Catch & Release

PT 2

 

If you decide not to believe anything you’re about to read here, I won’t judge you. But understand that by denying the possibility that what Im about to tell you may be true, you’re also denying the possibility that it could happen to you. Im just going to put it out there and let you choose what to do with it. 
This will be the 2nd time Im writing about the subject of catch and release. In my previous musing, I tried to share my personal conversion to C&R, and also encouraged my audience to come to their own conclusion. Here, Im going to share another account from a river that I believe redeems some of my previous misgivings of the concept.
It started in my 9th year of fly fishing. I got bit by the bug for mousing. Courtesy of my friend Jeff. I’ll expound on that story another time, but this one starts with a phone call to Jeff and asking him if he wanted to fish a local river one night. To Jeff, like many others, it’s not a question of “if” he wants to fish, but if he “should.” Jeff is funny guy, he’s a mechanical engineer, which makes him a meticulous fly fishermen, AND a faithful husband and father in his family. He’s taught me a thing or two about keeping one’s priorities straight. That is to say, I’ve learned what to do from watching him, and I’ve learned what NOT to do from watching him. 
On this occasion, Jeff had the green light for night time shenanigans on the water. I suggested that we fish a certain river, but he didn’t seem too thrilled about it, wanting to fish another river that he had been fixated on for a while. If I remember correctly, I actually went the first night by myself, partially because he didn’t like the idea of mousing this particular river. I went anyway. 
That night I caught so many decent brown trout that I almost had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Meaning that in about 250 yds of river I managed to land at least 5 fish 16” or better with the biggest one being around 20”. I caught a number of other small ones as well, that would have been more than enough considering my prior experience mousing. 
The way Jeff taught me to fish at night with mouse patterns, is to cast them up stream, making sure your line lands straight and tight to your rod tip, then give it one hard pop in the water, one that makes some noise. We call it “ringing the dinner bell.” That’s exactly what I did and it worked. 
When I got a hold of Jeff the next day told him what had happened, I don’t think he completely believed me. I think hearing about a night of mousing that went that well, seemed a little too good to be true. However, when he decided to accompany me the next evening, he found out first hand.
Between the two of us, that liked to fish one at a time, encouraging, coaching, mocking and netting. We worked our way up river that night, we managed to each catch 15 fish each, all between 13 & 23 inches. Jeff swore to me that he would never see another night of mousing like that again. “It just doesn’t happen like this.” He kept saying. 
The most memorable fish of the night happened next to a bridge. The procedure of landing a hooked brown trout at night is to make sure your headlamp stays off until you hook a fish. Small fish are brought to hand and released without any fuss, while bigger ones require you to turn on your headlamp once you know its hooked good so you can see and net the fish. Once Jeff hooked the fish and we were pretty sure it was pinned, we turned our headlamps on and got a good glimpse of the fish. A huge 23” male with a big kype. Just about the time we started screaming like little girls on a playground, we heard the low hum of a vehicle approaching the bridge. With out any kind of communication, each of us crouched down in the river, turned our lights off and went into stealth mode, all the while, Jeff silently, and diligently fought the fish. As soon as we were sure that there wasn’t any way for the vehicle to see our lights reflect off the trees in its rear view mirror, the headlamps came back on and we landed the fish. It was a tank. I’ll say for the record that since we landed that fish, larger fish have seen my net, but if that had been the biggest brown I’d ever seen in person, I die a happy fisherman, and I would wouldn’t care who believed me. The fish was released after a few pictures that didn’t turn out too bad, and we agreed that this may turn into the biggest fish that we’d ever see in one of our nets. 
The next year, I wanted to fish this river again, and reached out to my friend Cory. Cory and I fish pretty consistently. He works a swing shift, and even when the peak of guide season hits, I’ll admit that I try to schedule my trips his work schedule, so that we can still get at least a day or two a week on the water without any other guests. He knew that I had a good mousing river up my sleeve but never outright asked me to take him there. One day, I offered and he accepted. Up to this point I had taken Cory mousing before but not many times. It usually happened on the evening when we got stood up by and evening hatch, so instead of heading home, we’d opt to go out in a blaze of glory, by staying out even later throwing large mouse patterns. Other than some dinks, I don’t know that Cory had caught anything note worthy yet. 
When we first came to the river, it was already very dark. I think one of the first real signs that an individual is staring to get the hang of mousing, is when they can arrive a river they’ve never seen during daylight and can fight through what their senses are screaming at them to find even a sliver of optimism. Of course, when mousing, there’s a pretty evenly split level of responsibility, the angler does his part and the rest is up to the fish. There’s not too much in the way of fly and presentation options to run through. Any fly fisherman can find a different kind of presentation or add another variation to an already large variety of patterns, but in my experience, they’ll either be eating, or not. 
