Lindy’s Wild Ride

Not sure if I’ve shared this with all of the Louts. On the Saturday of last year’s trip, Linden and I headed up to the no-kill on the West Branch for some wade fishing. No hatches were coming off so we were forced to nymph the faster water, knowing that the Hendricksons would eventually come off in the afternoon. I waded across the river to the far side while Lindy was up stream in the riffs. He hooked a good fish and it took off downstream. By good fish, I don’t mean one of those beautiful 18″ -20″ browns, I’m talking about the biggest damn fish I ever saw in that river! While he never laid eyes on that hog, I did. I managed to quickly wade back across to attempt to help him net it. He must have chased it over a hundred yards and I caught up with him after a few minutes. I unsnapped the net from my back as he wrestled it closer to me. That monster came up to the surface, still far away from Lindy. If he was to land this pig, it would not be without help. I took one look at it near the surface and realized I needed a bigger net. A much bigger net. I made two attempts to land this thing to no avail. A gaff would have been in order. After several minutes, the fly simply pulled free - no breakoff, just pulled free. As I stated, Lindy never saw this fish and that’s probably a good thing. We would have found him drunk, laying in a gutter somewhere muttering “there is no God” had he realized his loss. I’m going to estimate it at 30″. The distance from its tail to its dorsal would have made it a great fish if that was its entire length! Of course, there is no glory shot, just a picture I took of him when it first took off for parts unknown…

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