A Special Kind Of Crazy

Chasing muskies is a pursuit that requires dedication, patience, and perhaps a bit of insanity. Photos courtesy Kubie Brown

“Dammit!” My brother bellowed, throwing his wading boots into the brush and plunking down in a chair by the campfire. We had just ended our fifteenth salmon-less day in a row on a cold, rainy Nova Scotia river. We were tired, hungry, and soaked through from hiking and swinging flies through miles of seemingly empty water, and as we got back to camp, he just exploded.

“Why the hell can’t we ever take a fishing trip for something that’s easy to catch!” He said, ripping open the tab on a beer. I didn’t say anything, knowing that silence was the only thing preventing me from catching a left hook to the jaw. It was my fault, of course, because I had planned this trip down to every detail—except the salmon weren’t cooperating and my plans just weren’t coming together.

My brother finished the beer and calmed down. “It’s just that I always get so excited for these trips, and it seems like they hardly ever pan out,” he said. “Atlantic salmon, steelhead, friggin’ muskies . . . we’re always chasing unicorns!” He stood up and started struggling out of his waders. “Sometimes,” he said, fumbling with his booties and flopping down in the sand, “I feel like we’re kind of crazy for doing this stuff.”

After they’ve caught a bunch of trout, anglers start searching for the “big one.”

Signs of Insanity

There’s an adage you always hear about the evolution of an angler: First you want to catch a fish, then a lot of fish, and then big fish, and so on. It speaks of a desire to do more, to challenge yourself, and to become more accomplished in fly fishing, and it’s what keeps us all coming back. Generally, this journey goes the same way for everyone who takes up the sport. When you first pick up a fly rod, you’re easily satisfied, but as you advance as an angler, you start to crave something more.

My first fish on the fly was an errant smallmouth bass that I caught on my grandfather’s rod when I was 10 years old. That bass sparked something in me, filling me with a mad desire to keep trying to catch fish on the fly. So I started mucking around with perch and panfish, catching them on wet flies and nymphs beneath a strike indicator before eventually starting to catch the very willing fish on dry flies.

Every fish I caught in those early days gave me the biggest sense of accomplishment, and for many anglers, that feeling can be more than enough. They’ll stay in their comfort zone, fishing the same water for the same fish every day—and there’s really nothing wrong with that. However, for a select few those first fish you catch on the fly trigger something deep in your brain. Those early fish become like the first few tentative steps you take on a steep downhill slope, where you start by picking your way along but before you know it, you’re hurtling down the mountain in an uncontrolled sprint. After my first fish, I wanted to speed up the learning curve to cram as much fly fishing into my life as possible and to become a better fly angler as quickly as I could. So I began to spend hours awkwardly flinging line around my head and untangling it from the bushes and trees at the edge of the water until eventually, I started to get better.

Part of being an adventurous angler involves finding success outside your comfort zone.

Soon enough, I was chasing more challenging species like trout and bass on nymphs and then eventually on dry flies. As I continued to progress, I learned from other anglers, devoured fly-fishing books and videos, and eventually I got a job in a fly shop and became a trout-fishing guide. Fly-fishing madness was completely upon me by then, yet the more trout, bass, and panfish I caught, the more that feeling of accomplishment that I was so addicted to began to fade. Then one day I heard a customer in the fly shop talking about steelhead. He spoke almost the fish an almost hushed whisper, describing their challenge and majesty and making steelhead seem almost mythical…and just like that, the madness was reborn.

Dipping Into The Hard Stuff

After hearing about the fish, I spent the entire winter chasing steelhead on Great Lakes tributaries, finally landing my first one on a nymph during a cold February evening. Holding that fish gently in the freezing water, I felt that glorious insanity all over again. It was a feeling of accomplishment, mingled with the knowledge that I still had more to do. The following autumn, I headed for the West Coast and started chasing Pacific steelhead with a Spey rod. It took a while, but I finally landed one after two weeks of standing in the cold rain. It felt good, it felt right, and I felt like I’d won something great. Yet like a rising fever in my brain, I knew that I still wanted more.

It wasn’t long after that I started casting big streamers when I was trout fishing, catching fewer fish, but landing some true monsters. It was sometime in there that everything just connected. The challenge was what I loved, and I’d developed a sort of psychosis, a desire to pursue the uncatchable. I no longer just wanted to catch any fish on a fly rod. I wanted to catch fish that were seen as often as Sasquatch and fought like Mike Tyson on a bender when hooked. I wanted fish that lived in exotic destinations, fish that listened to Black Sabbath, had tribal tattoos, and are often sighted on dark street corners with toothpicks clenched in their teeth.

Steelhead fishing is a waiting game, so you’ve got to stay caffeinated.

I started planning these trips, hiking and portaging back into rivers and backcountry lakes, looking for the big one. I would swing Spey flies for steelhead, throw big streamers for monster brown trout, canoe into high-mountain lakes for big pike, and row down giant rivers looking for muskies. I started saltwater fishing, chasing hard-fighting stripers on beaches, casting for spooky bonefish on clear flats, and pulling my hair out in frustration as I missed shots at permit.

It got to the point where I sometimes I wouldn’t catch a fish for days and sometimes for weeks, despite fishing hard, and I would begin to go completely insane. Day after fishless day, I would come off the water and think I was foolish for doing this. Then suddenly, it would all come together. When that hard strike and screaming fight finally came, I’d find myself waist deep in water holding more than two feet of angry fish in my hands, and I’d realize that, although I was completely crazy, it was okay.

Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

It’s funny how with certain fish species, it can only take landing one to make you realize that you’re afflicted with this specific type of madness. It’s one of those things that just happens suddenly and out of nowhere, completely changing you from a regular fly angler to a complete loony.

A year after that fishless salmon trip, after portaging almost a mile of shallow rapids with an 800-pound drift boat and casting a 10-weight until he felt like his arm was going to snap off, my brother landed his first muskie on the fly. As he stood there, holding that snapping, flapping monster in his hands, he looked back at me breathing hard, and I saw a wild and familiar gleam in his eyes. He looked back at the fish in his hands and grinned. “Hell,” he said, “Maybe I’m crazy too!”