The Petting Zoo

I started fly fishing last year with Jon Ng on the Trinity River. It was January and we were hunting steelhead, and as everyone expected, I got skunked. I slowly started to catch more fish as my love for the sport grew, but I was still catching mainly 10-14 inch fish. It was fun, but I wanted more. In April of this year, I decided that I ought to go on a road trip for my spring break from the University of Montana in Missoula. I had no real plan, but figured that I would visit my brother at his dorm in Boulder and stop at my uncle's ranch, on River X (sorry). I packed up my gear and headed East. After two days of driving I finally got to the ranch house. I told my uncle that I had checked the fishing reports, bought a bunch of midges and 6x, and “should I bring them?”. He laughed and said, “not if you're planning on catching anything”.

My uncle has a name for each spot on the river. “Bay of Pigs” and “the Petting Zoo” are two that I remember. These are not playful names; they accurately describe the fish living in his stretch of river. That first afternoon, my uncle started up the ATVs and we headed down to the river. I caught a nice rainbow on a nymph and was real happy, but as we headed back to the house for dinner, he apologized for the size of the trout. I assured him that I was quite satisfied with it. He told me we'd try again the next day and he'd put me on something bigger.

The next day the weather was a little gnarly in the morning so we used his truck to get down to the river. It was snowing slightly but it wasn't uncomfortable since we had an abundance of gear. We rigged up and he stood by my side in the river and told me where to cast and when I had a “fishy drift”. Inwardly, I chafed a little under the instructions because I fancied myself an alright fly fisher by then, but I knew that was just my ego and his forty years of experience could help develop my nascent fly fishing passion. I caught a couple decent fish, easily among the biggest I'd ever caught, but struggled each time I had a trophy size trout on the line. I started to get a little frustrated, but he calmed me down and we tried spot after spot. I hooked up a ton of times with what felt like huge trout but lost them because I was used to horsing in small fish quickly on my Sage 9' 6 weight z-axis, and I actually had to have skill to land these big guys. I lost them quickly, before I could see the silver rising out of the snow dappled depths. A storm started to move in and he asked me if I wanted to go back. If you're reading this blog you know the response I gave. We fished for a couple more hours, and then took a break for lunch.

When we were back at the ranch house eating lunch the weather took a turn for the worse. Several inches of snow had accumulated in the time it took me to eat a bacon and cheese sandwich and the conditions were nearing blizzard levels. Since the snow had gotten so deep during the day, we had to take snowmobiles down to the river. After a couple hours of fishing the weather became even more of an issue. We could hear thunder overhead and the snow was flying sideways. It was a driving, piercing snow that turned my hands so numb it became an ordeal to tie on flies.

After fishing for a little while in a new spot, I felt the biggest tug I'd ever felt. I was using a streamer, and when I set the hook, the fish was so strong that I had to use two hands on the rod when the fish went on a run. I narrowed my focus and felt like I was doing really well. Each time the trout went on a run, I let it take line, and when I felt it turn its head I countered it (with more skill than I knew I had). Eventually, I started to gain ground. My uncle, standing a little deeper in the river, saw it before I did and yelled “you're not gonna believe this”. Then the rainbow breached the surface. It looked like a fucking shark. I was honestly a little scared that it would swim toward me and try to eat me. I fought that fish for I don't know how long, but it felt like forever. It was my first real battle. I fought that bow with a mixture of confidence and fear. Finally, I brought it within a few feet of my uncle, and right when he put the net in the water to scoop the fish up, I felt a release. The line had broken. I felt like I was going to throw up and had to put my hands on my knees. My uncle smiled a smile that told me he'd felt the same way many times. I tied on a new fly and casted again.

We fished a lot more that weekend, and I caught some amazing fish, but there was nothing that tested my fishing prowess the way that hog did. The bigger fish I caught later were the result of him taking me to a slow spot in the river that he knew held big fish, but it wasn't as dynamic and didn't feel as true as when I was in the middle of the rushing, obstacle laden main flow. Every day I fish now, it's with the goal of getting my skills to the point where I can go back to the ranch and meet that bad boy once again.