Outsmarting the Fish

Bobby, you just have to be smarter than the fish to catch them!” After nearly half a century, my Grandfather’s words still ring in my ears. He was a lifelong fisherman, and that was his mantra. Just how true is that little homily? I’m not sure that the answer is as simple as shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel!

When I attend meetings of my local fly-fishing group, the need to get smarter definitely seems to be a given. You have to prepare flies that can prove to be indistinguishable from whatever kind of bait you are trying to mimic. The key slogan is that you have to “match the hatch” to find success on the stream.

Spend some time at streamside doing your research. Check out the buggies hiding under the rocks, look for nymphs, larva, tiny fish and other choice edibles. Then comb the surface and the weeds near shore. What is floating along, hanging off the branches, or hiding in the tules? Then, when you finally figure out what the fish are eating for breakfast, make one of your own. Something that looks like the right critter and floats or moves like it!

Emulating Hemingway
What happens if you don’t get it right? My favorite story involved my college buddy Rob. He took a pilgrimage to some of the great streams in Idaho to follow Ernest Hemingway’s journey to the world’s finest trout waters. Five days on the streams and not a strike. There were fish in the great rivers, but he couldn’t get them to take his offerings. All around him were better fishermen, hauling in some great looking brown trout, while he was shut out.
That certainly proved true in that case!

But sometimes the fish don’t follow that rule and will hit anything. A few months ago I went to a museum and got to look at a number of prehistoric fishing lures. Some of our indigenous Northwest residents discovered that you could catch a halibut by jigging with a piece of white bone taken from a long dead deer or elk, or carved from a walrus tusk. Sometimes a chunk of hair tied to a sharp hook would attract a fish to action.

But it gets a lot stranger than that. Last summer I caught several limits of trout on Power Bait, stuff that looks like Play-Doh and smells like used cat litter. They loved it! One lake I went to produced a nice limit of trout on cheese spread. Where in heck did fermented cow juice make it on the fish’s “must eat” list? I wrote one story about a bunch of kokanee salmon we caught using corn for bait! I can see attracting pheasant or ducks with corn, but fish?

Hungry Steelhead
One scaly creature I can’t figure out is the steelhead salmon, which I like to chase during the winter. This last season I saw fish caught on plastic balls, pink rubber worms, wads of chartreuse yarn—heck they even bite their own eggs! A few years back I hooked a nice metal head on a flared-out cigarette butt! One buddy of mine caught a steelhead in Big Creek that had swallowed a packet of Chinese soup that was most likely thrown overboard from a freighter.

So what is it? Are fish smart and wary, or are they dumb as a post? After years of trying to sort it out, I figure that they are a lot like fishermen! Some have it together, and with some you wonder how they ever made the step from small fry to grown up!

Recently I had occasion to mail in my fishing tags from this year’s catch. With the luck I had in 2005, I’m one of those addled bottom feeders who likely would get caught on a Marlboro butt! Let’s hope that 2006 is a little better, or that somehow I can find some dumber fish! Happy New Year!

Bob Ellsberg’s column, Fishin’, appears monthly in RV Life and rvlife.com.