Catching Steelhead....Without Hooking Them?
Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 12:17 am
Time for another interesting fishing story. Note that I did put up a report about this trip, but I kept it purposefully vague in order to avoid attracting the trolls. Read on and you will see what I mean.
On Monday morning I headed up to the highway side at Reiter Ponds to again try for my first winter Steelhead of the 2014-2015 season. I had been up the Saturday before but had no luck that day. Looking at the forecast and the river levels, it looked like Monday morning would make for a perfect slot to hit the water before the next set of storms rolled in and made fishing miserable and difficult/impossible.
I arrived at the river at about 7:00am and was quite pleased to see that no one had yet taken my favorite rock. I have a favorite rock on each side of the river in this stretch. It is nice to arrive at my rock in the early morning light, or before the sun is up and know what the structure of the river is like in front of me without having to guess. There are other reasons why these rocks are my favorites, but if I divulged that information....well, I might find them not being my favorites anymore.
As the light is coming up I quickly got my pole set up and tied on a standard quarter ounce bead shank pink marabou jig. I was ready to go just as it started to get light enough to see my bobber. It was time to get down to business. I began to work the water, adjusting my depth as necessary and just settling into my fishing state of mind. On a couple casts I let my bobber drift right in close to shore, maybe within 5' of the riverside end of my rock. Well, as it would happen, on one cast as my bobber drifted in front of the rock I unexpectedly saw it go down, however, as it dropped its top had that slight downstream slant and the speed with which it went under just wasn't quite fast enough to make me think it was a fish. I was pretty certain that I had hooked the bottom. Well, whatever, might as well just go ahead and set the hook anyway.
I set the hook, and I could immediately tell that it just didn't feel right, however, I didn't have long to think about how weird it felt because a split second after that thought I felt the headshakes of a good fish and heard the buzz of my drag as a nice winter Steelhead took off from its hiding place. Fish on!
So now I had an unexpected, but nonetheless welcome fish on the line and I switched over to fight mode. As it would turn out though, the initial feelings that I had felt that told me that something just wasn't right when the float dropped and when I set the hook weren't completely off base. As I started reeling in, I noticed that my float was nearly at the end of my rod tip, the fish was nowhere to be seen, but I could still feel it pulling. Something weird was going on. My first thought was that maybe I had hooked the line of someone who was fighting a fish downstream, but a quick head check confirmed that I was the only one in the vicinity with a fish on. I looked back out at the water and I could now see my jig suspended in mid air with another section of line looped through the hook.
Now this next part is significant; I can see that my jig hook is not caught on a swivel, or a weight, or a knot, or another hook, or anything that should have allowed me to keep pressure on the fish, it was simply looped once around my hook. Realizing that I had an interesting situation, I decided that it was time to leave my boulder perch and move upstream to try to get this fish to shore. I skidded off the rock, boots slipping on the slick sides, and bashed my elbow as I landed in the water with an almighty splash. No worries though, I had a fish to fight! So I grabbed my net (which thankful I had already pulled out to its longest length) and headed over to an area where landing will be easier. The fish however had different ideas. This one was a fighter and just refused to come in. It also didn't help that I had reeled my float to the top of my rod and still probably had 15 or more feet of line out counting my leader and the looped line to the fish.
This wasn't my first rodeo though, and I knew that if I could just hold this fish it would eventually tire out and come to shore. So I just stood there for a few minutes, keeping pressure on the fish with my rod in one hand, and the net in the other, poised to make the scoop at the opportune moment. Eventually the fish came in, I slid the net under it, pulled it to shore, did a quick adipose check and upon establishing that it was indeed a hatchery hen (chrome bright and a little under 8#), I moved a few feet away from the water to try to figure out what had happened.
