One Fish, Two Fish, Nice Fish, Hog

hog

There is a hierarchy to the words you use to describe landed trout. It’s a loose hierarchy and probably depends on what waters you are fishing. For me, fish are sorted into the categories of dink, not bad, good fish, nice fish and hog. It is socially acceptable to describe your own fish as a dink or not bad and maybe even to call one of your own fish a good fish, but for nice fish and hog it is more appropriate (and satisfying) to wait for another angler to call your fish ‘nice’ or ‘a hog.’ None of these categories really work on a small brookie stream in which a 10” fish is as big as it gets.

A dink is self-explanatory, it is anything bigger than a fry to about 9 inches. If it’s been a slow day and one of the few fish you’ve caught, then a dink is a welcome sight. It’s a fish and you caught it, you’re not skunked. Dinks can be kind of fun, they come in quick, but sometimes they go nuts on the end of the line and they still merit at least a glance at them before you through them back. Maybe they have nice colors, or you want to check if they still have their parr marks. A friend of mine had taken a trip to Montana and had a disappointing day; they hadn’t caught many fish and the few they had were mostly dinks. Their guide was trying to make the best of it and when my friend pulled in a dink, the guide said, “that’s nine inches of turbo!” with false enthusiasm. It kind of summed up the whole experience for him. Dinks happen.

A good fish is a trout that you’re not embarrassed to land. Its length is from about 11 inches to 14 inches. If you’ve been fishing for any length of time, you’re probably not going to want to take a picture of a good fish, but as you land a good fish, someone in the boat will probably say, “I’ll take that all day” and mean it. A good fish will have some fight and it is undeniably a ‘real’ fish. Depending on the stream and your own expertise a good fish might be a great accomplishment. My personal Everest is the lower Savage River in western Maryland. It’s a tough river with picky wild brown trout. They demand a perfect drift and the right fly. If I do manage to hook one, there is no guarantee that it will be landed. These are wild browns who will fight all the way to the net and then keep fighting. When I wade the Savage by myself and catch a good fish, I’m ecstatic. A good fish can be a great fish under the right circumstances.

A nice fish is a trout from about 16-18 inches. It’s a no doubter fish that when you land it someone on the boat will say, “that’s a nice fish,” with an emphasis on the nice. When you’re starting out, you will probably lose a lot of nice fish and when you start landing them with any regularity, you’re at the next level of your fishing game. You will probably want to take a picture of a nice fish, especially in the early days when you’re not at all sure that there are more nice fish in your future. I just got back from a trip to Tennessee and early on the first day, I landed a nice fish. A rainbow that was probably sixteen inches. We were still anchored at the put-in; the guide was rigging D’s rod and it was maybe my third cast. I pulled it in and my guide asked, “you want a picture?” Without thinking about it too much I said, “nah, but let me get a look at him before we let him go.” I hadn’t realized it, but that was a major step for me, catching nice fish stopped being this big, almost accidental occurrence and has started to be something of an expectation, but still a pleasant experience. It was the first time I had fished with this guide and it also got me some street cred (or stream cred) with him. He later told a mutual friend that D and I are good people (we tip well, so that helps). And the cherry on the cake: a wade fisher also gave me a “nice fish” as we released it; that guy is a class act, whoever he is.

A hog is a big ass trout that puts up a fight. Most of these still break me off or come unbuttoned. A hog can be 19” long if it’s a fatty, but I would argue that any trout 20” or more is a hog. I don’t land many hogs, but I’m starting to hook them with regularity, which I take as a good sign. I’m sure there are people out there for whom 20” is nothing special, but I hope I never become one.

On our recent trip to Tennessee we had a couple of run ins with hogs. The first was a brown that slammed D’s midge at the end of her drift just as she was picking up to recast. It must have thought that the fly was an emerger that was getting it away because it hit that fly hard. D went from gently recasting to fighting a hog in a second and did pretty well, but the circumstances didn’t favor her. The fly was already well down stream and she never really got a great hook set. The brown jumped a couple of times and we could all see that it was at least 20” and absolutely a hog. With each jump me and Sam, the guide, would each let out a big “woah!”. It broke off though and we were just left with the memory and the adrenaline. The second run in with a hog happened that same day; it was late in the afternoon and we were getting close to the takeout. Fishing had slowed down considerably, and we were all chatting comfortably when my indicator went down and I set the hook, but then my line didn’t budge. I had hooked a stump, but then the stump shook its head. “I think this is a nice fish,” was all I got out and I started to wind in the slack to get this fish on the reel right away. I never saw it, but it took off right at the boat. I was reeling to keep up, but it was hopeless, he went straight at me, under the boat and used the slack to shake my #20 midge off in a second. In retrospect, I should have just stripped in the line by hand and worried about getting him on the reel once I had him under more control, but I didn’t. I’m always haunted by these kind of encounters, the ones where you never even see the fish, or only get a quick glimpse of it before it disappears forever. Those kinds of fish take on a mythic quality and become legends you tell yourself so that you’ll be ready next time. They become your own personal Loch Ness Monsters.

