Behemoth
This monster brown trout was caught one late afternoon on my home river. Here's the story...
"Sure man, let's float it Saturday.."
Doesn't check the map or distance
Doesn't determine the float time
Trusts friend blindly ...
Shows up in that same friend's driveway.
"Yeah I think we can make it work" he said, as we eyed my 4 foot truck bed with two kayaks strapped in the back of it. (Ok, it's 6 feet if you have the tailgate down like we did. But the kayaks were 10 feet and 12 feet.) The issue really wasn't two kayaks in my truck though anyway...it was three kayaks in my truck.
What does the person we're meeting drive? a mini-van. Sweet.
You see, we were going to float from the dam to a bridge a few miles below. We all drove to the bridge at the bottom in two cars; two kayaks in my truck, one in Clark's minivan. But then, as I'm sure you're well aware, we had to do the car gymnastics to get all the kayaks in my truck to take them to the put in. And at the end of the day, we would arrive to the minivan at the bottom, load up the 3 kayaks in/on top of/"encima de" the van, and drive me back to the dam again to retrieve my vehicle.
So we get the kayaks in the water and we're off. Me, weighing the least, and in the largest kayak. The other two guys with about a hundred pounds on me each, in tiny little sit-in style yaks. I'm not sure if it was the physics I described above or what, but they were pretty much out of sight before I knew it. I then proceeded to paddle essentially all day, as they fished. Every time I caught up to them and begun to sling my streamer, they were off again. Maybe it was a cadence thing. Maybe I was just "not paddling hard enough" (that was their diagnosis). Whatever it was, I felt like I was hardly doing any fishing..
Which brings me to the comments made above about me not checking the distance, float times, etc. I blindly trusted today's Hero (the guy that ends up catching the huge fish). Turns out we had a LOT of water to cover.
We reallly needed to make it back to my truck at the put in before the DNR locked us in, or towed my truck. We had all heard they can be pretty strict on that, so there wasn't any wiggle room at the end of the day. We MUST make it to the end in time. We MUST pack up the kayaks in a timely fashion. And we MUST return to my truck before the authorities pull the plug on us.
I mentioned we were throwing streamers. I hadn't thrown streamers much at this point (I still haven't really), but Ben knew exactly what he was doing. He covered so much water in such a short amount of time it was fascinating. I had only nymphed with him before, which he also excels at. One big streamer in front of one big fish. That was the game that day, and he executed beautifully.
He actually had caught a few normal sized browns throughout the day, but nothing to write home about. We took a break at one point on a rock, ate some lunch and relieved ourselves.
Clark had let his mind escape the pressures of the world shortly after, and was genuinely just enjoying nature, the float, the sky; the peace and serenity found on the river. He stopped paddling as he lay flat on his back in his kayak, and got all philosophical on us about "how it's not just about the fish guys,"..."you gotta just enjoy the day and the opportunity to be out here" he said sleepily.
I jest, but he's right. You gotta enjoy the day or you ain't livin' right. Can't always be about the catching.
Catching? Who's catching anything anyway. Who's even getting to fish? not me. I'm paddling. Can't keep up.
As the day winds down, Clark had become so committed to 'it not being about the fish' that he actually just paddled way ahead of us and called it a day. Guess he was tired of being in that little piece of plastic. Can't blame him really because his boat does not look comfortable. Meanwhile, I couldn't have paddled in front of anyone because I'm just slow, so I'm still in the river along with Ben. We're getting really close to the take out, and really close to needing to leave, and then I see Ben hook up.
"It's a nice one" he manages to grunt.
"Yeah?" I start paddling down to get closer, thinking maybe he'll want a picture if he gets it in.
"yeah it's really good," he gets towed around a bit by what's turning out to be a huge fish. I drift a little closer and start recording some video as I start to see this thing roll underwater.
then…"Ohhh my GohhhahhaD"
(The video quality is just awful. I apologize. I'm a little ashamed to include it on a site that's half as much about photos and video as it is about the fishing. I'm working on finding the original file and figuring out how to upload it with less compression. You can see a vague rendering of the monster brown in the top left of the screen near the beginning)