There are only a few things I am sure about from that morning. I remember most vividly the moment when I got a look at the thing. I was shin-deep in the Henry’s Fork, water reflecting the sun, my rod skyward and arching, the line pulled tight. The fish moved out of the seam and swam exposed for a millisecond. I got my glimpse.
It was only a moment, but there was one feature I could not miss. This fish was . . . big. I know that is a poor adjective. No self-respecting writer should lean on a word so plain and monosyllabic. But I find myself returning to that irreplaceable description: big. When I got my glimpse, the word rose in my mind and surfaced: “Oh my, that’s a big fish.”
I had arrived expecting pale morning duns. A few trout rose, but drag-free drifts with proven pale morning dun (PMD) patterns went untouched. So I knotted on an X-caddis, and a few small fish took the fly with splashy rises. I switched to a bead head caddis pupa and an indicator, hoping to catch something of size.
Several nice trout came to the new fly quickly. The best was a fat rainbow that raced downstream and tested my knots but eventually ended up in the net. The sun was up high, and the fish shone, the pink streak along its side rising with its gills as I gave it back to the river. Two casts later—in the same current seam—the white yarn indicator jerked to a halt and submerged. I raised the rod and set the hook on something with no give whatsoever. I had been hooking fish for thirty minutes, but I still thought I had snagged a boulder—until it began to swim.
Large fish threaten my sanity. A true trophy is rare enough that, once I realize what is happening, I immediately begin to wonder how I will screw it up. After I got the glimpse, I reeled up the slack and waited for a run. Each second of waiting brought an unsettling internal spool of fear tangled with excitement and a little dread. There were only two potential outcomes, and only one was worth considering.
It is strange really, the importance anglers place on having a truly heavy fish—be it trout or tarpon—in our hands. While small fish are counted even when they spit the hook ten yards away, we have not caught a big fish until we have touched it—felt the wet scales against our fingertips. To hook even one such fish is to know the fear of failing in sight of the finish. In some twisted, anxiety-ridden way, losing a huge fish seems worse than not hooking the fish at all.
It has been nearly five years since the moment I glimpsed that fish. In that time, I may have tricked myself. Maybe I can’t trust my mind because of what happened next. Probably, my memory has grown the fish with each mental viewing. Maybe it wasn’t that big. Maybe it was a whitefish. But maybe it was a trout. Maybe my mind has made that fish—and that day with the caddis and no PMDs—something it was not.
Maybe.
I knew only in that moment what I still know—that I was hooked to something big. Bigger and in some way wilder than anything I had hooked before. I was exhilarated and afraid.
The thing didn’t stay put. It labored upstream like a train—slow at first but gaining momentum and speed until I was just a passenger, powerless to turn it or slow it down. Line sang off my reel like a church choir. I stood helpless, palming the reel lightly and waiting for the backing knot.
Then—without a leap or an abrupt jerk—the line went limp.
Reeling in, I found that the hook was not straight and that no knot had given way. The fly—my number fourteen bead head caddis pupa with partridge legs—had simply pulled free.
A few hours later, I stopped shaking.