Swamp Things, Pt. 4

Two or three times during each of the next few seasons, I would hook trout that could have swallowed the ones I caught most of the time and still been hungry. And every time, they would thrash me soundly and leave me standing with my line limp and my stomach at my knees. I swore that if I landed one of these bruisers, I would have someone take a picture of me with the fish and submit it to the local paper where (I believed) it would surely make the sports section. That never happened, but the encounters I did have with the Swamp Things left me with a large mental portfolio of tragic portraits. Here are a few.

A long bend just above the run where I'd hooked my first Swamp Thing had been productive for smaller trout in the past, but with deep water on its outside edge, sheltered by overhanging alder limbs, it had big trout potential. Fishing early one evening as rainclouds were creeping in from the west, I tossed a silver Roostertail spinner to the upper edge of the bend and let it slide under the alders on the retrieve. A heavy fish slammed the lure, thrashed twice near the surface, then dived to the bottom of the hole. Soon I felt dead weight, and this time that's all it was. Hoping the trout was just bulldogging me, I yanked the rod from side to side a few times to provoke it to run again. Nothing happened. I stood there for several minutes, hoping that somehow the fish was still hooked. The onset of rain didn't budge me. Putting aside my fear of watersnakes, I even reached underwater and probed along the sunken alder branches and roots hoping to touch the fish and pull it out by the tail, if necessary. Eventually I had to face the facts. The fish had likely hung my lure up on a root or sunken limb and bolted. I cut my line and walked home in the rain.

Once I decided to skip some of the less productive water in the lower reaches of the Swamp branch and enter the stream at a gap in the brush upstream. I wanted to target the pool at a sharp bend just above this gap. I tried to step into the water stealthily, but my boots slid down the steep, muddy bank and plunged in like depth charges. Surely I'd spooked any fish that might be in the pool, I thought. But it was a good looking spot, so I pitched my nightcrawler in and hoped there was a fish there more hungry than cautious. On the first cast, a very large trout hit the worm. My rod flailed like a buggy whip as it circled the pool a couple times, then slipped off. Holding my bare hook, I remembered reading an article in which the writer mentioned that he sometimes hooked a large fish several times in quick succession before landing it. Could it happen here? I rebaited and cast again. About three drifts later, I got a solid pull on the line; it was unfortunately not solid enough. I quickly landed a fourteen inch brown. On any other occasion, I would have considered it a nice fish, and it was more than I deserved after my clumsy wading, but that night I only felt cheated.