I laid my rod down and took a look at the mouth of the fish to see that it had a little size 1 or 2 hook buried neatly around the jaw bone. I slid the hook out and had now reached decision time (FYI, this is the point at which I would potentially expect the trolls to show up, assuming they have actually read this far without deciding that trolling my post is just too much effort). What do I do with this fish? Well, I figured that I had technically done nothing wrong, as I certainly didn't snag the fish, and I fought it to shore just like any other fish. I made the decision that this one was going home with me and proceeded to dispatch "my first" winter Steelhead of the year.
And now, let us speak of regulations. The arguments against keeping a fish like this that I can think of are:
---Harvesting part of another angler's catch
---Using two hooks in an area where only one is allowed
---Keeping a snagged fish
Lets look at each argument in order. First, I most certainly did not harvest part of another angler's catch. The fact that the fish previously bit another angler's gear is completely incidental to this discussion, seeing as the fish had clearly broken off by the time I "hooked it" (FYI, it had bit what appeared to be a size 12 pearly pink corky with black spots). Second, the usage of two hooks is completely out of the question as well. On the cast that I made where I "hooked" this fish, I only cast one hook. Now someone might argue "ah yes, but you did have to use TWO hooks to actually land the fish." That is true, but the question then arises, "who was the owner of the hook in the mouth of the fish?" It definitely wasn't my hook, and so for establishing ownership of the second hook, I think I would say that by that point it belonged to the fish. Or if you don't want to assign ownership of objects to animals, then it was nothing more than unclaimed garbage. Third, keeping a snagged fish is also out in my opinion because my hook in no way shape or form penetrated the fish. If you really want to go deep with this, then consider the argument that the line hanging out of the mouth of the fish is now just an extension of the fish. So I technically secured my hook around (notice that I didn't say hooked, because I didn't hook it) a part of the fish, which was extending out of the mouth of the fish. Furthermore, snagging is defined as attempting to take a fish with hook and line such that it doesn't bite the hook. Anybody who understands snagging knows that you don't float jigs to snag fish.
So, as far as I am concerned, the fish was caught in a legal, albeit extremely improbable manner. I feel that in this case, the law is unclear, but that I still followed what could be considered the "spirit" of the law in the absence of better clarification.
And I still have absolutely no clue how that line didn't pull off of my jig hook either, that part makes no sense whatsoever.
On Monday morning I headed up to the highway side at Reiter Ponds to again try for my first winter Steelhead of the 2014-2015 season. I had been up the Saturday before but had no luck that day. Looking at the forecast and the river levels, it looked like Monday morning would make for a perfect slot to hit the water before the next set of storms rolled in and made fishing miserable and difficult/impossible.
I arrived at the river at about 7:00am and was quite pleased to see that no one had yet taken my favorite rock. I have a favorite rock on each side of the river in this stretch. It is nice to arrive at my rock in the early morning light, or before the sun is up and know what the structure of the river is like in front of me without having to guess. There are other reasons why these rocks are my favorites, but if I divulged that information....well, I might find them not being my favorites anymore.
As the light is coming up I quickly got my pole set up and tied on a standard quarter ounce bead shank pink marabou jig. I was ready to go just as it started to get light enough to see my bobber. It was time to get down to business. I began to work the water, adjusting my depth as necessary and just settling into my fishing state of mind. On a couple casts I let my bobber drift right in close to shore, maybe within 5' of the riverside end of my rock. Well, as it would happen, on one cast as my bobber drifted in front of the rock I unexpectedly saw it go down, however, as it dropped its top had that slight downstream slant and the speed with which it went under just wasn't quite fast enough to make me think it was a fish. I was pretty certain that I had hooked the bottom. Well, whatever, might as well just go ahead and set the hook anyway.
I set the hook, and I could immediately tell that it just didn't feel right, however, I didn't have long to think about how weird it felt because a split second after that thought I felt the headshakes of a good fish and heard the buzz of my drag as a nice winter Steelhead took off from its hiding place. Fish on!
