Believe it or not, my most profound and truly special time fishing was on Taneycomo fishing for trout during the brown run in '94. It was my last semester of college and I didn't have a boat so I'd taken up fly fishing on Taney to give me an excuse to skip more classes.
It was about 3:00 in the morning, beautiful moonlit sky and just a little snow falling. No generators had run all day so you could go just about anywhere you wanted. There was only one other guy fishing the river there and several times we commented on us being "the only ones dumb enough to be out here". We couldn't buy a fish.
Finally, I waded across the river to what ya'll call the "rebar area". Spent about 15 minutes sitting on a log as wave after wave of widgeon and mallards landed all around me. Couldn't see much, but was still very awe-inspiring. After the duck action subsided, I stood up and went back to stripping the big, black Wooly Bugger through the deeper riffles (see, Carli, I knew what ya'll were talkin' about!)
After several minutes of this with no success, I cast my fly to some slack water on the outside bend of a riffle, shoved the rod (a beautiful Orvis 3-weight given to myself as an early graduation present -- even though I didn't know if I was going to actually graduate!) under my arm and reached for a fresh dip of Copenhagen. After I put the tin of snuff back into my vest, I lifted the rod tip a bit only to find my fly snagged on something. As I started wading toward the snag and reeling in the slack line, the snag started to swim!!
"FISH ON!" I yelled, but soon realized the other fellow must have left. There really wasn't a whole lot of fight to this fish, however. I actually thought for a second time that I really did have a snag and was just trying to fool myself into thinking that it was a fish. I waded up onto dry ground and sort of drug the fish with me.
When I got her close I realized that this was a pretty big fish. It wasn't until I turned on my little mag-lite, though, and shined it down on her that I saw what an amazing fish I had there. My big 'ol black Wooly Bugger was perfectly placed in the upper lip of a beautiful female German brown trout. I put the mag-lite in my mouth, laid my rod on the ground and cradled both hands around this behomoth. Now I know what Marty Babussa felt like when he caught the MO state record (21.75#, I believe) just below the dam the year before. This fish was no record, but still weighed at least 17 pounds. She just laid there, though, and let me admire her. Until I realized that eggs were coming out of her and she was far from spawned out.
The little devil on my shoulder screamed, "MOUNT HER!!"
The sportsman in me said, "Let her go, she'll make even more and bigger ones."
It was the middle of the night, freezing cold, no camera, no witnesses....I blew her a little Jimmy Houston kiss and pushed her back into the deeper, faster water. Not too proud to say that I did it with a little tear in my eye.
What a fish! That was also the last time I fished for trout. I ended up graduating after all and then Uncle Sam got me again. Ended up back in Georgia, bought my first Nitro and the rest is history....
