Fishing The Brown Trout Brown trout were brought to this country over one hundred years ago from several different stock sources in Europe. Germany and Scotland were the key sources for the predominant strains that swim our rivers and reservoirs today and this is one import that has caused more butt-puckers than any Ferrari or Lamborghini in history. Brownies are one of the most interesting fishing challenges in the world, because they all seem to be born with I.Q.s that rival Stephen Hawking, advanced degrees in quantum physics and built-in X-ray vision for inspecting the angler's offering with a fine-toothed comb. Don't feel bad if you have never caught one, for more than one eager fisherman has tasted the foul flavor of skunk after setting out to wrestle with a Brown Trout. I would have to say they are at least as hard to catch as steelhead (on a good day when they are aggressively striking) and can be tougher than catching a grouper on a dry fly when they are fussy. They can be harder to catch than a gorgeous, rich fine Southern California girl who thinks she has a chance at Brad Pitt or Charley Sheen. I have spent hours lobbing every fly in my box to one brown trout and everything was ignored with total disdain. Then I watched as one real bug floated past and BAM!, he took it like a man going to the electric chair. My flies were like cans of Slimfast set adrift in a vast sea of doughnuts on Chris Farley's kitchen table; they looked cute but they weren't tops on his menu. On one day in particular, I was standing in my favorite drift doing my best to dislocate my shoulder, tossing fly after fly to this one snotty brown trout that loved to give me the cold shoulder (kind of like a college girlfriend who watched you flirt with every girl EXCEPT HER at a party all evening long). A guy arrives with his 8-year-old daughter riding on his shoulders, carrying one of those Snoopy kiddie fishing poles in her little palms. He asks if I don't mind if the little bugger takes a cast or two. I reply that I don't mind at all as my shoulders were awash in lactic acid and the cold Harp Lager in my cooler was calling my name anyway. Well, cute little Snoopy Pole bounces down off daddy's shoulders, waits patiently while he threads a worm the size of a boa constrictor on her hook, and lets daddy toss the giant brown firehose out with a splat........you know what happened next. My brownie, the same damn fish that 20 seconds earlier was pickier than Kate Moss at a salad bar, inhaled the entire Anaconda-sized worm in one gluttonous gulp. I swear I even heard a "chomp" noise come out of his cakehole as he greedily swallowed the entire rattlesnake. Daddy sets the hook, and amid much screaming and wild yelling, my brownie is horsed in with all the subtlety of a stump-puller on a logging crew. That stinker weighed 6 lbs. and had the biggest red dots I have ever seen on a brownie. Snoopy Pole was more excited than Michael Jackson in a Junior High boy's shower, and her daddy proudly (and correctly) spent at least 10 minutes praising her fishing skills. I merely sat in my Jeep, drinking my beer and entertaining dark thoughts........ The only Brownie I got that day was due to having "creeper waders" that were about three sizes too small! |
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