Painfully Obvious Tip #3

I fish small streams often. The fish run smaller and even the big ones, those that measure longer than a foot, have so little room to run that one rarely needs to do anything more than strip them in after they've exhausted themselves. The reel is there to hold the line. It's not for playing fish.

Last weekend I visited a large river for the first time this season. The fish aren't much larger (though there's always hope for one) but they do have plenty of room to run. So, while many can be stripped in, there is the odd one that will give you a run for your money and the reel, and it's drag, will come in quite handy.

Which brings us to Painfully Obvious Tip™ #3:

Check your equipment. Ensure that the drag on your reel isn't ratcheted down all the way like it was at the end of your last trip. Otherwise a large fish will make you its bitch and steal your flies.

I don't regret losing this obviously nice fish.

It was a learning experience.


BONUS P.O.T. for bait anglers:

How to keep your bait off the bottom

BONUS VIDEO*: These fish were stripped in**


Brown Trout from Sipping Emergers on Vimeo.


* Yes, I was too lazy to add a cool soundtrack (i.e. banjos or some such thing) or video of the drive to the river or some foot level video of me walking to or from the river. And I wiped out the sound from the camera cause, as Owl Jones points out, all you can hear are squeaks and gurgles. Video really is a pain in the ass.
** On a reel whose drag was set so tight that it would foil fish catching six days hence.