40 Rivers To Freedom

Four married guys go fishing. After an hour, the following conversation took place. First guy: ” You have no idea what I had to do to be able to come out fishing this weekend. I had to promise my wife that I will paint every room in the house next weekend.” Second guy: ” that’s nothing, I had to promise my wife that I will build her a new deck for the pool.” Third guy: ” Man, you both have it easy! I had to promise my wife that I will remodel the kitchen for her.” They continue to fish when they realized that the fourth guy has not said a word. So they asked him. You haven’t said anything about what you had to do to be able to come fishing this weekend. ” What’s the deal?” Fourth guy: ” I just set my alarm for 5:30 am. When it went off, I shut off my alarm, gave the wife a nudge and said, ” Fishing or Sex” and she said, ” Wear a Sweater.”

Fishing Jokes and Fishing Humor

After a multi day trip to Ohio, I finally got to continue my search for another mega-smallie last night.  I haven’t really been able to get that last monster out of my head.  I drove past three spots with actively feeding Carp last night to get to the place where the average smallmouth isn’t much longer than the full wells grip on my 8wt.

He’s just gotta be there.

I caught a half dozen descent sized smallies, some sporting some really nice colors on “The One” and Shaq’s Bugger.  It was in an area where the current had just a little more oomph, and even the smallest fish of the night put a solid bend in a rod better suited for fish 4 times it’s size.

Then I got to thinking…

I’ve never really delved into the whole West Coast vs Great Lakes Steelhead debate- at least not here.  You know, the whole argument that Great lakes Stealhead, shouldn’t be called Steelhead.  I’ve always felt it was all semantics, though I usually took the side that our Great Lakes fish are pound for pound equals to their Pacific ancestors/relatives.  Mainly cause the brunt of the arguments put up by the west side guys center around arguments like:

• they come from the ocean, and the ocean is bigger
• they get chased by sharks- and stuff
• they’ve been to China
• they’re natives out here
• blah, blah, blah

In my opinion, these arguments are all pretty retarded.  Great Lakes Steelhead wouldn’t fight any harder if there were Seals or Great Whites hanging out in Lake Ontario.  They wouldn’t be any more of a fish if the Great Lakes were twice as big.  True, they aren’t native, but there are a hell of a lot of wild fish actively reproducing in Lake Michigan Tributaries.

So when it comes time to pick my side of the argument, I’ve never had a concrete reason to join forces with the left coasters.

At least until last night…

The fish I caught last night fought harder than equally sized fish I’ve caught in slower current areas, or in lakes.  Yeah, the current does add a little more bend to the rod, but it doesn’t account for the overall edge these swift water smallies have in scrapiness over there stillwater cousins.  It only makes sense that a fish who lifts more weights, the one who spends the majority of it’s life in swift flows, will be stronger than the one who sits on the couch all day in a lake.

But how could you make that stronger fish even more powerful?  You could give it steroids, or, you could stick it in the ocean. I’m not quite sure how I never recognized this part of the equation before, since we learn in 1st grade that saltwater is more dense than freshwater, but would now concede that the disgruntled have better steelheads than us.

It only makes sense that a fish that spends it’s life in the ocean would be a bigger badass than if it had spent it’s time in the Great Lakes.  Imagine that ocean dwelling fish as it makes the transition from salt to fresh during the spawn- a transition that Great Lakes fish don’t experience.  It would be like a person running 40 yards in a swimming pool, and then feeling like an olympic sprinter when they ran 40 yards outside of the pool afterwards.  This example is a little exaggerated, since the difference in density between water and air is a lot more than the difference between saltwater and freshwater- but it makes my point.

Now imagine spending your whole life walking/running in a swimming pool.  Your legs would be substantially stronger and your body would be much more efficient at doing stuff like eliminating carbon dioxide and other wastes accumulated during physical exertion than it is while walking around in air. Those Pacific fish have to be stronger and have more endurance, pound for pound, than our Great Lakes fish.  I don’t know if that totally seals the deal that our fish shouldn’t be called a “true” Steelhead, but it does mean I’m for sure gonna have to fish the PNW someday.

-and how I got into all that while fishing for bass, I’ll never understand…

• just caught the biggest smallie of my life. Tears welled upon the realization that my camera was on the computer desk. #

When I pulled up to the access spot,  I was surprised to see a truck already there. First instinct told me to go to a different spot, but I decided to hop out and see if there were any tails sticking up on the glassy flat below the pocketwater. As I came down the trail, I saw the other guy with a net in one hand, flipping over rocks with the other.

“How’s it going?”
“Alright” He says.

I scanned the flat, then noticed a fly rod sitting on the bank.

“Any luck?” I ask.
“Nah, they’re not biting here. I’m gonna go downstream.”

He picked up his rod and walked up to an old Ford Ranger. I scanned the barren flat for a few more seconds, weighing my options.

Something told me that this guy was a tool, so I walked up the trail to my car and slid my waders on as he broke his rod down. Not that it would have mattered if he was some sort of fly fishing god, when I’ve got a feeling about a spot, I trust it.  No words were spoken, but body language said he thought I was either an idiot for fishing where the fish weren’t biting, or an arrogant SOB. Either way, he was probably right.

I tied on the fly I call “The Other One”. It’s probably my second most productive fly for carp and smallies. I waded out to the slackwater pockets at the tail of the riffles and started working it parallel to the white water. Strip, strip, strip. Next thing you know I can feel something descent throbbing on the other end. It felt way to big to be a bass, so I was guessing it was a small carp when it erupted out of the water. It was no carp. I fought it the rest of the way in and slowly knelt down, completely and utterly blown away by this fish. It’s the fish I’ve been chasing for probably 10 years, and the one thing killing the moment is the realization that my camera is on my computer desk.

I couldn’t help but notice how big this fish was compared to my hands. I touched my thumb to it’s front lip and then stretched my pinky finger as far towards it’s tail as it would go and then touched my thumb to where my pinky just was and repeated. It was a little over two and a half stretches long, and after a quick calculation, I realized I was holding my first 20″+ smallie.

A million thoughts raced through my head, but I knew what I had to do.  I popped the fly from it’s upper lip, then burned the fish into my memory before lowering it back into the water and watching it leisurely fade away.