I am a catch and release guy. Almost 100% of the time. Certainly in the rivers. But every now and then, I get the urge to go out and catch dinner. Fortunately we have the perfect place for that right around Bozeman. The local reservoir is not only the town’s water supply but it stocked with Yellowstone Cutthroat on a regular basis. Yellowstone Cutts are damn tasty and there is no way I would ever kill and eat one out of the river. But stockers out of a lake? Hell yeah.
We got to talking about it at work yesterday and Ethan and I decided we needed to make it happen. So despite the wind in town when the shop closed, we headed up into the mountains. This was the first time I’d been up there this year and every time I’m amazed at how beautiful it all is. Even with low hanging clouds and obscured vistas, it is a beautiful place.
The foul weather kept a lot of people out, but there were still a few anglers where we wanted to fish. I don’t think they took to kindly to us both catching fish within 10 minutes of getting there, while they didn’t catch a thing the whole time we were there. Of course we gave them lots of room, but they could still see what was going on. Not wanting to cause a scene, Ethan and I both calmly and quietly dealt with our catch and moved on to the next ones. Between us we caught six and kept three. Not too bad for the first after work outing of the year and almost freezing our fingers off.
It’s an interesting thing, to bonk a fish over the head and know you’re going to eat it. Every now and then I think it’s probably a healthy thing for an angler to do that. Population control can be a very useful tactic in most waters, and it brings you back to the roots of fishing. Fishing for dinner was going on long before fishing for sport. But I digress…
Fresh trout from a cold ass lake in the mountains, wrapped up in tin foil with lemon and butter and tossed on the grill to steam is a delicacy that is pretty damn hard to beat. Fish doesn’t get much more fresh than that and you really appreciate the meal more knowing you personally bonked a fish to make it happen. Wash it down with a cold, cheap beer and you’ve got quite a meal.
Bon Appetit.
