A Tail of Two Fishies (or, Best-Titled Story Ever)

So a while back I mentioned the big brookie and the carp I caught by hand. They're connected by similar mysterious behavior.

The brookie was more dramatic. I was fishing my favorite trout stream, and trying to work some pocket water that I was always sure held trout but could never find any in. Something big hit my nymph and took off. I set myself for a tough fight, especially given the tricky footing and quick water. Very soon after the hookset, though, I saw my line angle toward a small boulder and then go tight under it. I could still feel the fish throbbing on my line, so I kept slack out and waded to the boulder.

I've caught fish before (usually bass) where I've had to free the line from tangles or wait for the fish to back out of weeds (sometimes you can induce this, at least on spinning gear, by plucking your line like a guitar string). This fish, though, had just cannonballed right under a boulder and stopped. When I reached it, I reached down and grabbed it near the tail and pulled it out. To my surprise, it was a gorgeous brookie about 15 inches long. Somehow it had wedged its head under the boulder and seemed unsure how to get out. I turned it loose and it seemed fine. I'm not sure how bright it was (especially given that it managed to get itself caught by me), but I'm not sure why else it would end up in such a predicament.

The carp was a little stranger, and I feel like I probably did something wrong. I was smallmouth fishing in my home county, working a stretch of water with Dad that, while productive, was more notable for the climb involved in exiting the river. I was upstream from him a ways when I caught site of a carp with its head in some weeds. I couldn't figure out how to make a cast, given that it's head was in the weeds.

I crept closer, and it didn't move. It was wiggling a little bit, or I'd have thought it was dead. I got close enough to poke it with my rod tip, but it didn't respond. I clambered up on a rock next to it and couldn't figure it out. It looked stuck. As far as I could tell, it wasn't spawning or anything. It just had managed to get its head (and gills, if I remember right) stuck on some weeds. I grabbed it by the tail and under the belly and lifted it up and back out of the weeds. I helped it revive, and watched it swim off. Then it struck me that I had perhaps intervened in some natural event I shouldn't have, but I'm not sure what that could have been (other than imminent death).

I'd be happy to hear any thoughts on this situation.

There it is. Two fish that managed to get their heads stuck. One a big brook trout in a cold, fast stream while hooked; the other an average-sized carp in a slow, warm river, apparently on its own. I still think both were a little weird.

Jack Ellis -- The Sunfishes

The Sunfishes: A Fly Fishing Journey of Discovery by Jack Ellis

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
The strength of Ellis's book is also its failing. Rather than focus on technique, flies, etc. (which he does well), he essentially constructs an argument for a particular approach to fishing, and the approach just isn't that appealing.

Ellis is a fly and trout snob. When he's forced to learn warmwater fishing, it doesn't breakdown his elitism, it just gives him one more thing to be elitist about. A fair bit of the time he's actually self-effacing, but when he mocks his snobbishness, there's no hint of regret that it's there. He's critical of boats, bass fisherman, plastic worms (which, oddly, he uses to find fish and then rationalizes -- I'll throw a live worm, but I won't apologize for it).

It is interesting to see someone developing an approach, and 15 years ago this might have been novel stuff. Oddly, he shifts focus from panfish (a word he loathes) to bass, which are technically sunfish, but not the focus for most of the book, nor what most people would expect.

Also, and this is minor gripe that just got to me because it happens twice, I'm pretty sure that a spotted bass isn't a type of smallmouth. Each are distinct species, and while a spot has a smaller mouth than a largemouth, that doesn't make it a type of smallmouth.

Recommendation: read the Wilsons' book on bluegill first, and if you're really hungry for more, then come to this one.


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Anglenook General Note

I know, this wasn't supposed to turn into a reviews blog, and, don't worry, because it hasn't. I can't speak for my co-writers, but I've been swamped lately, and largely indoors. Once the fishing heats up again, I'll be posting more regularly and hopefully more entertainingly here, both about recent outings and -- as was initially the idea -- about stories from the past.

Stay tuned, I've got one coming up that involves both the biggest brook trout I've ever seen in person and a carp that I caught with my bare hands, and how the two experiences were strange and similar.

Bill Heavey -- If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?

If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat: Misadventures in Hunting, Fishing, and the Wilds of Suburbia by Bill Heavey

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Okay, I'm probably feeling a little generous giving this one 5 stars, but it's the best of its sort of thing I've read in a long time.

I think of Heavey as the F&S humor columnist. He's usually funny without being hilarious (there are touches of McManus here, but very few, and it's a pretty different aesthetic). Heavey plays the average guy well -- he's self-effacing, but he rarely makes himself into a complete idiot. He's a guy like you, except he gets to go cool places. And he also does things like forget his pants and end up hunting in his longjohns.

What I hadn't remembered about Heavey is how well he does serious, too, whether it's tackling the death of a kid (in an article I did remember very well, even if I'd forgotten the byline), a sad but unforgettable mountain lion hunt, or a Hunt of Lifetime trip.

This book was supposed to kill some time between bigger works, but it ended up being my favorite read in sometime, and one I could barely spread out properly.


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