The Occasional Fishing Thread [Bandersnatch]

Welcome Piscators and Piscatrixes to the current installment of the occasional fishing thread. As usual, my musings, memories, biases, rants, brags, and outright lies are just a jumping off point. All things fishy are on topic.

Now, you’ve been a good Fish Horde and we’ve had fun these occasional Saturday nights so I have no wish to punish you. (Also, there are no pictures of Yoko fishing). But I couldn’t resist this one. I showed it to an ‘Ette, sort of a distaff Tyrion Lannister, and she said “I know nothing about fly fishing and I can tell that this is a complete mess”.

I do know something of fly fishing and I can assure you that that cast is about to collapse into a puddle of despair and effeminate preening. It is worse, sport for sport, than going 1 for 20 at hoops.

Today’s mooted topic is The One That Got Away. One that got away stories are great because they are at once self-aggrandizing and self-deprecatory. The fish can be as big as you want because it got away. Your achievement in hooking it was epic, the fault of losing it lies with the stars. Unless you just screwed up, as I did.

I was fly fishing in the surf at Nauset Beach on a very early morning. We fly guys resented the claims by surf casters that we just caught a lot of small fish, but that was largely true. I had not yet caught a keeper (then 36”) that year when I hooked into a fish I was entirely unprepared for. She was big. She was a she because striped bass longer than 28” are female. As I saw her near the surface she was longer from dorsal to tail than anything I’d caught. Amazingly I kept her on and got her in close and ready to land but I didn’t know how. (History gives too soon into weak hands … what’s thought can be dispensed with).

Well she’s coming in a little with each wave and being pulled out a little as each recedes. I decide to just horse her in and clamp down on the reel. Pop! The line parts. The wave receeds. The fish is lying on the sand at the lip of the beach. I tumble forward trying to tackle it, to claim the prize, but it’s twenty long feet and the next wave is coming in.

Have you lost any good fish?

Now, on to the Fish Brag pics submitted by Morons…

Shaef from Gettysburg sent in these:

My first guided trip in Maine, obviously successful. We landed three native brook trout at Little Boy Falls and released all of them.

From western Mass we hear from Man of Few Words:

Me with a fish

Herb from Kennebunk sent us this:

This is from November ’88, celebrating in Florida. Catching fish is secondary. I like being in the surf, or wading in the stream, or scaring the grandkids driving the Fountain boat 100 miles an hour.

Cookie Monster sends this:

I found this in an album. Those look like Adirondack Guide Boats, so I guess it was from one of my upstate trips.

This came over the transom from Archie Bunker’s Man:

Lurker Spetsnaz caught a hefty pike:

De-lurking. Trust me I’ve been reading everything for years. It took me a while to find a picture with my shirt on.

Finally we hear from Dutch:

I don’t really fish but I do embrace the vigorous outdoor lifestyle. Also, you don’t have a horse thread so I thought this might fit here.

By the way, who is that absolute pantywaist at the top of this thread?

And with that we move on to the raison d’etre of this here HQ, the comments section. Brickbats, praise, and fish brag pics are welcome at aoshqfish at sign gmail thing.

posted by CBD at 07:37 PM

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