Fugly...

Jordan LaRue sent a picture of a fish he caught on the Mo in what's called the "Toilet Bowl," just up-stream from Craig. To be honest with you, I'm not completely sure what happened to this fish but it looks pretty beat up. It's a pre-spawner so it probably didn't get that way by either competing with other males or by making reds. It could have developed some kind of infection while it was growing either by getting scratched by rocks or something looking for nymphs or it was from a hook. If I were to guess; it was from getting caught and by caught I mean caught and mis-handled. However, that is speculation for sure and it's really hard to say what happened to it.

What I do know is that the stretch of water where this fish was caught gets absolutely pounded and there are a lot of fish that resemble this one. Especially in these toilet bowls where fish stack up and tend to stay for a while, they could conceivably be caught many times throughout the course of the season. For the fish, the trade-off is easy food. Dead stuff and live nymphs collect in the bowls or eddies and they literally become the proverbial barrel to shoot fish from. Because so many fish stack up in there, they get incredible competitive and will eat just about anything you throw at them for a while until eventually, they do figure it out and become more selective.

These toilet bowls can save a day when the fishing is tough and believe me, I've taken my share of cycles and have done row-arounds with other boats in these spots just to put some fish in the net. But I've also seen guides sit in one toilet bowl for hours with clients roping fish, which brings up the question of what is ethical and when is enough, enough? To be honest, I've fished behind guides with clients who have done this the day before I get them and they actually ask me not to sit in one toilet bowl for hours if at all possible, which brings up a philosophy or approach to guiding that gets debated from time to time out here. The debate is numbers versus quality of experience.

Obviously, people come out and spend the money to catch fish but it's definitely not the only thing and I would argue for most, it's not even the most important thing. They want to have fun. They want to see cool things and spend a day with someone they actually enjoy talking to and learning from. They want to feel they've accomplished something, which is why they picked up fly-fishing to begin with. If they just wanted to put numbers in the boat, there are MUCH easier ways to do that. (And at some point I would have to believe that a person starts to feel a little dirty catching these fish.) I've had some of my best days guiding folks that only caught a few fish but they set out with a goal such as learning how to cast better and they work on it all day and finally, they connect on a good fish on a hopper and they are stoked.

I remember a few years ago I took a woman out fishing who was pretty new to the sport and was out here because she traded some work developing a website for an outfitter with a trip. The outfitter, who is very good at putting a ton of fish in the boat, fished with her the first day and I took her the second. When we talked about our plan for the day and what she wanted to do, she said she didn't care if she caught a single fish all day as long as she learned something. She had caught so many fish the day before but she didn't feel like she learned much accept how to fish scum-lines.

We went where we knew there wouldn't be a ton of people and we started with streamers and when fish started rising to caddis, we threw dries. We caught a handful of fish but she learned how to throw a reach cast and how to strip a streamer in and we had a blast. At the end of the day she said it was exactly what she had hoped for. However, I've also had on those rare occasions the opposite where all a client wants to do is do row-arounds up at the dam for three days...to each his own.

Keep 'em where they live...