The next day, I had my final encounter with a hog during our trip. We were fishing with Patrick, one of my favorite guides on a stretch of water we both really like. There are some big fish in this water, but not in high numbers. You don’t get a lot of strikes, but when you do, it’s likely to be a nice fish. It keeps you on your toes. There’s not a lot of talk in the boat, everyone is concentrating on the fishing, getting a good drift and making sure you don’t miss the hook set. D had landed a few nice fish already, but I hadn’t. I had missed two strikes and the morning had gone on long enough that a slight panic was setting in. Too early to worry about getting skunked, but if it went on much longer, I might get some razzing from Patrick and some pitying comments from D. I was about 30 minutes from the dreaded “do you want to take my spot at the front of the boat? I don’t mind.” Shudder.

Then the indicator went down and I set the hook. A solid set and instantly the line was alive with something substantial on the end of it. Hallelujah, it sped off upstream away from the boat, not towards it. The fish put itself on the reel by taking off away from me. Then it started peeling off line and then I was close to my backing. It was hauling ass up stream, into the current. Finally, I got it to slow down and when it came back at me, I was able to keep up with it. Each run, I was able to reel in more line and each run it ended up in a little shallower water than the last time, now it was just below the surface, running under the boat, but not so deep that I couldn’t control it and then Patrick got it in the net. I had caught the hog. Now, if God forbid, Patrick dropped the net or it slipped out, that was on him. I had caught the hog. I had witnesses. But Patrick of course, didn’t drop the net, we got the fish in for the pics and to measure it. A fatty shaped at 21”. Not any kind of record, but a no doubt hog, my first real hog if I’m being honest. I hope there are bigger fish in my future, but I doubt there will be ones that I feel as good about. For once, we got my little Nessie in the boat and I have pics to prove it.

My Verdict on Saltwater fly fishing is in: meh.

meh

As I mentioned in my last post, D and I went on a package saltwater fly fishing trip. I got a text from the fishing manager of the nearby Orvis shop asking if we would be interested in joining the excursion after another couple had to cancel. We had been talking about trying salt and this seemed like a good way to get an introduction. I guess it was, it’s just that neither of us really liked it all that much. Full disclosure, we probably would have liked it more if we had caught more fish, who wouldn’t?

I get that other people like it, but I just found it all underwhelming. For me it didn’t scratch the fly fishing itch. It also didn’t help that we weren’t in love with the lodge. The lodge was clean, very well run and staffed by very nice people who sincerely worked hard to make sure people had a good time, but it wasn’t for us. It was one of those all-inclusive places at which you ate meals together at common tables. It kind of felt like you were on a cruise and not really in another country and D and I are very much not cruise people.

Let’s start with the group meal, the whole thing only works if everyone is on their best behavior and that never happens. On day one, I introduced myself to a tablemate and asked where he was from, he said Richmond, Virginia. I said something like, “I’ve been there, it’s a great town (I always try to say something nice about where someone is from, because, why not?).” He asked me where I was from and I said Washington, DC to which he replied “Northern Virginia is not Virginia, I’m from the real Virginia,” to which I replied, “We live in DC, not Virginia.” He than said, “that’s even worse.”

It takes a certain kind of person to insult someone to their face for no reason within five minutes of meeting them. I have absolutely zero patience for this kind of jerk and will ditch them unreservedly. But for the moment, I was trapped at the table. I switched to talk to fishing, where does he fish back home? He named some rivers where he fished for smallmouth bass, I mentioned that I fish the South Fork of the Shenandoah a lot and he informed me that “the largemouth have taken over the South Fork and there are hardly any smallmouth in it anymore.” Like I said, I have zero patience for this kind of thing so I said, “what are you talking about? I fish it twenty times a year and catch hundreds of smallies, there are largemouth in spots, but the South Fork is a smallmouth fishery.” To which the jerk proclaimed, “the smallmouth have been pushed out.”

