It occurred to me recently that I’m going to have to buy a new net. This insight struck just as a nice trout slipped from my No. 18 Adams and finned back into the current.
That shouldn’t be a big deal. I usually put everything back. Well, just about everything. I’ve been known to club a trout with a rock for supper – we’re not golfing in waders here, this is a blood sport – but rarely when I’m in rivers. And that’s about 99 percent of the fishing I do.
Still, these so called long releases somehow diminish the satisfaction of fishing. Maybe it’s a male thing, you know, the hunter-gatherer instinct working in tandem with the make-all-that-you-survey-submit instinct. When the fish wriggles away without my consent it spoils all the fun.
Or maybe it’s just that these days you really haven’t done anything until the photos are posted on Facebook.
This all may fall to that fact that I’m a male and we’re shallow, but at least I’ve recognized my gender’s flaws. Most dudes never ponder such matters as they dig the lint from their belly buttons. Not me. I’m a thinker.
Speaking of thinkers, a vegetarian friend once confided that she bends the hook points of her flies flat. It’s enough, she said, just fishing for strikes and she doesn’t like to hurt the little critters. I’d already determined long before that she was nuts, and this confessional just served as further confirmation.
So I was standing in the river watching a trout I’d played for a few minutes swim away, just as I’d intended. But instead of feeling like the master of my domain, I labored out of the river under the crushing weight of failure. The trout “escaped” in this case only because I lacked a landing net and the leader brushed up against my waders as the fish thrashed about at my feet.
I do own a landing net, but it’s the long-handled boat type. I used to own a wading net, but I lost it years ago while fishing the Big Hole. Nature called, which can be a bit of an ordeal when you’re wearing waders, and in the process of answering the call I lost it. I have a vague recollection of hanging it from a branch of a cottonwood, but I can’t be sure.
It was about that time that I bought my first raft and launched a short, unsuccessful career as a fishing guide. Since then I’ve done most of my fishing from a boat and haven’t seen the need for a wading net.
I’m pretty good at landing decent-sized trout by hand, but there’s no doubt that nets are easier on fish. You can often capture them more quickly and leave the fish in the water while you remove the hook. If you don’t need a photo you can release the fish without even removing it from the water.
Landing nets have come a long way in the decades since I first started fly fishing. One of my first wading nets was made out of that bright green plastic which can be so abrasive on fish skin. Another of my early wading nets attached to my vest by way of an elastic cord, which stretched to the water to allow netting fish.
The problem was that the net would sometimes get tangled in streamside vegetation while I bushwhacked to another spot. More than once I failed to notice until I heard a strange noise behind me. Actually, it was more a vibration I sensed rather than sound. What I didn’t realize until it was too late was that the elastic cord was stretching to the point where it could stretch no more.
The net, flying at speeds approaching that of sound, clobbered me in the back of the head before I knew it was coming.
There are better options now. The new soft-rubber catch-and-release nets are easy on fish, and there are nifty magnetic clasps that attach the nets to your vest, but are easy to remove quickly when Facebook glory is on the line.