Fishing Buddies

This story was first published in the April 1982 issue of Yankee.

These were fly-fishing-only waters. Beyond the small river towns with the houses and general stores pressed close to the road, signs appeared “Salmon Flies Tied” and “Fishing Guides.” Sometimes we could see the fly lines of the fishermen drop gently in the water which sparkled beneath the waning sun, and at such times Bud Leavitt would glance from the road, looking for the strike of a salmon.

It was on one of the final weekends of last September, near the close of fishing season. Bud Leavitt drove down a dirt road a few miles outside of Blackville (pop. 987) and stopped between two cabins, a small one for guests, and the main lodge set on a knoll 100 feet above the Miramichi, the summer home of Ted Williams for 20 years. This was where Ted Williams had honed his skills as perhaps the finest Atlantic salmon fly-fisherman in the world; where Bud Leavitt came to renew a friendship that spanned four decades and, if he was lucky, to catch fish.

Bud Leavitt at age 64 is an institution of the Maine woods. His daily column,“Outdoors,” is in its 35th year for the Bangor Daily News, and his “Woods ‘n Waters” public television series has twice been voted the best outdoors show in America. “Anybody who goes fishing in Maine and doesn’t have Mr. Leavitt as his leader has gone wrong somewhere, probably in boyhood,” wrote the late Red Smith. Bud writes before dawn. After that his phone rings: ‘Are the mackerel biting?’ ‘The smelts running?’ ‘Will bass take better on rubber worms, or artificial bait, or natural worms?’ Sometimes he answers calls from people who know their only hope of getting through to the reclusive Ted Williams is through Bud Leavitt.

On the surface the friendship seems improbable. Both are strong-willed, stubborn, proud, profane, loud men with biting wit. One is a sportswriter; the other has a legendary distaste for the pryings of the press. But the outdoors has always been the great leveler.

Early in the Boston Red Sox career which established him as perhaps the greatest hitter of our times, Ted Williams turned to the woods, especially the woods of Maine, as his sanctuary. He remained merciless in his drive for perfection, whether on a ball field or on a river, and in Bud Leavitt he found a tenacity and a love for the rivers to complement his own.

It was past six o’clock when Bud Leavitt arrived. There was a bite to the air and the leaves of the white birches that ringed the cabins had begun to change. Down below he could see a few fishermen plying the evening waters of the Miramichi. Ted Williams was sitting at the end of a dining table perched by the windows overlooking the river. He glanced up from his dinner of spaghetti, salad, and pie served by his long-time housekeeper, Edna Curtis, whose husband, Roy, has guided Ted for 25 years.

“You said five o’clock. You’ve messed up our evening’s fishing already,” Williams flung to Bud in greeting.

“I can go home,” Leavitt replied.

“Do you know how lucky you are to be here?” Williams said.

Handtied salmon flies poked out from the patch of lamb’s wool on Williams’s fishing vest, worn over a tan chamois shirt ripped down the sleeve. His face was etched with a deep tan and his eyes were a little bloodshot from the sun.

“‘I’ll tell you, Bud, it’s the poorest fishing I’ve ever seen on the river. I’m coming to feel anglers are silly to try and save this fish,” Williams said. “I throw back hens and grilse [salmon between three to five pounds returning after only a year at sea] and they’re netting 400,000 metric tons in the high seas. The fish can’t survive the pressure. I’ve caught only 43 fish—caught, not kept. Usually I’d be around 100 by now. We’re seeing a species die here.”

They talked that night sitting on the porch until it got too cold and then they moved inside. Few sentences slipped by without jabs about the other’s weight or lack of talent in the outdoors or taste in equipment, arguing over the proper number of pockets in a fishing vest, whether raincoats should have pockets at all.

Before dawn the next morning Ted Williams was at his tackle bench in the basement of his cabin, working amidst small mounds of animal hair, bird feathers, and tinsel, tying salmon flies. Fly-tying began for him in 1946, the year the Red Sox won the pennant. He’d sit at his tackle bench in his hotel room, tense from a game, and he’d tie until finally he’d be able to sleep. The night they clinched the pennant, Williams was in his room tying flies, while his teammates partied and popped champagne corks.

His creations now are all tied on single hooks. He doesn’t believe salmon, scarce as they are, should be fished with double hooks, as was once his custom. This morning he worked up a beauty, a Number 8 Cosseboom, that he couldn’t wait to test. There was a guy with a gimpy leg across the way to whom he had promised his next salmon.

At seven o’clock Roy and Edna Curtis arrived. Roy is a stocky, ruddy-cheeked man who likes to say he has never fished in front of Ted Williams in his life. “I want Ted to get first crack at a fish,” he says.

