Hello readers! Things remain steady at home as we continue my wife Anna’s journey to a cancer free future. It really is a one-day-at-a-time battle, but we are getting there! Anna is in great spirits and feeling better each day. What a champion she has been! There hasn’t been much time for writing, but I had a fun fishing experience recently and had to capture it. I hope to make my column a more regular habit again soon. Tight lines!
Perseverance is a valuable trait in many aspects of life, and it certainly pays off in fishing. Fighting until the end recently paid big dividends for me, providing another reminder that it’s never over until the final buzzer sounds.
I was fishing a remote Idaho reservoir for the first time—one that had been on my list for several years. It was a brisk but beautiful October morning, and I arrived just as dawn was breaking. As soon as I got eyes on the water, though, I suspected I might be in for a tough go. The water was extremely low—not uncommon for this time of year here in heavily irrigated Idaho—and weed growth was thick.
Undeterred, I headed down to the water, where two more red flags greeted me. For one, the water clarity was excellent. In my experience, low, clear water means picky, spooky fish, especially when targeting big trout (which I was). For two, it seemed the water had receded very quickly, very recently, leaving the shoreline the consistency of quicksand. Within 20 yards of the water’s edge, every footstep sank inches deep in the muck.
Knee-deep in the quagmire, I set to work with a variety of lures and baits. I got a couple exploratory, non-committal bites early, but as the sun climbed higher, things shut down. I painstakingly worked over several hundred yards of shoreline, doing my best to use rocks as footholds in the quicksand. I had four hours of fishing time, and more than halfway through it, I still had a zero on the scoreboard.
Pulling a lever from my Boy Scout days, I ventured into a brush patch and captured a large grasshopper. I attached this to a small hook on a light leader, three feet behind a clear bubble float. I made a long cast and waited for several minutes with no action, even with the hopper kicking away on the surface. But stubbornness can also be a valuable fishing trait, and I refused to believe such an offering wouldn’t get eaten eventually. After nearly half an hour, the bobber finally went down, and I soon landed a 16-inch rainbow. Not the giant I was after, but it felt good to beat the skunk.
I was unable to find a second grasshopper, so I kept cycling through lures and finally landed two smallish rainbows on a Rooster Tail spinner. At this point, I was down to my last 30 minutes, and still searching for the big fish opportunity that had drawn me to this lake. I decided to make one last foray into the brush, where I succeeded in procuring one more large, juicy grasshopper.
Time was nearly up and I was gathering my gear when a flash near my float got my attention. Something big had come for the hopper! This, it seemed, was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. As the float disappeared beneath the surface, I set the hook into a heavy series of head shakes. Fish on!
What followed was a nerve-wracking fight on light line. More than once, the fish burrowed into a clump of weeds, leaving me no choice but to apply pressure and influence him back into open water. But my gear held up, and I soon brought a huge, colored up buck rainbow to the net.
In moments like these, all the struggle melts away into gratification of an awesome catch. If anything, the hard work of wading through the mire, changing lures a dozen times and, finally, busting out the old grasshopper trick made victory all the sweeter. This fish was 23 inches long, weighed nearly five pounds, and was released to continue growing.
After watching my trophy swim away, I hit the road. The buzzer had officially sounded, but not before I got to tangle with the big trout I was after. I’ll be back—earlier in the year, I hope, to avoid the low-water difficulties. Until then, at least I have a good story to tell. Tight lines!