sent it skimming and twisting out into the main current. Dropping all thoughts of landing the cutthroat, Sandy leaned hastily over to pick up his paddle.