Home Forums Fishing Flyfishing Picture of my first fish of tonight's forey into the river. It's Huge!

I had just put on a little midge nymph. I let it do it's first float and then picked it up to cast to another spot. It felt odd and I thought my line had wrapped around my reel. When I could see no obvious problems I pulled in my line to find this whopper had received a free round trip ride on the Big Sky express. None of his buddies are going to believe him when he tells his tale of terror in the upper world.

Getting a mount done?!

They always look bigger when you hold them close to the camera like that....
Ingwe

That made me laugh. I was definitely trying to make it look bigger to avoid unnecessary embarassment.

I'm going to go give the trout a try this week....but I may hold out for something even bigger!!!
We'll see...
Ingwe

Despite its small size, it appears to have a pretty good grip on your pinky finger. Savage little beasts.

I hooked one that size on the Yellowstone River that size downstream of LeHardy Rapids and above the real flat stretch before Buffalo.....er Nez Perce Ford (What the hell was wrong with keeping the name Buffalo Ford?) There's a nice pool in higher flows there where the river turns against the highway.

Anywho, I hooked the fish in flew through the air and back into the water. I dropped my rod dip and gave it some slack hoping it would get off the fly. I pulled the rod tip up and found myself fast to a 3 pound cutthroat.

I fought the fish for a while with the wee trout still dangling out of the big trout's mouth. Eventually, the small fry fell off, and I landed the nice cutt.

It was the only time I've ever caught a fish with a live or, for that matter, a dead minnow.

It was the only time I ever broke the fishing laws in Yellowstone. I was a bit nervous. It was also weird as I had read Charles Brooks story where he'd done a similar thing, also by accident, on the Firehole.

I had no witnesses as my Dad had headed back to the truck already.

Similar incident on Oregon's Metolius where the original take was about a 10 inch rainbow at the Bridge 99 pool. I had seen the take, put all the stress I could on the fish with a 4-lb tippet, and could not move it at all as it did 5 slow motion laps around the pool. On the 5t pass it was close enough in that I saw about a 30-inch Bull trout with my fish clamped hotdog style in its jaws. Head out the right side and tail out the left.

Being alone at the time, I readied my self on the 6th lap with my net planted on the bottom, and had hopes of simply lifting the net beneath the fish as it came around again. Execution though demanded that I shift my footing at the last instant. That spooked the bull trout and he released my rainbow. With my 4-wt bent nearly double, the rainbow went nearly 5 feet in the air. I unhooked the fly, put the fish back in the water, and it took off in fine form. First and last time that I've ever had a fish that was probably thankful for being hooked up.

I've since learned that some folks fish for those big bulls with a daisy chain rig. A hares ear on top and big stone fly trailing. They catch a trout on the hares ear using it like a ford fender to attract the bull trout as they walk the length of the pool. The flash brings up the big boy, and he takes the stonefly that's trailing behind.

In a couple of similar salt water situations, I only landed half of the initial taker.

I thought my accidently live minnow fishing in Yellowstone was bad. I imagine doing the something with an endangered bull trout is now a federal offense.

You ever pick your line up off the water to cast and a poor little feller like that is on the hook and goes for a ride? I'm sure sorry when that happens.

Actually, that's what happened on my accidental live minnow incident in Yellowstone. The poor fella flew over a 10 or 12 foot arc.........wheeeeeeee!!

Mines bigger!

This reminds me of Cliff Claven's fishing safari on "Cheers". The Mailman was a class or I should say a classless act.