So I think I may have mentioned in my first post here that I’m just getting back into fly fishing after a seven year break. I’ve been hitting it pretty hard in the past couple weeks, driving for hours to find water that isn’t blown out due to the run off. I ended up at the upper Madison near Yellowstone this weekend and caught a lot of nice browns and rainbows. Just like ridin’ a bike!
Over the past couple of years I’ve been trying conquer a lot of my fears in many areas of my life, and when I started fishing again I wondered what would happen when… well, let’s cut to the chase:
I AM AFRAID OF SUCKERS.
Deathly afraid. Some people are afraid of heights, some people are terrified of snakes or spiders, and I am horrified by any sort of sucker fish. Actually, I’m afraid of any fish with a suckery mouth, especially if they also have noticable scales. This includes everything from actual suckers and carp, to whitefish and grayling.
To me, slow water might as well be toxic waste. I won’t step into it for anything because I know they’re down there. To make matters worse they’re highly visible and not in the least bit afraid of me. Now I know that suckers are everywhere, but at least in fast current they’re harder to see and a bit less likely to end up on the end of my line.
I think it started when I was in junior high and I had a small 10 gallon aquarium with a few bandit catfish that I thought were kind of cute. Well, one year during Christmas break I had a friend take care of my fish, and when one of my tiny little catfish died, he felt bad and went to the pet store and got me the “coolest” sucker fish he could find. It was some kind of horrible prehistoric black sucker with giant lips, huge scales, and ridges down its back. To make matters worse, the damn thing was at least 7" long, and could barely turn around in the tank. I hated that fish. I hated feeding it disgusting brine shrimp. I hated looking into his disgusting mouth. After a while I stopped paying attention to the aquarium and eventually the monster died. Despite the fact that I was utterly terrified, my mother forced me remove the beast after a few days, which I did with bare hands. It crunched in my hand. It crunched. It stunk. I threw up.
Since then I won’t go near a sucker. For a while I could stomach the occasional whitefish, but only if they were little. But the problem got worse and worse and now I won’t go near any sized sucker.
So anyhow, I knew when I started fishing again this year that I would eventually hook into a whitefish, and I’d been mentally pumping myself up to deal with my ridiculous fear and finally allow myself to remove it from the fly.
I caught him on Sunday. At first I thought it might be a brown, but my whitefish alarms were going off like crazy. I tried pulling him up to get a glimpse of his noggin but he wouldn’t surface. I calmly removed myself from the water (because what if he touches me!) and fought him until he was close enough to shore to get a look at him. Sure enough, a 14-16" whitefish. I looked at him for a while the way a kid looks off a high cliff down into the quary where his friends are yelling “jump!” I started to move towards it and…
…quickly jerked the rod into the air to break the tippet. My standard chicken-sh*t sucker-on-the-line manuvuer.
It’s embarassing. It’s a bit costly too, but mostly just really embarassing. I make it a point now whenever I start fishing with somebody to tell them that I’m afraid of suckers. “Let’s get the teasing over with before we start. And also…if I hook into one, do you think you could come over and take him off the hook for me?”
When I hear people around here talking about carp on the fly rod it’s enough to make me lose my lunch. I’ve shot carp with a bow a few times and can remove them from an arrow without too much distress, but having to get near their giant carp lips just gives me the willies.