14. Miracle Mile and Beyond

Mile: 1,685

 “zzzZZZZzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZ...” my drag was being stripped out as if someone was letting a kite out in the middle of a hurricane. I knew it was a big fish. I hadn’t even laid eyes on the golden brown beauty but I knew. I knew. He had to be the biggest I had ever hooked into. Had to be. That first run you’re always just along for the ride. Hold on and pray. You don’t know how long the ride will be or what underwater stump or rock the monster will try to use to break free. The only thing you can do is hold on and pray. “...ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz....zzzzzzzz...zzzz...zz” I had survived the first run. He was still on. He had given the run everything he had to try and break free but...I still felt his weight. I turned his head gently, I didn’t have a choice fighting him with 4 lb test line on my ultralight spin-cast in some of the fastest current the Platte River holds. To some, that will tell you everything you need to know, if that doesn’t mean much to you think of it like this; you’re taking a 100 lb Labrador Retriever for a walk through a chicken pen and the leash is made of yarn. Think on that for a second. You’re job is play the tension just forcefully enough that you slow the labs thrusts forward down just enough so that the chickens can escape but too much force holding him back, the yarn will easily break and you have dead chickens on your hands. It’s a dance. Give and take. Give and take. Keep him on long enough so that he tires and he can be led out of the fast water. I applied the max amount of force I was willing to put on the yarn, I mean 4 lb test line, his head turned and he started my way. Now it’s my turn. Reeling as fast as I can I’m keeping the tension steady while he bends his will to mine and comes out of the fast current. He’s like a boxer surviving the last few punches before the bell rings and he’s able to take a quick rest, ready to come out swinging the next round. Forty feet out, thirty five feet, thirty, twenty-five, twenty, “Come on big boy, that’s it!” I see him rising up out of the deep current, I was reeling fast now. “Ding ding” the bell of the next round of the bout apparently sounded underwater and I realized quickly I was not quite in the drivers seat just yet. “ZZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz” the second run was not as long as the first but he made it back into the fast moving waves of the Platte. When they reach the fast water, the ball is in their court. They have the upper hand. The judges don’t have to score the bout, it’s clear who’s winning. But I know, as long as I don’t get knocked out, I will win the fight. The run ends and I’m able to turn his head again back towards me. Now he’s really coming in fast. He’s given it his all on two long runs and I still have him on the other end of the line. It’s now my fight to lose. 

Clients and guides in drift boats were now rounding the bend from their morning put in. I never took my eyes off the fish but I could feel the fingers pointing, the exclamations of the clients from the front and back of the boats, and the curses from the clients in the rowers seats. I soaked it all in. I knew I was in a good spot. I woke up at 6am that morning, made pour over coffee, changed a flat inner tube on my mountain bike and hit the trail. I had ridden two to three miles down river from the camp ground into state land. I was on a mission. Find a spot on the river that holds the big boy. The spot that your everyday average joe would not put forth the effort to get to. To find the Mac daddy trout that saw the least number of artificial baits per day so that when I put something in front of him, he would be willing to give it a try. I had found it. There is a shoal in the middle of a bend that proceeds a deep hole of fast moving water. Off to the side there was a tornado of water that would make any trout fisherman salivate. He would be down there. The one everyone wanted. The most hunted and the most wise. Knowing that since guides weren’t casting, my chances were higher. Clients might get close but probably not to the spot you need to be. And there, I began fishing before any of the guided boat even set out at 8am. 

Now at 8:30am the clients and guides were watching me fight this brown. Much like a tiring team of tug-a-war contestants the effort against me was waining quickly. He came closer and closer, now only ten feet out. Five feet. I grab my net and quickly assess that it’s too small. Laughing to myself how amazing this whole experience is. He saw my six foot stature towering above and started one last short run but exhausted, he couldn’t maintain it. I now easily controlled the direction of his course with the end of my ultralight rod and guided him into the net. Even though his body bent down in the net, his tail still protruded five to six to inches out of the net on the back side. Twenty-two inches. Twenty-two inches of brown trout beauty. After a couple of pictures I let him return back to the water to accept his defeat, learn a little more, and become bigger, smarter, and harder to catch. 

It was a rich moment. The biggest brown trout of my life so far. And I hate to say this, but I have to. If you know any fly fisherman you know that fly fishing for trout is king. It is a game chess and I had caught this monster in a game of checkers. Don’t misunderstand, I was ecstatic that I had just landed the largest brown trout of my life on an ultra light using 4 lb test line. But in the mind of any serious fly fisherman, that catch comes with an asterisk. I will never turn my nose up at someone else telling a story of catching a fish, especially a fish of this size, no matter how they catch it. However, when it comes to me, this is a catch I will tell for the rest of my life, but when speaking with another fly fisherman, I know that it will need to be clarified. It comes with an asterisk. Regardless, I had caught a big boy and was overjoyed. But now, it was time to do so on the fly! 

I had caught this big brown in the fast moving deep water below the shoals and below the tornado or eddy of deep water. I knew that if I wanted to catch the grandfather, that’s where he would be. I waded out into the mossy still water of the eddy and felt my feet slowly sinking into the muck. Every minute they were another quarter inch deeper. Soon it was up to the tongue on my wading boots making my feet feel like someone had tied a fifty pound dumbbell to each one. I was double nymphing (fishing two flies below an indicator) roughly six feet deep. After strategically working the drift so that my flies swirled in the eddy in “free drift” as it’s called, it happened. My indicator swirled under by the pull of the current, but it did not pop back up. “ffffFFFFTTT” I set the hook and I was hung. My 3 wt fly rod was doubled over. The log that I was hung on began to move. Down. Down. Down into the depths it started. I felt a head shake like a horse whips it’s tail at a pestering horsefly. “I have him” I say somewhere in between disbelief and excitement. I had done it. I made the effort to mountain bike miles away from other shore fisherman. I had chosen the right eddy to fish, fly to use, correct depth, I had been patient casting in the same location for the last twenty minutes knowing that the water looked too good not to hold a monster. I had kept the persistence and confidence that he was there and it was a matter of time. The presentation was right. He had fallen for the bead headed prince nymph and hook set was right. Another head shake, this one was more serious as if a younger brother scores a basket on his older brother and the older brother kicks it into the next gear propelled realizing the severity of the situation. Another head shake and “NO!....NO! NO! NO!” I shout out loud sickened to my core. I wanted to throw up. I had just been shook off by a fish of a lifetime on my fly rod. And just like that monsters of the deep grow old, fat, and wise never to be seen again. 

Ohh and on my way back I blew my spare inner tube and walked my bike the three miles back to camp. Tis is life. And it goes on. One monster (asterisk*) brought in and the grandfather sinks lower and grows older getting the best of yet another angler.