So now I had an unexpected, but nonetheless welcome fish on the line and I switched over to fight mode. As it would turn out though, the initial feelings that I had felt that told me that something just wasn't right when the float dropped and when I set the hook weren't completely off base. As I started reeling in, I noticed that my float was nearly at the end of my rod tip, the fish was nowhere to be seen, but I could still feel it pulling. Something weird was going on. My first thought was that maybe I had hooked the line of someone who was fighting a fish downstream, but a quick head check confirmed that I was the only one in the vicinity with a fish on. I looked back out at the water and I could now see my jig suspended in mid air with another section of line looped through the hook.
Now this next part is significant; I can see that my jig hook is not caught on a swivel, or a weight, or a knot, or another hook, or anything that should have allowed me to keep pressure on the fish, it was simply looped once around my hook. Realizing that I had an interesting situation, I decided that it was time to leave my boulder perch and move upstream to try to get this fish to shore. I skidded off the rock, boots slipping on the slick sides, and bashed my elbow as I landed in the water with an almighty splash. No worries though, I had a fish to fight! So I grabbed my net (which thankful I had already pulled out to its longest length) and headed over to an area where landing will be easier. The fish however had different ideas. This one was a fighter and just refused to come in. It also didn't help that I had reeled my float to the top of my rod and still probably had 15 or more feet of line out counting my leader and the looped line to the fish.
This wasn't my first rodeo though, and I knew that if I could just hold this fish it would eventually tire out and come to shore. So I just stood there for a few minutes, keeping pressure on the fish with my rod in one hand, and the net in the other, poised to make the scoop at the opportune moment. Eventually the fish came in, I slid the net under it, pulled it to shore, did a quick adipose check and upon establishing that it was indeed a hatchery hen (chrome bright and a little under 8#), I moved a few feet away from the water to try to figure out what had happened.
I laid my rod down and took a look at the mouth of the fish to see that it had a little size 1 or 2 hook buried neatly around the jaw bone. I slid the hook out and had now reached decision time (FYI, this is the point at which I would potentially expect the trolls to show up, assuming they have actually read this far without deciding that trolling my post is just too much effort). What do I do with this fish? Well, I figured that I had technically done nothing wrong, as I certainly didn't snag the fish, and I fought it to shore just like any other fish. I made the decision that this one was going home with me and proceeded to dispatch "my first" winter Steelhead of the year.
And now, let us speak of regulations. The arguments against keeping a fish like this that I can think of are:
---Harvesting part of another angler's catch
---Using two hooks in an area where only one is allowed
---Keeping a snagged fish
Lets look at each argument in order. First, I most certainly did not harvest part of another angler's catch. The fact that the fish previously bit another angler's gear is completely incidental to this discussion, seeing as the fish had clearly broken off by the time I "hooked it" (FYI, it had bit what appeared to be a size 12 pearly pink corky with black spots). Second, the usage of two hooks is completely out of the question as well. On the cast that I made where I "hooked" this fish, I only cast one hook. Now someone might argue "ah yes, but you did have to use TWO hooks to actually land the fish." That is true, but the question then arises, "who was the owner of the hook in the mouth of the fish?" It definitely wasn't my hook, and so for establishing ownership of the second hook, I think I would say that by that point it belonged to the fish. Or if you don't want to assign ownership of objects to animals, then it was nothing more than unclaimed garbage. Third, keeping a snagged fish is also out in my opinion because my hook in no way shape or form penetrated the fish. If you really want to go deep with this, then consider the argument that the line hanging out of the mouth of the fish is now just an extension of the fish. So I technically secured my hook around (notice that I didn't say hooked, because I didn't hook it) a part of the fish, which was extending out of the mouth of the fish. Furthermore, snagging is defined as attempting to take a fish with hook and line such that it doesn't bite the hook. Anybody who understands snagging knows that you don't float jigs to snag fish.
So, as far as I am concerned, the fish was caught in a legal, albeit extremely improbable manner. I feel that in this case, the law is unclear, but that I still followed what could be considered the "spirit" of the law in the absence of better clarification.
And I still have absolutely no clue how that line didn't pull off of my jig hook either, that part makes no sense whatsoever.