The Mouse that Roared
Posted by Pete Robbins on Jul 19th 2020
My wife is a fishing badass. I don’t state that lightly, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever said it before. It’s not just that she’s caught more legit 9-pounders than most of you, and it’s largely in spite of the fact that she enjoys Carolina Rigging, but the point hit home last week on a remote creek in southwestern Alaska.
The trout on those creeks follow the salmon upstream as the latter lay their eggs and engage in a little bit of omelet-oriented gluttony. Thus, the best lure for consistent action – the salmonid equivalent of a Senko – is a small bead that resembles a salmon egg. You cast it a little bit upstream, let it bounce down among the rocks, and they just about rip your arm off trying to gobble those suckers.
That’s what I fished all day.
Hanna, however, having experienced a taste of topwater trout fishing a few days earlier on a different creek, relied on a floating mouse all day. It required considerably more effort to present it correctly, along with a more nuanced hook set, but she embraced the challenge. She probably only caught 60 or 70 percent as many fish as I did, but she experienced some absolutely heart-stopping strikes. That’s the sign of maturation – choosing, when the right situation presents itself, to go for the quality of the overall experience over the sheer number of fish caught. By the time I came around to her way of thinking, the float plane was on the way and it was too late.
Now, for the first time in her fishing career, she has a fishing accomplishment that I’ve yet to taste. I couldn’t be happier. She’s the Dean Rojas of Bristol Bay.
