Hooking big fish is one thing, landing them is…
The last big fish I hooked was a fresh winter-run steelhead that skipped across the river in three jumps, wrapped around a rock, straightened the hook on my size 12 Copper John, and was gone in less than 15 seconds. It was kind of breathtaking, in a way. I sat down like a rookie who’s just watched a trio of wicked 95-mile-per-hour sliders on the corners for his first major league at-bat and is thinking “Well, OK, I can still make 20 bucks an hour driving for Uber.” It’s cleansing, really, if one can appreciate psychic enemas and spending two days of hard casting for not much else. But later on, it got me thinking about all the tricks and maneuvers I’ve been shown by veteran fish over the years, and I found there really is an appreciation, a legitimate regard, for the finely honed intelligence that these fine creatures somehow acquire without benefit of analysis, consultants, or smart-phone apps. So I’d like to share a sampling, mainly as a cautionary tale, because no technique or how-to advice is going to help you much when you get attached to a semi-rig on 7X. What will be, will be . . . but maybe you make it home still able to smile.
Shake, Rattle, and Roll
The default reaction of fish of any size and most species, at hook’s first sting, is to shake their heads, then bolt and run. We know this. And we know why: it works. Probably 60 percent of the fish I lose are gone within the first 15 to 20 seconds, when that gill-rattling shake slings the fly before it can be properly set. Then there’s the obligatory rolling in the line, which changes the angle of tension on the hook, sometimes enough to let it fall out and sometimes, if the angle is right, making use of the fisherman’s own pull to pluck it out. With barbless hooks having been the norm on our blue-ribbon waters for many generations of fish now, it’s pretty much in their DNA that rapid-fire, violent headshakes can get rid of a piece of steel pretty effectively.
Obviously, a needle-sharp hook is the best offense here, and I make it a habit to sharpen every hook of every fly I tie on, even new ones, to improve their bite by getting rid of those microscopic bumps that can impair penetration. And I sharpen them again, after hang-ups or back-cast snags, or sometimes just for luck, because, hey, it can’t hurt. Even a sixteenth of an inch here can make the difference between the good and bad kind of memory. The more advanced students out there, though, have taken this shake-and-roll move to the next level. I’ve had a number of major trout do exactly the opposite: the instant they felt the hook, they simply opened their mouths and leaned back, counting on my automatic hook-setting reaction to pluck the fly out before it sets at all. After watching a massive East Walker brown that I was sight-nymphing do this, I began to wonder how many others I’d lost like that — fish I couldn’t see that had the fly just long enough to identify it and that then opened up to let me take it away for them, while on the other end, all I felt was a slight tick or bump. Could’ve been a snag? Yeah, let’s go with that. I don’t want to think too much about all of those losses.
Is That a Hook in My Mouth, or Are You Just Glad to See Me?
This one is really a crafty veteran’s trick. Most often, I’ve seen big browns and steelhead use it, but some of my standard-gear friends tell me they’ve had stripers and largemouths pull it, too. Basically, it’s a sucker punch. After the initial head shake and run, the fish “pretends” to give up, or at least, not put up much resistance. It may even swim toward you . . . here, let me help you with all that line I took out . . . until you’ve got the leader in sight, maybe right at the tip top. It’s as if they don’t quite believe they’re really hooked and are curious to see what’s got ahold of them. Well, don’t buy it. What comes next is usually another sudden charge into the backing, or maybe a tremendous wrench of the head, right when you’re raising the rod and reaching for the leader. Snap and gone.
If it seems things are going too easily, beware — these guys don’t get all tuckered out from one run across the river, especially anadromous fish who just swam a hundred miles upstream against the current. But sadly, human nature being what it is, we want to believe, and we’ll take a free fish if we’re handed one, so a lot of ’em get loose this way. And if it works once, it gets remembered and tried again. Until you show them you can hit the curve, expect a steady diet of offspeed stuff. So stay skeptical, keep your hand loose on the crank (it’s about to start turning really fast), and be ready to drop the tip and let it all go instantly.
I once met a jumbo rainbow on the Pit who had developed a unique variation on this pitch. He did a preliminary sprint out of the slot he’d been sitting in, out into the frog water, and then the line went almost limp. I knew he was still on . . . there was weight and a faint wiggle . . . but he gave so little fight it was alarming, and he came in barely moving, on his side, practically belly-up. I thought maybe the hook had penetrated his brain (it happens), but saw he was fairly snared in the corner of his lip hinge. And he came all the way in like that, allowing me to retrieve my streamer and try to revive him in the current. I noticed his eyes were strange, the black iris kind of shattered looking, and then suddenly he shook himself, flipped upright, and zipped off. All better now! In hindsight, possibly some form of piscine epilepsy . . . if they’re even capable of epilepsy . . . but whatever, an impressive performance, though technically he didn’t get away. But I’d be willing to bet that on the Pit, where a lot of people still kill what they catch (legally or not), a meat hunter would be hesitant to eat a limp rainbow with crazy eyes. Not too shabby a move to have in one’s repertoire, yes? And perhaps a reason why this particular fish was pushing 20 inches and was lord of the pool on that stretch.
The Bolt Hole
It’s interesting what you can know via a fly line, a crude data-streaming device at best, yet oddly effective at times. There is a distinct, qualitative difference between the tug of a fish fleeing in fear and one headed toward a definite destination. You can sense intention on the other end. And if your common sense is intact, you get the message: this must stop immediately! Because nothing good can come of letting a fish make it to his bolt hole, that classic fortress of solitude almost every big fish keeps close at fin. This seems to be mostly a characteristic of long-term resident fish with entrenched territories — trout and bass, in my experience — but I’ve also seen migratory steelhead who mysteriously knew exactly where to go in an emergency. Big trout tend to take up lies in the same place for years at a time, and (as John Gierach pointed out) have “very little else to do with their time” besides study their cribs. Cracks between underwater rocks and sunken logs or sweepers are popular choices. A nearby Class IV whitewater chute will do nicely. Same with weed beds, if you got ’em.
