Mile: 2,120
“Come on...yes...come on now...take it...take it...take it!” The biggest trout of my life was moving towards my fly slowly, steadily, purposefully...
Madison jumped in riding shotgun and I piled in the back seat of “The Beast”, a three quarter ton 1991 Chevrolet Suburban as white as the snow and the size of a small house. We were headed northwest. Idaho bound. Bill as our captain. Bill has a friend that owns some land along the Snake River and has built a series of ponds along a running creek that hold trout that are absolute monsters. And we were headed that way. It’s amazing to be around someone who has seen a small town grow for the last forty years. “My good friend runs that burger joint there and they have the best burgers in town. This ranch here on your right was started by my buddy and he has really done a good job with it. This run down shop here on the right is where they use to build some incredible drift boats but unfortunately they had to close their doors this year. This peak up here on the left is where we would park and downhill ski back to town before it got to be overcrowded. I duck hunted in those woods when it was still public land.” Line after line Madison and I sat there learning the history of Jackson, WY and the neighboring towns. The wealth of knowledge in this man’s head is immense and he’s a good story teller at that. The ability to tell a good story is the ability to teach, to inspire, to motivate, to entertain, to lead, to share. Story telling is a powerful tool and if you have the ability, don’t waste it.
We pulled up and Bill put The Beast in park. It was still early morning and the rays of sun were bouncing low off the water. The day that would ensue would be one of the best trout fishing days of my life.
I started off with a black wooly bugger per Bills suggestion. It wasn’t long until I felt my line get heavy. With a swift lift of my rod and stripping the slack taught “thnnNNGGG!” I was hung, hung on an 18” rainbow trout lip who was not ready to roll over and give in. He put up a good fight and gave it his all. Several minutes later I brought him in, netted him, took the hook out, told him “thanks” and sent him on his way to demolish more mayflies landing on the surface. This continued with my second fish, third, fourth. Amid me working on bringing in number five I heard a shout off to my left, it was Madison. “Ohh yeah! It’s a good one! It’s a good one!” Pretty soon Bill was standing by his side net in hand. The first fish over 20” for the day went to Madison. A big rainbow! “Agh! I love that!” I said as if I was speaking to a crowd of people. There’s only one thing that might be better than catching fish, and that’s watching your friends bring in a big ole toad of a trout.
We bounced from pond to pond as they were all connected by a stream feeding them oxygen and moving water. Around noon they started to get pretty picky and I must have cut and tied on ten different flies trying to figure out what they wanted. In my impatience I didn’t change from 5x tippet back to 3x when I tied on a giant segmented streamer. One that would scare any fish that wasn’t a big boy. On my fifth cast I saw a flash of darkness and a tree trunk was racing towards my streamer. “WHAMMM!” He hit it with a fury like a linebacker when he smashes a receiver going full speed in the open field and helmets go flying. I set the hook firm and solid, “This is the biggest trout you’ve ever had hit your fly!” My mind unconsciously screams inside my head. I had done it! I chose the right fly! I casted well! Great hook set! But as my rod tip double over it flung back out like a bow when the archer looses the arrow. My mind was searching, grasping and in a fraction of a second it set in. Madison might as well have set a fifty pound kettlebell on my chest. I fell backwards to my butt and sat there looking at nothing. Thinking only of one thing. 5x tippet. It is equivalent to 4.75 lb test line. It wasn’t enough. A trout like that, a hit like that, with a hook set needed to secure the fly in the corner of his mouth, it couldn’t take it. It just snapped. The biggest trout of my life. There he goes. Gone.
It must have been written across my face plain as day, and I know I said some words along with that because Madison asked me if I wanted to go home. “No no, I’m ok. I just need a minute.” Something like that you replay over and over in your head of what you would have done differently in hindsight.
No other fish wanted a streamer, I couldn’t get another hit. So I changed to this fly and then to that one. Still nothing. But now the sun was high and the grasshoppers were coming alive in the fields, moving away from you as you walked through the grass like a puddle of water when a tire hits it. “It’s hopper time” I say to myself. This whole time Bill is slowly but consistently bringing fish in. It’s amazing to watch a truly talented fisherman. It’s artwork. So I tie on a foam bodied hopper and begin to sail him out to the middle. Twenty minutes of nothing, so I began to experiment. Big twitches. Little twitches. Up down up down I tried getting a reaction strike. Nothing. Until I tried the smallest movement I could muster my fly forwards with. I don’t know that my fingers were moving even an inch at a time as they stripped my hopper along the surface. “Come on...yes...come on now...take it...take it...take it!” The biggest trout of my life was moving towards my fly slowly, steadily, purposefully. In one fluid movement his head rose and my hopper disappeared.
Call me Captain Ahab because I just hooked into Moby Dick. It was a roller coaster ride and he had the steering wheel. Down into the deep water he went, taking drag nearly to my backing. Then banking right he cut through the water like a rocket. Breaking the surface he flew, head thrashing, airborne he went. He had taken off with such speed that my fly line couldn’t keep up. My line was entering the water at my twelve o’clock as if it continued down into the core of the earth, but he was airborne nearly at my two o’clock and I was feeling every headshake he gave. A moment frozen in time. My eyes had taken a picture that will remain in my memory forever. This giant that I had expected to play tug a war with in the deep water was showcasing his high flying acrobatic skills. His sheer size looked unnatural that far out of the water. His nose must have reached four feet above the waters surface. The midday sun gleaming off his side showcasing his color for all the world to see. For that one second of air time might as well have lasted a full sixty seconds, and my heart ceased beating for the entirety of it. Back in the water and off like a rocket again he went putting an even bigger arching bend in my fly line. Even though I was applying the maximum amount of drag to the line with my left hand that I dared put on my 3x tippet, my line couldn’t cut through the water at the speed that he did leaving a rainbow arch as it trailed behind. Again he shot out of the water as if being thrown by some underwater giant head shaking violently trying to free himself. Again my heart stopped for a moment until he reinterred the water with a wake sending splash. For fifteen minutes we would exchange who was in control. He would dominate for a forty foot run and then reluctantly give the line back as he regained his strength. Back and forth this went, the whole while my mind hyper focused thinking about each knot that I had tied joining my fly line to my leader, my leader to my tippet, and my tippet to my fly. I was half believing, half hoping that each knot would stand this test it was thrown into. There’s always a balance of belief and hope when you have such a big fish on the line. It’s between those two that I seesawed back and forth depending on whether he was on one of his crash course runs stripping line off the reel or if he was reluctantly giving line back to me.
Madison ran over with the net and prepped himself. I’ve seen many fish hit in the head with the net and knocked off the line in my day. This fear was fully present in this moment of action. Once the eyes of this massive trout caught a glimpse of Madison, myself, and the net he was off again like a lightning bolt, taking the line with him. However, this run was noticeable shorter before he ran out of gas and my seesaw dipped a little heavier towards the “belief” side. With each following run they became shorter and shorter, with that came a stronger belief that I had done it. He was ready to give in and let me have my moment of glory. Madison netted him head first and heaved the net over towards me. Lifting this massive trout seemed surreal. His sheer size was dominating and commanded respect. After Madison grabbed a few pictures I set him back in his domain rocking him back and forth helping him get oxygen back in his body. Slowly and surely he cruised back to the depths to once again be the most dominate force under the water.
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