Point Eight: Breaking into the 20-inch club

August 5th, 2024

Over the past month life has been the good sort of busy: a trip to Yellowstone with family, a visit to San Francisco to see my father, a promotion at work and the extra time spent to become acquainted with the new position. I've been able to sneak away to the river a few times just to satiate my fishing addiction but didn't catch much during that time except some much-needed tranquility. Today was the first day in what felt like a long time to commit a whole day to the river and reconnect with my fishing roots.

I woke up feeling lucky, and decided to fish a familiar stretch of river up in the mountains that reliably produced many brown trout for me last year. I arrived mid-morning as the sunlight started heating up the crystal clear tailwater. Journeying up river, I noticed two things: grasshoppers of all different sizes scattering with each step I took through tall grass and an abundance of large stonefly molts atop boulders on the rivers edge. Because of these observations seemingly delivered to

me on a silver-platter, it seemed like a fool proof strategy to string up a hopper and a size 10 rubber legs as the dropper. I eagerly tied on the flies and expected instant success with my first casts. I fished the textbook perfect riffles, the undercut banks shadowed by trees and brush, the gently flowing shallows and despite my best efforts came up empty time and time again with each fishy-appearing water. A little frustrated and with the mounting heat, I decided to mix things up and tie on an articulated streamer, which worked quite well in the past for this particular river.

After a few minutes the streamer appeared to be the ticket. Especially fishing in faster moving runs near the undercut banks there were many exciting flashes of brown streaks under the water followed by capricious tugs on the line. The fly was

at least eliciting a response from the fish, just none were hungry enough to completely engulf the bait. That was until one particular retrieve, I made some fast strips through a pool and just as I was about to pull the streamer out of the water a large fish nabbed it and pulled hard. I didn't get a good look at the fish but I could tell from the weight while gliding through the water with my line that it was a large one. It took me on quite a rodeo, going on a lengthy run downstream parallel to an undercut bank. It was a fight I had to employ quite a bit of finesse with as I had to maintain a tight tension on the line, avoiding overhanging branches above water and sunken logs and sharp boulders below water. I could tell the fish wanted to burrow itself somewhere along the bank, which suredly would have broke off the line on some obstacle along the way. However the stars were in my favor and eventually wrestled the fish towards to main river channel where I was finally able to breathe a bit. The fish breached in front of me, revealing a big buttery brown body before plunging back to the depths and going on a couple more runs. Eventually it tired out and netted the fish in triumph. My first impression

of the fish was not only how long it was- which is typically the measure of size of a trout but how truly big-bodied it was. It was a beautiful and strong specimen, taking up the whole length of my net, which just so happens to be 20 inches. Knowing the hard battle that was fought and the rising temperature of the water I took a quick picture and video before releasing this beauty, who scurried off quickly back to the depths of the pool I caught her from.

The rest of the day unfolded nicely but the first fish was undoubtedly the highlight of the outing. I ended up catching about 10 more fish, all brown trout about 10 inches to another good size fish topping out at about 18 inches. It was a fantastic day I was certainly grateful for. I'm hoping with the craziness of the summer coming to a close I can commit a little more time to doing what I love most and spending some quality time on the rivers.

With catching a 20-inch brown I earned another point in the Legendary Angler challenge, making it my eighth point total. Just 92 more points to go.