My Fly is Bigger Than Your Fish

by Mark McGlothlin on November 24, 2013

in Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Jake'swhopperProving that good things can and do spin out of untoward life events (shoulder issue), I had occasion a few weeks ago to speak with a couple of longtime fishing compadres.

Both compadres are what most of us would call ‘distracted fishers’; they’re busy as hell with large families, they’re well-heeled and travel to (at least in my pedestrian book) exotic destinations to fish for nifty saltwater species.

Both live in locales that afford them easy access to some of the best salmonid fly fishing water in the lower forty-eight (Kalispell and Salt Lake City); while neither fished the Greater Yellowstone region this year (if you don’t count the South Fork of the Snake) they both made it to Andros and Belize.

Though they don’t know one another, they’ve both honed in on tarpon and permit as their species of maximum interest. And both perked up significantly upon learning She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were now living on the left coast near the Olympic Peninsula and its fabled steelhead waters.

Both wanted to know what my fishing focus of late had been. Both laughed when I said I’d rather be chasing feisty little native cutthroat or adfluvial grayling in the high country of southwestern Montana or the backwaters of Greater Yellowstone, though the lure of West Coast native steelhead will likely consume the lion’s share of my fishing days (pending what they can do for my shoulder) this winter.

My SLC friend wryly observed that some of his tarpon flies were bigger than the fish I caught in these streams, though I did steer him to Pat Ford’s recent writeup in Fly Tyer (Tarpon Flies: Past and Present) discussing, amidst a host of interesting stuff, the shrinking size of Florida tarpon flies over time.

And while on most days we target fish a tad larger than the leviathan Jake managed to land on the lower Madison above, there’s no question that some of Mike’s tarpon rigs are bigger than the quarry many of us chase on the cricks and creeks of the West.

I’ve long been one to argue that the size of the fish on the end of one’s fly line doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t, though there is something special about a big fish on a fly line – whether it’s a big bull red, tarpon, permit, steelhead or salmon.

Jake and Blake got into some fair sized Coho and Chum the day before yesterday on a river in Western Washington; judging from the smiles I’d venture they’re big fish guys too.

Blake'sCoho