Tag: fish stories

Sarah’s First Trout

My daughter’s first trout was admittedly somewhat of an accident.

I’d like to take guide credit. After all, I had told my daughter Sarah where to stand and cast when her first rainbow trout bit. That’s not the whole story, though.

The truth is that I’d been picking promising looking runs and suggesting casts for a few hours, and had basically given up hope on connecting her with a trout that day. We were fishing a heavily stocked section of the Tallulah River, so I’d begun the morning with high hopes, but the trout didn’t seem as plentiful or willing as they sometimes are.

Sarah didn’t mind. She was having a grand time exploring the river gorge and was at least as interested in wildflowers and ferns as she was in catching fish. And as much as I wanted her to experience a trout catch, I tried not to dwell on that because I didn’t want to take away from her experience.

The cast that finally produced was an afterthought, and a fish was not the objective. We were about to call it a day when I noticed that the run beside us was pretty. As an outdoor writer, I wanted a photo of Sarah casting there. So I pointed to the cast that would be good for my photo and stepped up onto a higher rock for a better vantage.

Sarah cast a Rebel Crawfish right where I’d pointed and started reeling and immediately hooked up! A moment later she was lifting a rainbow trout out of the river and swinging it over the rock she was standing on.

The trout flopped out of my hands and back into the river when I unhooked it, so we didn’t get a good photo, and I completely forgot about the photo I had in mind.

She caught her first trout, though, and I did at least get an unspectacular photo of her fighting it. After that, we really did pack it up for the day. That day was more than 20 years ago, but I think I remember it all fairly accurately!

Biggest One that Got Away

The biggest fish I’ve ever hooked bit while I was fishing alone from a bridge.

In a recent post about my most heartbreaking lost fish — a bull redfish that I hooked from a bridge when I was around 16 — I noted I had once lost a fish that was substantially larger than that one.

Completely unlike the big redfish, which I was very close to landing when it surged and broke my line, I genuinely never had a chance at catching this fish.

I actually never glimpsed the fish, but I assume it was a big shark. Officially that was what I was after, although when a buddy and I put out our “shark rods” we usually only caught stingrays or overzealous sail cats, and when I think about it now, I don’t know how I would have landed even a small shark had I hooked one that day. I suppose that was a “cross that bridge when I come to it” concept.

My “shark rod” when I was growing up was a deep sea outfit I had inherited from my grandpa.

Like the lost redfish day, I was fishing alone and from a bridge. I’d guess I was 17 or 18 years old. This time it was the bridge over Johns Pass, between Madeira Beach and Treasure Island, along Florida’s Gulf Coast. My “shark rod” was my late Grandpa’s old custom boat rod and Penn Senator 114H he had used for deep sea fishing, spooled with 50-pound test, I think.

A simple bottom rig and big hook was almost certainly baited with a pinfish, grunt or chunk of ladyfish I had caught with my other rod. The shark rod was always something I put out if I caught suitable bait and was out there “just in case.” It was never central to the primary quest, which might be why I didn’t have a landing plan.

I don’t remember any other catches from that day or even how I was fishing with the primary rod, and only know I caught something because I never bought fish for cut bait, and I wouldn’t have bothered putting out squid or shrimp on the big rod.

Here’s what I do remember.

At some point my big reel’s clicker abruptly started singing, and line was spinning off the spool. I grabbed the rod, braced myself, and was ready to set the hook when I put the reel in gear. As it turned out, no hookset was needed or possible. The instant my thumb slid the lever to engage the reel, the fish hooked itself and nearly pulled the rod from my hands.

It’s good that the drag wasn’t locked down, or I probably could not have held on. I don’t know that hooking the fish slowed it at all. I was too frantic to turn off the clicker so the reel continued screaming at the giant fish raced away and burned line off the big reel.

Short story short, because it happened quickly, and there really aren’t other details to tell: I kept gradually tightening the drag as much as I could without the rod being yanked from me, and the fish kept peeling line. I don’t think it ever slowed significantly, and in fairly short order it took all my line. Again, it was good that the line wasn’t attached too securely because there’s no way I could have held on and kept myself on the bridge!

I don’t recall what happened after the fish was gone. I suspect that was enough excitement and that I packed up and went home. As hooked on fishing as I’ve always been, though, I might have just gone back to fishing with the other rod as if that hadn’t happened.

I suppose because I never had a chance, that memory doesn’t sting like the lost bull redfish. It was just a thrilling few minutes that were unlike any others in a lifetime of fishing.