In only the most wild, clean, cold, and complex streams on the the west-slope of the northern Rockies, there is an ancient relic that is big, bad, beautiful, and sacred.
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| Image Credit: Joel Sartore/National Geographic Stock with Wade Fredenberg |
In most of Montana, it is illegal to intentionally fish for bull trout due to their listing as a Threatened Species by the ESA. Historically, all of the westslope streams in Montana, where trout could distribute themselves after the last ice age, were cutthroat and bull trout streams. Rainbows are not native to Montana except for one strain in the Kootenai. Brook trout are from the east of the continent and are bad news for bulls because they can breed and create sterile offspring (like horse + donkey = sterile mule). Brown trout aren't even from this continent, they're European. I won't even get into the lake trout/bull trout thing, it's super contentious and complicated.
The thing is, these absolutely amazing fish, while struggling, are still here and every once in a while, you'll catch one by accident.
If you fish in western Montana long enough, you'll hear of and eventually witness what we call "shark attacks." You'll catch a tiny cutthroat on a dry in mid summer only to watch a shadow appear from the depths and eat it off your line. One time, up Rock Cr., I had a shark attack happen. A shadow came out and whacked my tiny brown trout who just ate my stonefly dry. I instinctively pulled the little trout away from the shadow and it disappeared. I just kind of stood there stunned and as I pulled in my little wounded trout, the shadow came back without any concern of me standing there and grabbed my trout. He didn't let go until I scooped him in my
Measure Net. He was 20" long. I've randomly caught other smaller bulls on streamers in the Blackfoot or Rock Creek and even caught an 18" bull on a skwala dry on the lower CF near Superior.
So why all this about bull trout? It's because yesterday, I caught a 30" monster bull trout in downtown Missoula. It was about the craziest fishing experience I've ever had. For the first 10 minutes, I thought I foul hooked a huge sucker. You know how sometimes this happens and you think for a minute that you've caught the largest brown trout of your life until the sucker bellies up to the surface or you feel the tell-tale signs of a foul hook?
Not yesterday. I was fishing a 6wt and for the sole purpose of conserving my flies while fishing dirty water, I had my upper nymph tied on 1x and my dropper on 2x. When I first set the hook, it felt as if I hooked into a sinker log in the current. My rod was just about ripped out my hand as this giant, throbbing, whatever ran into the main current. After I figured out that whatever it was, it could not be a foul-hooked sucker, my heart started racing. I could not pull this fish up in the water column or up river at all and I was confidently giving it hell due to my stout line. My little rod was bent so hard I thought it would burst. The fish was falling back with the current and taking me with him. I caught it in slow, safe water and it was pulling me towards a raging, brown river.
It was about this time, that I noticed a small crowd had gathered on a footbridge about 50 yrds. downstream. I didn't know if I'd be able to safely make it around some submerged trees and get to some slack water on the other side of the bridge. I called out to the people on the bridge, "can you see it?" A guy yelled back, "No, don't come this way!" I got my answer and the only way I was going to ever see this fish and not die was to pull it back upstream.
When trout fishing, you don't normally have the time to think about a lot when you have a fish on. Even the most epic battles are over pretty quick. But this was like deep sea fishing. Thoughts had time to creep into my head. Is this a giant brown? Did a pike eat a whitefish off my line? I visualized all the knots on my hand tied leader. I wondered if my cheap-ass rod would explode.
Eventually, some of the crowd made their way down to the bank behind me. As I looked back at them, I saw that behind them, in the restaurant that overlooks the river, the staff and patrons were all standing at the windows watching me. If you read my post yesterday, you know I don't normally fish around people. Now, I had a genuine audience. Oh god!
A minute later, I got my first look at the fish. I screamed, "It's a fucking giant bull trout, oh my god!" It took off deep again. Now I had time for different thoughts. I knew my net wasn't going to work - too small. I knew I had to do everything right as far as releasing this rare river phantom, especially because of my job, trout conservation reputation, and the audience watching. I got him in close again. It had to be getting tired because I kept having to switch arms because of burning muscles.
As I finally pulled the fish close enough to touch, I grabbed her by the
caudal peduncle but she just shook me free. On my next attempt, I thought I'd just go for the fly. As I reached for it, she spooked and ran off again. On the last attempt, I grabbed the tippet right above the fly, the fish spooked, the fly dislodged, and the river phantom disappeared back to the darkness.
I looked up to the guy that was helping me. He noted my undersized landing net floating away. We both just couldn't believe what happened. He was an old guy and he said he had never seen a fish like that in the Clark Fork. He thanked me, I thought that was funny. We laughed when we looked up in the restaurant and all the people were clapping and making the "how big?" gesture with their arms. I love Missoula.
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