Ted came out on the porch and peered through the mist to the river. Sea smoke, white and ghostly, hovered over the dark river. “Water pretty near came up over five inches. I can see that rock—I think it came up six inches.” He curled a hand to his lips and blew a version of the Marine Hymn down to the river. “I’m alerting the river,” Williams said.

Roy packed the pickup. Edna handed him the thermos of black tea and a sack of homemade doughnuts and sandwiches slathered thickly with mayonnaise, as though fearful one of the fishermen she saw to the river would lose an ounce of fat while in her care.

Ted waved his eight-and-a-half-foot rod in front of Bud. “That’s the best equipment you ever had your hands on,” he said. “The question is, is it too much equipment for you? Too sophisticated for you?” Bud, who had been kept awake most of the night with mice scurrying through his cabin, mumbled, then Roy and Bud and Ted climbed into the pickup and left for Gray Rapids.

* * *

The first words Ted Williams ever spoke to Bud Leavitt were, “Hey, Bush, come down here.” It was 1939 and Williams was a brash rookie of 21. Leavitt was in the Red Sox dugout interviewing Billy Goodman for his sports column in the old Bangor Evening Commercial.

He was an imposing-looking man of 22, a former Maine high school hammer-throwing champion. He glanced over at the tall, wiry Williams.“I’m not through talking to this man,” he said. At the end of the dugout Williams stood waiting, gripping a bat, taking half swings before the game.

He said, “I’m Ted Williams.”

“I know that,” replied Leavitt.

“I hear you’re from Maine,” Williams said. “Tell me about it.”

After Leavitt told him what he could in a few minutes Williams said, “I’ll call you,” and by a month or so later they were bass fishing on a small pond in Washington County. Leavitt’s world fascinated Williams—the wardens, the woodsmen, the cooks and waitresses in the small-town diners—and whenever he could, he returned. Leavitt kept his distance when distance was needed, and whenever Williams said, ‘Off the record, Bush,’ it remained so.

In 1941 pressure mounted as Williams made his run at batting .400, finishing at .406. Leavitt would come to Boston and they’d go to dinner in Chinatown and never mention batting. As each season ended now, Williams, in need of peace and quiet, would come to Maine. Bud and his two daughters would meet him at the airport and he’d sit behind the wheel of Bud’s 1939 Packard Touring Sedan convertible driving through downtown Bangor while people hollered, “Hey, Ted.” He’d sprawl on the king-size divan in the Leavitt living room, downing Barbara Leavitt’s lemon pie with a quart of milk, before heading out the next day to Fish River Lake, or the Red River country in Aroostook, or the Machias, where fishing and woodcock hunting waited.

One memorable year Leavitt was given the executive coach of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad to bring Williams back to Maine at season’s end. It was a sight Leavitt has never gotten over—the great engine pulling one car with two men and their steward northward in luxury through the night from Boston to Presque Isle.

They reached the Miramichi together in September 1958. It was the day after Ted won his last American League batting title at age 40, beating out Pete Runnells on the last day of the season. He flew that night from Washington, D.C. to Boston, and then to Bangor. After resting a few hours they left at three in the morning to get to the river on the final day of Atlantic salmon fishing. Driving through dense fog, they narrowly missed colliding with two cows that reared suddenly from the mist near Fredericton. Past 2 p.m. they reached the river. Roy Curtis was their guide.

“The wind was blowing awful bad,” he recalled. “That morning I crossed the river in the canoe and the sun was coming up over the mountain. I could see every rock and every fish in the pool, and there was a rock in the middle with ten fish laying around it. I said to Ted, ‘You wade out and cast and I’ll tell you when the fly’s coming over the rock.’ The whitecaps were high but he got it out there. I said, ‘Now you’re over the rock.’ He stood there and stood there! He had staying power. And didn’t he get one!”

The fish, a 20-pound hookbill, gave Ted one of the greatest fights of his life, convincing him to build a cabin on the river someday. That night he told Bud, “I could go on forever.”

Ted was 42 when he played his last game on a cold day in late September 1960. Bud sat with him in the dugout before the game. In the eighth inning Williams sent a towering home run into right centerfield, ducked out of the stadium, and went to his hotel where Bud was waiting with some of Ted’s friends from Maine. From then on he called himself “Ted Williams, fisherman.” He never really retired.

* * *

It was 30 minutes down a rutted, bone-jarring road to Gray Rapids, where Ted owned one of his four fishing pools along the river, pools worth thousands of dollars. In the river towns it was a source of tension that wealthy outsiders could own native waters. Sometimes cabins were burned and private pools poached with nets, but Ted had been left alone.

A parking area had been cut from the woods, and already several trucks were there, their owners plying the public stretch of water below Ted’s private pool. An outsider can pay $1,000 a week to rent a cabin and a guide on the Miramichi while natives fish the river for the $20 license fee. It was a steep descent to the river, the path slippery from the rain a few days earlier. Ted caught his breath, coughed deeply, and called to the men he saw almost every day fishing Gray Rapids. Some were well-to-do; others were unemployed mill workers from nearby towns. But in their waders, suspenders, and hats studded with flies, there seemed to be no difference.

