The words “big trout” excite a fly fishermen’s nervous system, and in a way that’s all out of proportion to their caloric value.

You start wondering about things like that, and the next thing you know you’re digging through texts about the psychology of our hunter-gatherer forebearers, and eventually you just give up and go try to catch a few big trout, which is a lot easier when you know where they are.

Bamboo fly rod fighting a big trout
A 20″-22″ trout puts a big bend in Raine’s 8.5′ hollowbuilt quad prototype.

Local guide Wayne Eng – sensing I needed a break from the regular beatings meted out by the Upper Sacramento – called and suggested a scouting trip to a private pond.

I’d fished it before, and done well; a fair number of nice trout, and always one big fish.

It’s small, it’s centered in a tiny alpine valley, and later in the year it can get a little weedy. The pond’s been “enhanced” in terms of size, but because that happened years ago, you can’t tell.

Tom Chandler fly fishing a pond
That’s me late in the day, speed stripping a streamer (Wayne Eng photo)

Over the years, the edges have softened nicely with weeds and cattails, and the trout — which can’t really reproduce in the lake — were initially stocked in small and large sizes.

Wayne said it hadn’t seen any new fish for over a year, and frankly, I wasn’t expecting much. The cormorants had been hammering the smaller fish, and there’s always the threat of a winterkill when spring’s late in coming.

At least we can scratch the winterkill theory:

A big, colorful, rainbow trout
The trout were all like this; shoulders like WWF wrestlers.

My final body count was in the vicinity of ten fish. My two smallest went 16″-17″ and my biggest was somewhere in the vicinity of 22″-24″ (most were around 20″).

Naturally, I lost a few – they’d get their big heads in the weeds and that was it – and several real torpedoes chased a streamer I was speed-stripping, which was enough to stop my heart.

broadmouseWayne was oddly focused on catching a big trout on a mouse pattern, and he worked it to death in an attempt to prove… well, I can’t imagine what.

He got a few to swirl at it, but never hooked up, and sometimes it happens that way; you’re fly fishing in pursuit not of fish or bragging rights, but to prove an obscure point.

That you catch fewer fish doesn’t much matter, and besides, once you figure catch & release into the mix, it’s clear the pursuit the actually is the point.

The Fish & Gear Portion

All my trout (and two of Wayne’s) were caught on the prototype Hollowbuilt Quad (8.5′ 6wt) loaned to me by Chris Raine, and it handled throwing weighted streamers in the wind about as well as you could expect any rod to.

Bamboo fly rod; hollowbuilt quad by Raine

When I took it apart at the end of the day, it was still arrow straight. In the space of a single afternoon, I think we inflicted several year’s worth of abuse on the rod, a fact which will hopefully put the myth of bamboo’s fragility to the sword.

My first trout ate a small wet fly that looked a little like the water boatmen the trout were chasing.

The fish was huge, and 1/3 of his length was head. His jaw was hooked like a salmon’s and I put him back in the water, couldn’t quite grasp the size of him, and decided I could probably stop for the day without any qualms.

Big rainbow trout, wayne eng
One of Wayne’s bigger fish

I didn’t of course — fly fishermen just talk about doing that stuff to reinforce the perception of our elevated moral sense — and after a while, I started channeling Ian Rutter because I had the sudden urge to speed-strip a rabbit zonker streamer.

On the second cast, a big fish hammered it and tailwalked a good ten feet before throwing the hook.

A minute later — with adrenaline still pumping through my system – another monster trout freight trained it from the side and because I saw the whole thing happen, I instinctively set the hook hard, immediately breaking the 3x tippet.

Rainbow trout on a bamboo fly rod
One of my streamer trout doing his best to break my fly rod.

That’s when I sat down for a few seconds, took a few deep breaths, and reminded myself I wasn’t fishing for bass with a flipping stick and 20 pound test.

I hooked several more on the streamer, and almost as much fun were the fish who followed it and swirled, but never ate it.

Watching the wake of a 22″ trout approach your streamer — and doing nothing about it — is an effective test of your nerve, and after the streamer bite died, I was actually pretty relieved to go back to slow-stripping a nymph.

broadsmalltrout
A streamer trout. Thanks Ian.

Yeah, What is the Point of It All?

This was a rich, weedy pond that at one point hadn’t been much of a fishing hole, and while the fish in there were mostly stocked, they’d survived several years — long enough to lose their hatchery drabness and mangled fins.

In the larger picture, they were pretty damned lucky trout; they’d gone from a concrete runway to a wild place where they’d never actually be hungry, and if trout look up at the surface of the water with anything approaching wonder, they’d see a breathtaking mountain view staring back at them.

Wayne Eng fly fishing near Mount Shasta
Wayne Eng hooked up (in more ways than one)

It’s a great place for fly fishermen to play, and yes — you have to go where the big fish are to catch them — but I get the feeling that bragging too much about the monster trout I caught would be a lot like going to a strip club and bragging about all the boobs I saw.

It’s fun, it’s diverting — and maybe it’s an example of the way the West fished before we screwed it up — but given the number of big fish swimming around in the thing, even a pretty bad fly fishermen could walk away thinking he’s a real predator.

See you on the water, Tom Chandler.

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