The Search For Big-Ugly

Time is very limited. I have to go back to teaching on the 7th and that will basically be that, aside from the odd Saturday--though not likely. Teaching can be depressing. Yes, there is summer, but then there is 10 months of papers, planning, red tape, NCLB, parents, administrators, professional development (to give administrators a reason to exist), gangs, guns, jackasses, knives, drugs, fights, murders, and a twenty minute lunch break. There are the moments of learning--the break-throughs. Those moments are magical.

But, the fishing. The past three nights have been spent on the two very un-secret Wisconsin rivers close to the Twin Cities. I took tonight off because I've been wet wading for three days and I wanna let my feet dry--sometimes the toenails get a little waterlogged and loose. There have been successes. Some pretty big successes. I haven't measured any of the fish caught but they were respectable, 18'' or 19''--maybe a little larger. I dunno. I'm a poor guess. But, they were brown trout and that means something.

My first really nice fish came from the Yellowstone river below the lake in the park. It was a cutthroat of 20'' which is rare because these fish live mostly on bugs and they seem to top out at 18''. I caught the fish on a size 16 Adams. I was fifteen years old. I was ecstatic. In the photo I am wearing old (probably Hodgeman) waders and white leather tennis shoes for wading boots. I didn't have the money at the time for both. The first big rainbow I caught was a steelhead from the Brule in Wisconsin that measured 25''. I caught a 28'' the next day. Both fish came on a orange glo-bug drifted using the old mono and fly rod method. The first big brown came from the Rush River. It was an even 20''. That was a big day. I knew how hard it was to hook and land such a fish. I was a senior in high school. Oddly enough, I caught it on a size twenty hares ear nymph--my induction to the 20/20 club. In those days, the Rush was warmer, and it was hard to walk the stream bed near El Paso and not scrunch tons of crayfish. There were sculpins and dace and chubs everywhere. There weren't many trout then. Most fish were stocked and there seemed to be really big fish, often plainly visible. The Rush still has big fish. Though falling stream temps have resulted in wild fish and more fish. My largest brown ever came on a chartreuse Clouser minnow swung through a shady yet shallow riffle mid-afternoon. It measured 27 inches.

Out west the rivers and the mountains seem to overshadow the fish, or the rumors of big fish. Maybe it is because if you put your time in on the Yellowstone between Livingston and Big Timber you will catch a huge fish. Big fish are an inevitability there. But, if you walk into the Yellowstone Angler in Livingston and look through their streamer collection you will see why: they have and fish huge flies--2, 1x, 2x. The sort of stuff some guys throw for pike and musky around here. There are some people who say that fly fishing and fly fisherman won't catch big fish. That is pure bullshit. It's tough to beat a big fly for big brown trout. I think per acre there are just as many huge fish in the Rush as there are in the Yellowstone, Madison, or Missouri. However, I think the difference is that in Montana a cadre of fly fishermen have developed that know how to fish them. They also have the luxury of fishing many miles of water by drift boat. Ones odds rise considerably when one can put their fly in front of many fish. The other thing is those methods are marketed readily to visiting anglers. Just look how long it took us to get around to fly fishing for Lake Superior steelhead. Many anglers said it just wasn't effective. "Gotta use mono or throw hardware." They were wrong.

Around here there is a mythology surrounding big brown trout. Since most people throw small flies they catch mostly smaller fish (though if you put any fly where a big brown lives appropriately he may eat it). In northern Wisconsin, rivers like the Brule, Namakagon, and White hold some truly enormous fish. I've been lucky to take a few from the Nam, and while I've experienced some success on the upper Brule and the Bibbon Marsh of the White I've never experienced the massive trout that are known to live there. On, both rivers, however, I've heard the toilet flushing-like sounds of big trout slurping Hex spinners in the dark. Some other time, perhaps. Be forewarned, the mosquitoes are horrible in both places.

The appeal in hunting large browns around here (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan) is mostly the tradition: the image of someone like Dr. Albert Schweitzer (who fished northern Wisconsin) swinging a big Hornberg and catching eight pound browns (which he did) all in a late-evening scene that rivals any romantic, Albion inspired scene painted by Frederic Turner. But, also it is the secretive nature of the hunt. Rumor leads many demented anglers into the brush. However, electro-shocking surveys have made it a little easier. I know of a 29 inch brute living in a brush pile that I have been hunting for years--I'm gonna wait for the new moon and hurl a mouse pattern in there and see what happens. Rumor and secrets fit the landscape; our streams are small, brushy, claustrophobic. The some of the best seem to flow through dense coniferous forest in the north. Around here, a return to prairie grass seems to help narrow and increase flows while decreasing temperatures--not necessarily the best for growing big browns, but brook trout populations are exploding and they are the natives. Big brook trout hunting is even more secretive--the mythology of the lost beaver pond is another story.

So, I have two weeks then I'm back into the classroom with all of its glories and disasters. At least in the off-season there is First Avenue, 2-fer-1s at Lyle's, and a very understanding girlfriend.