New Site

I'm moving everything over to wordpress. Find it here.

Old Fish (Part 3) The Legendary Rainbow

This took a little work to get right.

A 25'' rainbow from Trout Lake in Yellowstone National Park. I fished this lake for years and caught nothing but fat, 16-20'' cutthroats--nothing wrong with that, but I had heard about these rainbows. These huge, fat, scud-slurping lake-bows.

This lake was so packed with bugs and other fauna that you could see huge schools of BIG cutts just cruising like giant whales with their mouths open taking in the scuds and other bugs--just an amazing place.

But, the rainbows? I had never seen one. But, they were reputed to be there.

But, one day, lazily trolling across the open water of the lake this guy hammers my bugger and here we are. Big (and so was I, geez).

Sadly, the Park Service is planning to remove all of the (non-native )rainbows from this lake because they have been deemed a threat to the (native) cutthroat population. However, it's a little misguided since there has been no evidence of hybridization between species and cutts far outnumber the bows.

I'm all for the natives, but let this one be.