President's Journal June 2006
Thursday, 01 June 2006, 11:13 p.m. CDT
Why Big Fish Mean Something
We all talk about big fish, the ones we saw but couldn't catch, the ones that got away, and the ones we caught. Freudian psychologists would say that we obsess about big fish because they are metaphors, psychological surrogates, for something about us -- our ego, our super-ego, or our... well, you know what I'm talking about.
Sitting around at the end of the day, in a bar or in front of a fire, talk gets the loudest and most boisterous when talking about the big fish of the day. It's seems it's always "Man, that was a big fish at the head of the bend pool, wasn't it?!" and never "Man, that was a long string of pale 11-inch stockers we took out of the bend pool, wasn't it?"
Starting out fly fishing, and for years afterwards, I never caught big fish, and so I taught myself to ignore the "big fish" talk, and to focus on aspects of the regular-sized fish I caught: pretty rises, pretty colors, the ability to pick the right fly for the right place and time, eventually, a decent cast, maybe even a difficult one that not everyone could do... I took it as a given that fish "got bigger" as the stories went on so I never put much stock in the sizes quoted. And I noted that often enough, the guys boasting about big fish were maybe a little bit braggarts, sometimes trying to out-do each other in their stories. In my mind, talking on and on about big fish became evidence of a mis-placed focus in fly fishing: focus on competition and one-upsmanship, rather than on the experience. Of course, it's pretty easy to come to that conclusion when you can't catch big fish yourself.
Over the course of time, fishing in different waters, and sometimes being able to watch the behavior of fish themselves, I've changed my mind: catching big fish does mean something important (something other than the belief that you have a big you-know-what, I mean.)
More than once now, I've watched a pod of fish react to food: the biggest fish shoulders the smaller guys out of the way, and takes what he wants. I've also become accustomed to the fact that the biggest fish in a pool will often materialize at the very head of a pool, or right in front of that big dead tree hanging in the water, where he has first chance to pluck goodies out of the drift, before the other fish below him get to eat. They aren't dumb, though, those big guys -- they know where the most protected lies that will bring the most and best food are, and they "own" them. They didn't get big by being stupid or gullible. Or timid.
And that's why I've come to the conclusion that big fish mean something important. They can be the hardest ones to catch, requiring the most accurate cast to the head of that pool, the lightest tippet, and the exactly right size and shape fly -- anything less, and they pass on it, allowing the less-experienced fish below to take their shot. And one of the things I've noticed is that they pretty much don't give you a second chance -- one bad cast, and they are down, safely ensconced. They refuse a fly once, because of size, shape or color, and they won't consider it again -- a refusal rise is as good as a rock in the pool, for signaling that they have shut down.
And if you trick one into taking, there's no guarantee you'll net him -- they are strong and they often fight smart, using their habitat and the pressure of the water to get free. I've heard stories of big rainbows in the North Platte running 50 yards of line straight off your reel, then turning 90 degrees and running another 100 yards, so as to put more pressure on your line and tippet. Hook a big fish upstream, and the smart ones will swim past you downstream then turn to face you, so as to use the water against you, and to get better leverage for dislodging that hook. If they can't drag your tippet through weeds and brush, sometimes they will swim down to the bottom and loop it around a rock -- anything to increase resistance so a sudden lunge will snap the connection. In spite of the guiles of big fish, once in a while the fishing gods smile on us, we play the fish well, and bring them to hand.
So in the end, at least occasionally, catching a big fish means more than another dumb-luck chance to lord it over your fishing buddies. It might also mean that you are getting better as a fly fisher, more skilled at analyzing situations, casting into hard places, playing fish smartly... That, I think, is the real meaning of big fish. At least, that's what I'm willing to think, now that every once in a rare while, I'm able to catch one of those big fish.
Lee
(This essay was inspired by an exceptionally large brown trout in an unusual location on Verdigre creek. I hooked him but he beat me in the fight to the net.)