The Fisherman Or The Fish: Who's Really In Control?

So there we were. Doug and I, on our favorite river, The Swan River, for a day of fishing. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and about eighty degrees. It was the kind of day you dream about for river fishing. The gang hooks were tied, the bait bags were stocked with our favorite live bait (worms), and everything was pointing towards a perfect day fishing.

As a matter of fact, about 10 minutes after we arrived at the first fishable stretch of river, I heard Doug yell, "Fish on!" He fought and landed the nice eighteen inch Rainbow Trout with ease, then followed that up with another one. Oh yea, back to back fish. This was going to be a good day. We continued to fish for the next hour or so, both landing multiple fish that were around eighteen inches. They were all very nice trout, but after catching three or four fish that size on ultra light fishing gear, you get lulled into a sort of trance. You start to think that this dream is never going to end. This is how trout work. They try to lull you into a false sense of security, then BAM, they yank, you right back to reality. It's almost as if you're the one being fooled.

So we wade to the head of a nice pool and the only way to fish it from where we were was to fish directly below ourselves into the deeper water. It was a strange scenario, to be sure. Under normal circumstances I would never fish a hole in this fashion, but under these circumstances, there was no other way. There was also a fallen tree on the left side of the hole, which extended all of the way into the deeper water. In hindsight, the conditions definitely favored any fish that might be swimming in that hole. That didn't seem to matter though, because after fishing for about twenty minutes Doug began his move to the next hole. And I was just about to make the same move when I felt a pull on my line.

I, of course, set the hook and the fight began. Now mind you, thirty minutes earlier I had caught and released two or three eighteen to twenty inch Rainbow trout. And that is exactly what this fish felt like for the first minute or two. Another nice trout. Then after five or six minutes of routine fighting, something happened.

All of the sudden the fish stopped. I couldn't budge it. It was as if I were suddenly snagged on a rock. So, this of course meant that I had to begin to get upset. I started moving my rod to different angles, pulling with varying degrees of pressure, and all in all just trying no get myself unstuck from what I thought was the bottom. And of course during all of this the profanities were flying about the fact that the fish had "hung me up". So I waded to my left along where the fallen tree was, reeling in line as I went. I was looking into the water with my polarized glasses on as I waded, until my line was pretty much vertical to where I was standing. As I looked into the deeper water where my line was I saw a very disturbing sight.

There, probably four feet deep was a very large rainbow trout on the end of my line! It didn't look be a lot longer than the eighteen to twenty inch rainbows that we had been catching all day, but this monster had to be twice as wide. I saw nothing but a huge red stripe glistening in the sun. My heart skipped a beat as I tried to grab a hold of my composer, and then.....Snap! The line broke.

I suppose there is no need to go into the tantrum that ensued, but let me say that it would have made the worst two year old in the world seem like an angel. There's no way to tell exactly how big that trout was, but after seeing it, it was easily the biggest I had ever had a hold of to that point in my fishing career. It was as wide a trout as I had ever seen, other than in books and magazines. I was not happy with myself to say the least, but after the initial mental anguish wore off, I did learn something. Something that helped me to actually land the largest rainbow trout that I ever have one short year later. That fish did the same thing. It got itself sideways in the current and I couldn't budge it. But this time I just waited it out, keeping my line tight the entire time, and not trying to "horse" the fish. Eventually the trout got tired, and I was able to land it. So that's the lesson that I learned and I'm sharing with anyone who reads this article. Big trout can get themselves sideways in the current and make it feel as if they are snagged under a rock or something. If you wait them out, while keeping pressure on them, they will eventually get tired and begin to move again. By the way, that's usually straight downstream.

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