“I’ve got something for you,” Ted said to one of the fishermen who had come to the river bank. He took out his fly box and held it open. “I want you to be happy— take any one.” Ted glanced at Bud. “This won’t be an easy decision for him,” Ted said. The fisherman then offered Ted his reel. Ted shook his head, visibly touched.

“Give it to Roy,” persisted the fisherman.

“No,” Ted said, “he’s already spoiled.”

Ted started upriver to fish his pool. He glanced back at Bud enjoying a cigarette on the bank. “I’ve got a chance to catch fish behind my friend,” he said loudly. “Maybe catch one he’s missed.” Then he was walking carefully on the loose rocks, disappearing around a bend through the alders, his rod flexing like a wand in his hand.

I walked with Ted to his private pool. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Ask interesting questions.” He waded out about 50 feet and dipped a thermometer into the river. “The water’s pretty cool,” he said. “Fifty-seven. I bet the fish are laying in Boyd’s Pool on Black Brook.”

He stripped line from his reel, tugging it downward on his forecast and backcast, shooting the line in a high tight loop before releasing it to the water. He worked his way slowly downriver, his goal a bunch of rocks barely visible above the water. “They like to lay in there,” he said. “There’s holes seven feet deep where they sit and rest.”

He looked downriver where the fishermen were spaced at 100-foot intervals. “I can tell a guy by the style of his cast,” he said. “The trick is the consistency of the cast, keeping the angle the same. And you have to know your limits—don’t cast more than you can handle.”

He measured his line by bringing it in and stretching it across his chest, his arms flung open to a six-foot span. He figured 90 feet into the east wind. “Not a lot of fishermen can handle that,” he said.

“Sometimes I fish all day knowing the water temperature is no good and not many fish are coming. But you never know, you never know. The other day I was fishing and I wanted to see what Roy was doing, but as I turned I said to myself, ‘Be ready for a strike’ and boom there it was.”

He stayed fairly close to the bank, feeling for the black rocks beneath him disguised in the flowing water. The bank to his left was a mound of high grass with a few dead tamaracks in a grove of young birch. Across the river was a knoll with houses painted white and a blue tent on a lawn where a campfire smoldered, a scattering of trailers, and two canoes beached on the shore. Four mergansers flew past and above them streaked an Air Force jet: for a moment the fly line, the ducks, and the jet shared the sky above the water. He looked up.

“Four hundred fifty knots,” he gauged. “See that fly swinging now. That’s a hot spot. There’s plenty of action in the water, lots of oxygen for the fish. Now the next hundred feet will really be hot. I’m in a good place here, mercy, mercy.”

As he cast his mouth hung open just a bit and his body leaned towards the water on his follow-through. “Yi, yi. yi. I’m in a goodplace! I remember all the spots, and that’s a lot of memories. I remember where I cast, where I got a boil. Every time I approach that rock I remember that little roll I got, so slow and pretty. Fourteen pounds. This fish gets under your skin so bad, so bad.”

Across the way a young native fisherman called out from his canoe. “Happy birthday, Ted. I heard it on the radio. Pretty soon, Ted, the salmon are going to put the shift on you.”

Williams laughed. “Pretty good. Forty years ago,” he shouted back, “I was whistling along at .413 right about now.”

Suddenly his voice lowered. “I don’t know but I could have had a fish boil under me there. I’m probably wrong, but I’m going to give it another cast. Now that’s just close observation and I may be altogether wrong. I thought I might have had a little disturbance underneath. I’ll give it one more cast, one more chance.” He cast to the same spot and spat into the river. The water boiled. “Goddam, there’s one! What do you think of Ted Williams now?” he shouted. “What do you think of Mr. Williams?” as the salmon leaped and cut the water with a flash of silver. “It’s a good fish, 12, 13 pounds,” he said.

Roy appeared with the net, drawn by the shouts a hundred yards away. Ted let the salmon into the net carefully so it would not thrash and injure itself. It was a hen filled with eggs.

Roy lifted her by the tail. “Fresh from the sea,” he said. “Sea lice still on her.”

For a moment Williams seemed undecided, thinking perhaps of his friend across the river to whom he had promised a salmon. “I hate to keep it,” he said. “I hate to keep it.”

Roy looked over, then put her in the water, stroking her belly. A minute or two later the fish put her nose to the current and moved upriver. A local fisherman who had scurried over said, “Lucky she got caught by you. I don’t think I could have let her go.”