Sometimes you can spot these potential trouble spots before you fish a pool or run, but often they are hidden or tucked away somewhere you wouldn’t expect, adding the element of surprise. I once had a heartbreakingly large rainbow on the McCloud play me for 10 minutes before deciding he’d had enough and slithered into a crack directly under the rock ledge I was standing on. I didn’t try and stop him, because he was coming right at me . . . it seemed like a good thing at the time . . . and I had the impression he could have done that long before, but was saving it for a big finish. An artsy SOB, but still, hats off. This isn’t a recreational activity for the fish; they’re fighting for their lives, and no one can blame them for pulling out all the stops.
Now unfortunately, the cure for the bolt hole, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in our tippets. This is a touchy subject, and I can sense irate fingers poised over keyboards already, but I will venture the opinion that most fly fishers routinely use tippets that are too light. Yes, there are many fish out there that can’t be touched with anything heavier than 6X or even 7X, especially in dry-fly situations. You won’t hook up very often on Putah or Hat Creek, for example, using 3X jumper cables. And many people feel that a lighter tippet is more “sporting,” if by that one believes that extending a fish’s terror, leaving broken-off flies in its mouth, and forcing a massive energy expenditure in a long battle is fair play. Personally, I would prefer to get them in fast and turn them loose fast . . . and when those purposeful runs toward who knows where start, I would like at least to have a chance of turning their heads back in my direction. I don’t mind hooking fewer fish and landing more of them, if that’s the trade-off, because I’m at that stage of my angling life where a couple of decent-sized fish a day is fine, and there’s no need to drain the river. But I had my time when numbers were important, so I’m not one to judge. Again, just an opinion and what works for me.
I’m Leaving Now
Sooner or later, we all hook up with one that is way above our pay scale. It often begins with thinking you’ve snagged bottom or a log. Nothing moves. Maybe there’s a mildly irritated head twitch. And then it begins: the fish starts to swim off. One may even be a bit afraid of setting the hook, or pulling at all, because what’s coming up through line and rod and into one’s arm is whispering that you, not the fish, are in a whole lotta trouble. This isn’t really a trick or a learned ref lex on the fish’s part. This is when that rare specimen attains a kingly estate sizewise and is simply not concerned with our crummy little hooks and lines. They just swim away. They get all of your weight-forward and a bunch of backing out into the current, where you lose line control and get wrapped around something or the tippet snaps from the accumulated weight. My last adventure of this sort was with a springer chinook I accidentally tied into while swinging a 6-weight for steelhead. It never broke stride after a very brief pause when hooked, momentarily puzzled by the minor flea bite in its jaw, but not enough to keep it from continuing on upriver. It even jumped up a small chute, clearly more concerned about biological imperatives and getting to the spawning grounds than with my fly, and it effortlessly straightened the hook. Quite rude, those chinooks. Something similar happened this summer to my fishing partner with a heavyweight brown on the McCloud that just kept going and going and . . . and honestly, I have had zero success with these guys. No batting average whatsoever, but fortunately (I guess), I don’t hook many in this size range. Sometimes you just have to concede defeat and hope you don’t lose your fly line or break a rod tip. It makes a great story, though. We are bigger men and women for having lost bigger fish . . . once the pain wears off.
And of Course, Operator Error
But by far the biggest advantage these lunkers have going for them is that there’s a human being holding the rod. I will refrain from even scratching the surface of the dozens of ways I’ve invented to lose fish, because I’m sure everyone has their own encyclopedia on that (a volume of which could be written solely about fish lost during the landing phase, for example). More than once, a whopper has earned his freedom by simply waiting me out, just swimming around out there until I get so impatient, or arm-sore, or panicky that I do something stupid. And with nearly 60 years of angling mistakes under my belt now, I have vast resources available, which I swear they must sense somehow. There’s something kind of eerie about how a big fish can turn into a mirror of all your weaknesses and reveal all the holes in your game in under 10 seconds. I hate to give them credit for any of this, because there are likely other forces calling the shots at such times, but I really have seen that certain fish I hook remain calm and deliberate, you might even say poised, and seem very composed, even when about to be landed. What do they know that I don’t?
Along with that, I’m sure we’ve all observed that the catch-and-release ethic that’s been mainstream for the last 30 years or so has been a boon for fish education and evolution. They’ve all been caught, usually multiple times, by the time they reach bragging size, and each experience has left a repository of information in the database. There’s obviously a reason why Nature has depended on the survival-of-the-fittest principle for millions of years, and encountering that law in living “real” time is a very silencing experience. Curiously, even the ocean-goers (whom one would think would be more naïve) seem to wise up in a hurry once they start upriver, as if their ancestors had left underwater billboards along the way (“No worries! They let you go!”). Then again, most truly monster trout just avoid the whole game by becoming nocturnal, not wanting to soil their dainty caudals with any human interaction at all. And it might all be quite disheartening for anglers if it weren’t for the same sublime wisdom of Nature, who apparently builds a few imperfections into each of Her creations, maybe as an experiment, or as a hedge against random environmental catastrophes, or who knows why. The good news is that fish, even the biggest and best of them, make mistakes, too . . . as the enormous volume of fish porn on the Internet will attest, thus leveling the playing field a bit and giving us those millimeters of chance, hope, and joy that is the essence of fishing. Game on!
