Not a bad fish.
It was 10 years ago I went on a trip with my dad to the Babine River in BC to fish waters my dad and grandfather fished for many years, to fish a hole on the river named after my grandfather and to have a shot at a 20# steelhead.
That was my first trip to a lodge, my first week of lodge fishing. I had high expectations, even though I told myself not to.
The fishing was great. The catching, on some days, was not. I was surprised by that. It doesn’t get much more remote than the Babine and it has one of the best steelhead runs left in the world. I kind of thought it would be 10 fish a day and aches and pains from fighting all those many pounds of ocean trained trout.
There was at least one day I didn’t land a fish despite the routine of cast, drift, retrieve repeated 1,000 times.
There were fish caught… even some big fish (although not my 20 pounder), but there were still many hours of quiet, fishless contemplation.
It can be hard, mentally, to get to your dream destination and have trouble finding the fish. Not everyone can have the “it is great just to be here” mentality, especially on your first big trip. It gets a bit easier to take that mindset on once you have done a few trips and have come to understand even at the great destinations, the fish still don’t just jump on the fly.
Be it the Seychelles, the Bahamas, the Babine… fishing is still fishing and some days are better than others, so you better enjoy just being there.
Have you been surprised to travel across the world to find the fish lock-jawed?