I led the way for Cory down a skinny foot path to the river bank. We left our headlamps off and assumed the risk of being swallowed by a bog, as to not spook any fish with light. When I got him situated on the first bend, I explained as best as I could what he would be casting to. Which way the river was flowing in front to him, and how much line he should be throwing and the direction he should be throwing it. One I felt that he had a pretty good idea of what he should be doing, I left him to it, and told him id be up river about 50 yards or so. Within the first 3 casts he had a missed what sounded like a nice trout. Between where I left him and where I stopped to fish, he missed at least 3 fish. By the time he got to me, I was releasing my first Brown Trout, one of about 15 inches.
For the next few hours we each landed a number of other fish. One came close to the 20” mark and we were happy with the way the night was progressing. We came up on the notorious bridge where I told Cory about the fish that Jeff had caught the year before. I gave him as detailed description  as I could, of what the river was like 30’ up stream of us, and encouraged him as best I could. At this point, he had already experienced his best night of mousing, so Im not really sure what his expectations were. All I know, is after a handful of what he thought were botched casts, he was about to give up. His 2nd or 3rd cast into some kind of grumbling about how he didn’t think it was going to happen, the water exploded! He fish barely fit in my net, one of those deals where you had to scoop the fish head first and hope that the fish would flex to the contour of the basket. It did. An educated guess put this fish around 7lbs. We got a few pictures and I even managed to capture some good footage of the fight on my go pro and and held camera of the fight and the release. The smile that had taken over Cory’s face, held for a good week or two after that evening, and returned quickly at the mention of that night. It was a fish of lifetime.
Between the excitement of the night, and what was probably partial sleep deprivation, while we were driving home, each of us shared our perspective of the big fish encounter. Probably because we were still beaming from the moment, but I won’t exclude the possibility that it may have also been in part to keep our story straight. Excitement has been known to get the best of many anglers and this fish was so remarkable that we didn’t want to stain its reputation with fruitless exaggeration. As I started to recount the moment, and realized that this was the 2nd very large male Brown Trout that hit my net, and that it happened in that same exact spot a year earlier, I started to wonder. Could that have been the same fish? I knew that the chances were extremely low, but I had to at least look at the pictures I had, that had been saved on the hard drive of my cell phone. An added perk to the fact that this fish was so big, was that the markings on the fish were undeniable. Blue hue behind the right eye, four spots in the shape of a diamond above the pectoral fin, along with the distinct markings on the face. It was undoubtedly the same exact fish. 
This took the experience of that evening to a completely new level for me as an angler. I had heard of things like that happening before to other fishermen, but it’s one of those experiences that you never truly grasp until it happens to you. I sent the pictures to a couple credible fishing friends to confirm my findings, but it was already obvious, this was the 2nd time that we had caught this fish. 
The story doesn’t stop here. Over the next few days, this remarkable fishing tale had reached the ears and eyes of a few other anglers in our area. I received an email from a guy not too far from here that wanted to know what stretch of river I was on because he claimed to hadve caught that fish at least 2 other times in the past. After a few messages back and forth where I told him I needed some “proof of life” from his end, before I could confirm or deny anything, he provided me with 2-3 very clear pictures of that same exact fish in his hands and net. At this point, without naming the river, I told him “It was next to the bridge.” The tone of his response indicated to me that the information I shared with him was exactly what he had expected me to say. 
You can do the math here, and understand why I might share this account when considering the subject of catch & release. Without anglers that are willing to practice the release of large healthy fish, there’s no way that this account could even be possible. 
There are individuals I know that resort to numbers, science, any any other means that they can come up with to support their desire to see more catch and release fishing, and even though I would agree in most of their findings, this experience is all I need. Objectivity is a hard goal to achieve in the realm of fishing, especially when there are so many things that you can implement to up your chances of success. Your desire to catch a fish is many times the things that pushes you from defeat to victory. When it comes to the debate of catch and release or sustenance fishing, each person needs to ask themselves what they enjoy more, and then do it in a way that is sustainable. 
Ive talked to a number of fishermen that practically cower in fear after they admit in conversation that they killed and ate a fish, because the tendency of some is to value the life of a fish, more than that of fellow fishermen. You can laugh, but we all know it’s true and it’s a sad thing. We would do ourselves, the fish, and other anglers, a service to keep our priorities straight. The majority of fishermen now days, live in places where the resources required to catch a fish, (time and money for gear), would go a lot farther in a grocery store than it would on a trout stream. After all, you can’t eat your fly rod. 
All this being said, I have yet to hear of a more significant fishing encounter that ends with the fish being eaten. 

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