“Little Fish Tales,” by Jim Mize
The author’s daughter fights one on the tailrace where a small fish tale turned into a bigger one. Photo: Jim Mize
Fish tales often turn on the dramatic action of a huge fish. These stories can involve the ones that got away or the remarkable achievement of landing a monster after a battle that has stressed both tackle and angler. Sometimes, however, tales of small fish can be equally amusing, especially when they involve a hint of the unusual.
One such story happened to me a few years ago on a small stream in the North Carolina mountains. You might surmise that most of my tales involve small fish, considering the waters I fish in and the talent of the angler. You could be right.
Yet I still need to have some tales to share over a pint, and this is one of mine.
Rock Fish
I was fishing the Hateful Fish Hole on Humility Creek. The hole was so named by my daughter after a nice rainbow refused her dry fly multiple times, and the creek itself bears this code name in my family, as the water is already crowded and needs no further press.
So, standing knee-deep at the tail of the pool, I was drifting a nymph through the main current when the fly seemingly snagged on a rock. I had been bumping the bug along the bottom, and this wasn’t the first time it had hung up.
I flipped my wrist a few times above and below the rock thinking if I got just the right angle it might come loose. No such luck.
Not wanting to lose my fly, I simply waded out to the rock and ran my hand down in the water guided by my leader. When my hand met the rock, I gave the leader a tug in what seemed like the right direction and it moved. Not only did it move, but it kept coming, too.
They can’t all me monsters. Photo: Phil Monahan
I raised my hand with about a foot of leader trailing with the fly, only the fly was in the mouth of a small brown trout that had decided to take refuge under the rock. As the fish came up to my surprise, I continued raising my hand until it was almost at eye level, and it began to gyrate and flip until the fish went back into the stream and my fly flew in the opposite direction.
That may have been as close to a catch as anyone in my family ever got to a fish in the Hateful Fish Hole.
One Fish, Two Fish
Not all my small fish stories come from small waters. I was fishing a tailrace a few years ago late in the evening when a few bugs hovered over the water in the haze of fog. The pool I was in was fairly slow, and the lower end was too deep for my chest waders. Small rainbows leapt for these hovering insects, and I was entertaining myself trying to catch these fish on small dry flies.
I had tied on a size sixteen Parachute Adams since I couldn’t see the bugs well in the fog and figured the fish couldn’t either. Due to the depth of the pool, I was having to drift the dry fly in from upstream to reach the fish. This had the advantage of presenting my fly before my leader but the disadvantage of disturbing fish when I eventually had to pick up the fly for the next cast.
Still, I was catching fish, mostly in the ten-inch range. As the evening wore on, the action began to slow, and I thought I was about done. As anglers often do, I promised myself one more cast about ten times, and on one of these last casts a small rainbow sucked in the Adams.
The fish couldn’t have been six inches long, what one of my fishing buddies calls a “tiddler.” Not wanting to waste too much time on such a fish, I began pulling it in when suddenly it stopped. My first thought was snag, but then it began to move. That was when I realized that a large fish had swallowed my tiddler.
Plenty of other realizations followed. First, my leader was probably too fine to land such a fish. Second, my fly was probably not hooked in the big fish, since it was in the mouth of the small one. Last, I was only connected to the big fish because it wouldn’t let go of the tiddler.
I did the only thing I could, which was to buy time in the hope that the small rainbow would be completely swallowed.
As you might have already guessed, the larger one was a brown trout, as I observed when it swam by me on one of its light-resistance runs. It hardly fought against the amount of pressure I put on it, but having seen the fish I guessed it at about two feet long.
At one point it did start swimming downstream, and before I risked turning it, I was into my backing, something that hadn’t happened since I had replaced my fly line during the term of our former president. In short, I couldn’t remember what color the backing was since we were such rare acquaintances.
This went on until I managed to get the fish directly in front of me, fifteen feet away, and felt the sickening pull of my fly sliding out of the small fish without hooking the big one. Anyway, it was fun while it lasted.
So, I’m not sure if this story qualifies as a small fish tale. But I do know that sometimes little fish tales turn into big ones.
Jim Mize mostly remembers the ones that got away. You can purchase Jim’s award-winning book, The Jon Boat Years, in the MidCurrent Marketplace or buy autographed copies here.