Jerks usually talk in pronouncements and often have nice spouses who you instantly feel sorry for. This guy was no exception. I refused to say another word to the guy, but engaged his long-suffering wife in conversation. She was very nice, interesting and was retired from important work that she talked about with passion (I’m not saying what it was because I want her to have some anonymity and peace). Jerk cuts her off and starts blowharding about some nonsense. Sorry ma’am, but I can’t save you; I made the mistake of sitting next to him at dinner, but you made the mistake of marrying him. For the rest of the dinner I physically turned away and talked to people at the other end of the table and for the rest of the trip I avoided the jerk with great alacrity.

When I’m on vacation, I don’t want to have to avoid people who tell me they hate my home town and are jerks to their wives. I don’t want to eat with them and I don’t want to have to work to avoid them. There is something about the all-inclusive experience that attracts these kinds of people; people who are jerks to your face and then are puzzled why no one will talk to them more than once.

Now the fishing, we head out in a panga with our guide and here is where I get my inkling that I’m not going to like this kind of fishing. There is a lot of downtime, a lot. First we are in the boat for an hour to get to where we are fishing, okay, I drive a long way to get to streams, but its’ weird to be on the water and still not be at the fishery. Then we take turns to fish, which is weird. You know what I like? Fly fishing. You know what I don’t like as much? Waiting my turn to fly fish.

On a stream, D and I will fish a pool or two together and then one of us will head off to do their own exploring, coming together every occasionally, to compare notes. In a drift boat we are both fishing, but in a panga, you take turns and wait and wait and wait. Some of the anglers on this trip were paired with guys who were all about getting their clients in to some fish and getting some early success; these guides took their sports to spots where they could blind cast and have a chance at a hookup. Our guide was more traditional, for him fly fishing the flats is sight fishing and casting to specific fish. Over three days we saw maybe six bonefish and caught a couple. I would rate the experience in the Not Skunked Category in my system for rating fishing trips. From worst to best, my categories are:

It’s Nice Just to be Outside
Not Skunked
We got in to some fish
We Had an Amazing Day
If I Quit My Job, I Could Do This Everyday

The Guide was a good guy, but he had his program and if it wasn’t working, or if the sports couldn’t get with the program, oh well. After the second slow day with the guide, we were talking about maybe asking the lodge to make a change with our guide when something extraordinary happened. We were finishing up the day, maybe hitting one more spot when the guide spotted a Belizean teen on a beach with an American fly fisher. The teen was waving to the boat to come in to them. Our guide knew the teen and we went over.

It turns out that the teen was the apprentice of a guide from town who had taken out this woman and another client (also a woman) from a local hotel for some fly fishing. The guide had left the teen and the woman on the beach while he took the second client into the mangroves for some fishing. He had dropped them off at 8am and now, at 2pm he still had not come back. They had been stuck on that beach with no shade, no food and no water for seven hours. At one point, the teen had found a bottle of water floating in the ocean and the two had split it. We gave them water and a ride back to their hotel.

The client who had been left on the beach was much more collected than I would have been. When we pulled up, she had the wherewithal to give us a concise update on her condition and a quick fishing report, “We’ve been here since 8am, our guide never came back with my friend. I caught one small barracuda broke off a big bonefish on the rocks on a Christmas Island special. That was my only fly.”

Now, that’s a bad guide, considering recent events and in homage to the gods of fishing, we decided to give the guide another chance and didn’t ask the lodge to make any changes. We had another slow day on the water and then spent the last dinner trying to avoid the jerk before scurrying to our rooms to pack. Since we’ve been back, I’ve been monitoring the news from Belize to make sure that the second client from the bad guide hadn’t come to some bad end that would require me to reach out to the authorities. Between the jerk at dinner, the waiting to fish and the rescuing of marooned anglers, like I said: meh.

Guides I Have Known

driftboat

I fish with guides and I fish by myself. I tend to use guides when I’ve traveled a ways to get to the water. We’ve been to Montana a couple of times and did floats with guides for everyday of the trip. I figure that if I’m going to fly to Washington State, rent a car and drive three hours, I might as well try to get the most out of the trip and hire guides. Also, I might hire a guide for new water than pick his brain about spots where I can fish on my own. One of the hardest things about new water is figuring out where you can legally access the water. The last thing I need on my day off is some conflict with a local.

Closer to home, I have two guides I use regularly for floats; one for the South Fork of the Shenandoah in Virginia and one for the a couple of rivers in Tennessee. We try to get out with both of them a few times a year and we look forward to the floats for weeks ahead of time. Right now, I have a float with my Shenandoah guide on the books for April and with my Tennessee guide in May. Not only do we catch a lot of fish when we float with these guys, we also have a blast. They’re both very different people. CT, the guide I fish with a lot in Virginia is a retired park ranger. Patrick, the guide from Tennessee, is a young guy in his twenties, just starting out in life. But what they both have in common is that they give a damn. They sincerely want people to have a good time on the river, while respecting it. The care about their clients and they care about their rivers.