Hours later, Williams called from the river. Was it 12:30? He was hungry. It was 2:15. He was surprised and came slogging through the water. “The thing to do now,” he said, “is agitate Mr. Leavitt.”

He was delighted to find Bud down river, his hook tangled in some grass. “First time I’ve seen his rod bend,” he laughed. “C’mon, Porky, get in here.” Bud waded onto the bank and asked me to dislodge a hook caught earlier in the back of his vest. Williams raised his eyebrows, made some unflattering noises.

“Didn’t you ever hook yourself?” asked Bud.

Williams considered. “Maybe once,” he said. “In ‘57 or ‘58.”

A fisherman was approaching, holding a grilse, the only evidence of any action since Ted had released his fish. He had white hair and wore a hearing aid. “Look at Williams,” he said, “all solid meat, not an ounce of fat.”

“He’s after a fly,” said Bud.

“The man’s just being honest,” replied Williams.

The fisherman displayed his fly case, filled with a summer’s worth of donations by Williams. Bud angled over for a look. “Don’t show him,” hissed Williams.

“Hat flies,” spat Bud. “Never been in the water.”

“There’s a lot of jealousy here, a lot of jealousy,” Williams said. He poked through his own collection. “There’s a winner,” he said, and handed it over.

Time moves slowly on the bank of a salmon river when few fish are showing. The conversation percolated through layers of memories. Sometimes it drifted to baseball and paused there awhile like a slowly passing cloud. Someone asked about Yastrzemski. Williams was silent a moment then smiled. “First off,” he said, “Yaz fishes with worms…” But at the slightest movement in the water the talk swayed back to fishing.

Bud was talking smallmouth bass fishing, about a river where “there’s no way you’re going to hit the water early and not catch 10 to 15 fish.”

Williams hooted. “You told me the same thing about the St. Croix and we didn’t catch 15 fish the whole week.”

“Well,” Bud said, “we caught a bunch of pickerel.”

“Little pickerel,” Williams said, spreading his hands a few inches apart. “If it’s so good up there,” he added, “I’ll make a movie with you. I’ll put your show on the map. I’ll give it a good rating.”

“I had a floater with a plug,” Bud continued. “I just threw it in and it exploded.”

“How big was it?” asked Williams.

“Four and a half pounds, a helluvafish,” Bud said.

“And you think that’s a good place for bass, huh?” Williams asked, his interest aroused.

“And you just go along the shoreline?”

“Yeah, you just poke along,” Bud said.

“That’s fun. That’s fun.” Williams said.

Soon Bud began fiddling with his reel. “When it comes to mechanical ability,” he said, “I can’t screw a light bulb in, but I know there’s something wrong with this reel.”

Williams reached over and began tinkering. Bud looked on, keeping his peace. Williams was obviously having trouble putting it together again. “It’s a little tricky getting this spool on,” he said. “Got to get it just right.”

“Yeah, well the moral is if it’s working don’t open it—use it as it is.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. You think you’re Thomas Edison?”

“Did I ever tell you you’re terrific?” said Williams. “You’re terrific.” In the distance he saw a fish break the surface. He handed Bud his reel, all in one piece. “I’m going back in there.” He stood up and took a fly from his fly case. He squinted. “Not many fish see this

one.” Then he smiled. “Oh, we’ll be tired tonight. Love it when we’re tired.” But there was no more action on the river that afternoon. Emerging from the river, he walked stiffly until circulation returned to his legs.

* * *

After dinner Bud came out on the porch. “I want you to hear this,” he said, inserting a cassette into the tape recorder. He said it was a re-creation of the 1941 All-Star game, recorded by a California sportscaster. Ted came banging outside. “Let’s get excited!” he said, peering toward the river. Roy tugged his waders on. Ted was moving ahead, down the rough-hewn steps leading to the river.

Bud flicked on the recorder. The voice was grainy above the steady roar of a simulated crowd. “Two out bottom of the ninth. The American League trails 5-4. Ted Williams the batter, tying run at third base, winning run at first in Joe DiMaggio. Williams is one for three with a walk. Takes a pitch, just misses for a ball. Williams is batting .405 on the season. Two balls one strike. There’s a long fly, home run off the parapet in the top deck! The American League wins 7-5.”

“He laughed going around the bases,” Bud said. “People said they’d never seen him so happy.” He shook his head. “Three years ago he walked on the field at Winter Haven with his balloon uniform that Johnny Orlando had outfitted—and it had to fit perfectly even then—and the writers crowded around. Who else, just by putting on the uniform, can do that?”

We strained our eyes to see Ted as he worked his pool. From inside we could hear Edna straightening up the pots waiting for Roy to take her home. Outside it was quiet, and Bud had turned up the collar on his jacket. Down below we could see the twitch of motion, Ted’s line hitting the river. As the dusk deepened even that was lost, and all we could do was sit and wait for Ted to come back.