Look at this face:
This guy thought he caught a trout, which made him feel very, very happy. Trout are hard to find, hard to catch, and apparently very tasty if you are so inclined. I (yes its me and yes I should have transitioned better to active voice but make your own damn blog) have caught most of the freshwater fish available in Central Mass thus far: bass, perch, sunfish (oh I have a sunfish blog coming for you), and of course the true rats of the inland seas – pickerel (and if you’re lucky you’ll get a pickerel blog too). What I haven’t caught is a trout. Trout come in many forms, but here’s a picture of the commonly stocked (ie supplied by the state in certain waters) rainbow trout:
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Notice there was no photo of a rainbow trout because I’ve never caught one. There’s two rules to fishing (subject to whimsical changes):
- Don’t be a d*ck to the fish, either catch and release or catch and cook but make up your damn mind
- Never post a picture of another man’s (or lady’s (hey, sup?)) catch on your own fishing blog.
I suggest you google pictures of trout. They are a good looking fish and you can see why people like to catch them. Also it would be great if you would google them because it’s kind of central that you are able to rule out fish that aren’t trout from here on out. I apologize for this with a picture of Bubz:
Now back to my point. I went with a friend (he’s literally so bad at fishing) to a spot where we were likely-ish to catch trout. I say the technical term “lickely-ish” because, again, trout are not easy to catch. They scare easily, are super dumb apparently, and hide out in tougher/deeper waters. You can find someone else a lot more qualified to explain the intricacies of catching these bass-tards but long story short they like cool rivers and the little pools that form in them. Here’s where we were:
A note about my friend I fish with – I won’t name names but his name is Tommy. This guy literally thinks he invented fishing when he was being swaddled in diapers. And yet every time we fish I catch lunkers (big fish, see next blog or two) and he catches actual babies. See below:
Obviously we take pictures for each other of every fish we respectively catch like real men. And sadly enough, this is the biggest one he’s caught in two weeks of daily fishing. But that doesn’t deter him from acting like a “Hermione Granger” – level know-it-all about fishing (OH YEAH! Just opened the floodgates of Harry Potter references and there ain’t no stopping it, CHOO CHOO!)…. Is this mean? He doesn’t know I’m writing this (yet, I’ll make sure he reads it), but on the other hand a public shaming might do him some good.
SIDE NOTE: My mom just turned on Call the Midwife, so at any point I may be typing through a very intense birthing scene. If you notice a dip in quality please attribute it to me appreciating my mother, all mothers, and the miracle of birth.
Luckily this blog hasn’t gotten long-winded at all yet. Anyways, we had been fishing the river, walking through it to the choicest of spots (reminder: pay Tommy the $8 for the water shoes he got you at Ocean State). And ohhhh snap, a fish on the line! I knew it was unlike any fish I’d yet caught; it was fast as all heck and really shiny, almost like chrome. I had read that brown trout, despite the name, can get this type of scaling. After a short but intense fight, I brought in a nice and plump fish:
Cool looking fish right? Well I thought I had finally caught a trout. Tommy and I even shared a celebratory brew (he had a Wally, I had a manly summer shandy) because we had both been hoping to see a trout on this river trip (foreshadowing: Tommy was all aboard the “it’s a trout” scene). I was super happy, thinking I had accomplished something I’ve been striving for this past month since being back in Mass. I decided I would take it home (ie dispatch the fish) and eat it, as my mom has routinely been mocking me for never bringing home dinner (it’s a very supportive home environment). On the way home, I sent a picture to another friend saying I had finally caught a trout…
Response, “Not a trout. That’s a creek chub, would not eat that.”
“Jimminy cricket!” I exclaimed (consider this a euphemism for the litany of curse words I let out). I obviously felt badly for dispatching of the fish but also I was fully intent on eating my catch, as not doing so would be a waste of a fish’s life and I’m not about that. Turns out, creek chub are a popular fish to catch but not necessarily to eat. They are a tad bony, but I proceeded to pan fry (maybe I’ll make another blog about the recipe). Here it is in the pan:
Turns out chub is quite tasty, yes some bones, but meat was clean and tender, falling quite easily off the bone. It stinks I thought it was a trout, but the fish was put to good use. I think I was just so excited about the idea of catching a fish I’d been hoping to catch for a while that I didn’t ever really think about if it looked like the fish I’d seen on google image searches.
Long story short, because I went fishing, I found a really cool bit of nature very close by (this is honestly my favorite part of brook/stream/river fishing!), caught a very cool fish in the process, brought food from the wild to the table for the first time ever, and further confirmed my suspicions that Tommy doesn’t know what the H-E- Double-Hockey-Sticks he’s talking about (hockey is so boring, I worked at a New England boarding school where hockey is king and actually had to pretend to remotely care about it for THREE YEARS. Wake me up when the Bruins are in the Stanley Cup, until then I’m watching football and the Celtics (and bootleg ultimate frisbee live streams). Great people there but my goodness do you care about the most boring sports (sorry lacrosse but yeah you too)). So grab a rod, open up google maps, pick a random blue spot, and…
Cast and pray,
Jon (see below for a picture of someone who doesn’t know where the camera is despite there only being one camera)
EDITOR’S NOTE: I think I’m gonna try for 1 (maybe 2 during the summer) of these longer posts a week (and maybe a second short one if Bubz does something cute) given these are pretty long and also I’m not good at catching fish. Also, some of you may not love the catch-and-cook aspect of fishing, I don’t plan on making it a central focus of this blog or my fishing experiences in general. I mostly catch and release, but I may occasionally highlight a recipe I’ve tried if I choose the alternative route.