Fish it to the End

" A trout is a moment of beauty know only to those who seek it."
- Arnold Gingrich

There are not many weekends left in the angling season and therefore I always try to get out as often as I can. A rooster fishing friend in Baja is usually Steelheading on the Deschutes at this time of year. I always contact him in the Fall to see how he is doing on that Oregon river and he reciprocates with a question on how the trout fishing has been. His final note is always, "Fish it to the end!"

I returned to a Plains river this weekend and spent the afternoon on it. When I arrived it was tough going due to the clouds. Sight fishing is so, so weather dependent. By late afternoon the sun poked through and there was opportunity.

The first fish I caught died. I honestly can't remember when that last happened to me. Maybe 25 years ago. I guess there have been fish that I caught and released that could have died after they swam away but I never witnessed it. I did witness the death of this fish. I was fishing a dry fly and missed the take as I was distracted by a noise upstream. When my eyes returned to the slack water I had casted to, where my fly had been floating, it was gone. I knew something was up so I raised the rod tip, felt tension and the rainbow took off across the river. It fought harder than most but I was able to land it fairly quickly. The fly was lodged deeper than usual probably because I missed the take and reacted late. I debated whether I should simply clip my line and leave the fly. Instead I managed to extract it with relative ease with forceps. The fish, however, seemed spent. I held it in a flow for about 20 minutes waiting for it to revive but it never did. Rigor Mortis occurred and the pulse of its gills became faint. There was no kick of the tail or body wiggle as usually happens. With this fish, nothing.

I guess it is a reminder that fly fishing does occasionally kill fish and certainly damages some even when good angling practises and precautions are taken. One of the best parts of fly fishing is getting to admire a trout up close, its beauty, and then the release, and watching it return to the wild below. Unfortunately, this was not the case today with this particular fish.

I left the fish upright lodged between two mid-sized river stones with a gentle flow running over it, dorsal fin protruding skyward. As I walked downstream I kept looking back to see if it was still there; to see if by some miracle life might have surged back into it, and it would swim off.

Everything has a spiritual essence; a soul. I'll try and be even more careful in the future.