My Best Fish Ever!

 

 

 

My Best Fish Ever! Don Denney 5-23-2012

I've been meaning for a very long time to write this little story. It happened so many years ago I'm not sure which year, I think mid '90's. I sometimes tell people the story.

I publish a weekly stream report on my website, www.hiwassee.net , and on the page I have a link to a collection of particularly memorable (at least to me) reports that I call "keepers". This story certainly belongs in that archive.

My flyfishing really began when I was a child growing up in Cleveland Tennessee. Back then (1950's and '60's) we had a lot of neighborhood barber shops. We got our hair cut at a place on Wildwood Avenue run by Mr. August Johnson. He had a magazine rack with sporting magazines, Sports afield, Outdoor Life, and Field and Stream. I would sometimes drop by just to read the magazines, he didn't mind. He charged $.85 to give us a "bur" haircut. There was no tax on less than a dollar then, so we got $.15 change, or as he described it, "An RC Cola and a moon pie".

The covers back then were painted by illustrators,and I remember some with flyfishermen wading rapids with a big trout on jumping right next to them. I hope sometime to find a copy of one of those.

He sometimes talked about his trout fishing on the Tellico, and he showed me one of his favorite flies one time, a brown bivisible. Back then materials and equipment were not as available as they are now, and one day he showed me what he used for a homemade flytying vise. It was a section of broom handle with a slot cut in it and a screw and wing nut that could be used to clamp a hook in it, mounted on a square piece of plank as a base.

I made one, got the smallest hook I could find, some sewing thread, and a feather pulled out of a pillow, and fashioned a crude fly. I fished it in a branch that ran by our house with a privet shoot as a rod and sewing thread as line. I caught a dace. It was so small that only the barb fit in its mouth, but it was hooked and so was I.

When I got older I eventually acquired a cheap fly rod and fished popping bugs for sunfish and sometimes bass. The first trout I recall catching was a small Hiwassee rainbow on a popping bug some time in the 60's. When I was in the Army I developed my flytying skills, such as they are, and became primarily a small stream trout fisherman. I had been caught in the middle of the Hiwassee a few times when the water came up, and was a bit intimidated by it.

The big snow of 1993 dumped so much timber in the small streams I couldn't fish them that year. I tried the Hiwassee again, and became more comfortable with it, wading even on 2 turbine flow. Since then, if I get a chance to fish, the Hiwassee is my first choice. It's a beautiful river.

Over the years I've caught some good fish, my biggest up to now being a 23" brown. Among all the big fish I have caught one stands out, the subject of this story.

The fish wasn't really that big, a 14" rainbow. It was some time around the mid 90's at Little Rock Island. Most of my big fish have been caught in that area, and that's where I want my ashes scattered.

My favorite spot then was right at the head of the island river left, a pool by a rock bluff. Periodic high water has changed the configuration since, but at that time there was a big submerged flat rock I could wade to and make casts in all directions to any pont in the pool.

It was probably late spring or early summer, and as I remember it was morning. I was fishing my favorite fly at the time, a brown hackle peacock, quarter casting downstream river left. I got a hard take.

The fish immediately soared out of the water straight toward me. The jump was 4' high and spanned 10'! It jumped again to my right, and then jumped again to my left so quickly that I wasn't sure that was the same fish, but it was! It then ran to the lower end of the pool and hunkered down deep, shaking its head, twisting, and trying to throw the hook.

I kept pressure on it as it ran side to side at the lower end of the pool, its jumps providing a better air show than the Blue Angels. The fish was green enough and strong enough so I could not gain line on it. If it had taken off downstream across the ledge I would not have been able to stop it, it would have broken off or pulled loose. In that heavy current I knew I would have to get below it to have a chance at landing it.

I started carefully wading toward the bank river left, keeping pressure on the fish. I had to climb over a downed tree to get on a ledge below the pool. Once across the ledge I had the fish upstream in the pool where I wanted it. If it had gone downstream over the ledges I would have no chance. Now it was just a matter of keeping pressure on the fish to tire it, trying to keep it steered away from tangles, and hoping it was well hooked. I would gain line when the fish would yield, when it would get close enough to see me it would take off and put the reel to screaming again. I don't recall how many times this happened, but the fish had amazing stamina.

I heard someone shouting excitedly and looked around. I didn't see anyone until I looked up, some time during all this a kayaker had beached in a little eddy above the rock bluff and climbed to the top of the rock maybe 40' up to watch. He had been shouting "What a fish!" and other things I couldn't understand.

I had business to take care of and kept at it. Eventually the fish tired enough to stop the long runs and just hold stationary in the current. I couldn't move it for a while, but in time I started gaining line and led it to quiet water by the grassy bank, and then beached it on the grass. It was a beautiful slightly chunky female 14" rainbow, amazingly strong and athletic. Fish vary in their abilities just as people do.

I don't recall that I took a photo, couldn't find one. A photo would not have been particularly distinctive, you wouldn't have been able to look at the photo and guess that that fish had fought like it did. I have noticed over the years that rainbows that jumped a lot were almost always females, whereas browns that jump a lot are almost always males. I have no explanation, but that is what I have observed.

I took considerable time to revive the fish before carefully releasing it. I had to respect it, it was a much better fish than I was a man, and I was blessed to prevail in the encounter. I will never forget it. I looked around and the kayaker was gone.

I have only seen one other fish that came close. Years later one late afternoon I was hiking back down the tracks and happened to look across the shoals above Big Lost Creek. There was a flyfisherman out there with a fish on. From my viewpoint it looked like a rainbow 2' long jumping as high as his head first on one side, then an instant later all the way on the other side, just as my fish had. It never crossed my mind until I started writing this, but I suppose that could have been my fish.

A guy I worked with told me there had once been a big rainbow that hung around the mouth of Big Lost Creek until a local snagged it and claimed he caught it. The guy was obviously still upset about that, as he should have been. I hope that wasn't my fish. I hope my fish lived a good life and died well.

I have caught a lot of other good fish, and I have caught much bigger fish, but this is the one that stands out in my mind as my best fish ever. I don't expect, or even hope, to ever catch a better one.