We did a float with a guide once in Arkansas and for lunch, he got out a camp stove and made this elaborate meal on the shore. It was nice, but a little weird. It definitely established who the sports were and who the clients were. Both Patrick and CT have a much more relaxed approach to lunch, Patrick has some sandwiches from a local gas station and some chips you can choose from and with CT, we just bring our own lunch. In my opinion, the best lunches on fishing days are simple and eaten in the boat while staring at a rising fish that you plan on casting to as soon as you’re done eating. Lunch is a chance to catch your breath, go take a leak and then get on with it.

Both Patrick and CT are the kind of guys who likes to stay busy. I asked CT what he did on his day off one time and he told me, “I was going to go fishing, but I didn’t feel like dragging the boat out on my one day off this month, you know what I mean?”

Me: “yeah, I could see that.”

CT: “so instead, I just grabbed my chainsaw and cut up this dead ash tree to lay up some firewood for the winter, you know?”

Me: “No.”

Both Patrick and CT seem to be as happy as either I or my wife are when we land a nice fish. Patrick’s a highly technical trout fisherman who enjoys talking fly tying and presentation strategies. CT does some wade guiding for trout in Virginia small streams, but we usually fish with him out of his drift boat for smallies. Like I said, he’s a retired park ranger and a lot of the float is just him telling us stuff he knows about the history of the Shenandoah Valley, the ecology of the river, the names of trees along the bank, or some crazy story about a tourist doing something dumb from his ranger days.

Maybe because we’ve been fishing with CT a long time, or because we’re fishing for smallies and the occasional bluegill, CT floats are relaxed. We know we’re going to catch fish, probably a lot of them, and let’s all just take what the river gives us. D and I have been fishing with CT a few times a year for about four years now and it’s as comfortable as it gets. It’ll usually start out with him saying to me, “get one off that gravel bar while I rig up D’s rod. You think the Nats are going to make the playoffs this year? Hey D, how’s your dad doing?” and we’re off. No lie, I have had hundred fish days on a CT float. The South Fork is a numbers fishery, but they’ll be some nice ones in the mix. One time, my back cast hit the water and when I came forward with it, there was a bluegill on the line. Bass fishing is convincing yourself you’re a hotshot and trout fishing is about taking a big old ose of reality.

With Patrick, the quarry is browns and bows. The rivers we fish in Tennessee haven’t stocked brown in over 20 years, so if you catch one a brown in either river, they were born wild and free. Both rivers have stocked rainbows and also wild bows. One river in particular has a population of beautiful wild rainbows and you know as soon as you see one in your net in didn’t grow up in any tank. D, Patrick and I all enjoy these wild bows. Their colors are amazing, deep red stripes, green backs and sides that are almost bronze colored. Their fins are crisp and they fight all the way into the net and then keep on fighting. You catch a couple of those then hook in to a stocky twice its size and you know immediately, the stocky gives up as if it gets that the deck has been stacked against him since day one. Get a stocky to the boat and he’s all beat up, fins rubbed smooth, no color and they look like they should have jailhouse ink and be smoking a cigarette. Patrick calls them junkyard dog fish.

As a trash talker myself, I really appreciate Patrick’s ability to give me grief. Last year, I broke off a big beautiful rainbow, easily 25 inches. We could see it in gin clear water feeding with a bunch of smaller trout. I had picked off some of the smaller ones behind the hog and was going for the big boy. Patrick told me that when I hooked him, he was going to take off like a rocket and in this shallow water, he’d break off pretty easy if I didn’t let him run. Then I got him to eat my fly and he took off like a rocket in shallow water and broke me off. I had him on just long enough to realize that I had hooked him against all odds, then I was holding slack line in my hand.

D said, “oh, sweetie, I thought you had him.” Patrick said, “don’t worry about it, you’ll get another shot like that in about 20 years.” We decided it was a good time to break for lunch. Twenty minutes later, halfway through my sandwich, Patrick asked me how old I was. I told him fifty. “Okay,” he said, “so in 20 years, you’ll be 70, you’ll get another shot at a fish like that sometime in your early 70s. That’s if you can still get out on the water. Yup, sure would have been nice to land that fish. I have the camera right here, good light, would have been a good pic.” Patrick’s smart enough to figure out who he can talk trash to and who he can’t. Another angler, I’m sure he would have been, “don’t worry about it sir, I couldn’t have landed that fish, it was good angling just to hook him.” I take it as a compliment that he was busting my balls.

I booked my trips for next year with both Patrick and CT the day after that float.