Catie Clark

It is an inevitability that a column written by an angler will, sooner or later, be about fish. Of course, the usual wisecracks about the mundanity of everyday life versus the glories of fishing need their airing, so let’s get that out of the way right now. It is true that the worst day fishing is always better than any day working or even any day off and cleaning the house. I am reminded of this every other Tuesday night, while covering Ely City Council meetings — usually around the time that one of the older city council members is waxing eloquently about why Ely doesn’t need a dumpster beautification ordinance. You don’t think that sort of thing happens at city council meetings? I can send you the link to the minutes of that meeting if you don’t believe me.
I grew up fishing for a wonderful thing called flounder, one of those New England coastal fish that’s flat as a crepe with both eyes on the topside. Flounders are a pain to clean, but they are great with light breading and baked in butter. Yum.
As a kid, I also went through the trouble of getting a scuba certification. No kidding, this has to do with fishing. Well, to be honest, it has to do with lobstering. If you have a scuba certification in Connecticut, you can get what’s known as a personal use lobster license, which allows you to scuba dive for lobster. It has the added benefit of allowing you to run up to 10 personal not-for-commercial-sale lobster pots.
Getting a personal use lobster license with a scuba certificate is the only way a non-commercial fisher can run lobster pots in Connecticut. For this reason, scuba classes were very popular where I grew up. I was diving for lobster as soon as I was old enough to take and pass the scuba class. Grabbing and wrestling a lobster from 30 feet down in the rocks up to the surface is an amazing experience – and a lot of work. The first time I did it, I tossed my lobster into my 15-foot runabout only to watch in horror as the wily crustacean promptly scrambled into the bow and flung itself back into the water. To be honest, I caught most of my lobster in the four lobster pots I built myself. As anyone who fishes can tell you, it’s only one step down from heaven to catch your own and eat it fresh within hours.
My experience of catching aquatic things to eat in my youth engrained in me the concept that the purpose of catching fish is to eat them. By the time I started fishing in Idaho, I realized that many people do this thing called catch-and-release. I’ve never seen the point. My worldview is built on a foundation that you catch fish to eat them.
I can cope with catch-and-release to protect an endangered species or rebuild a fishery. In Idaho, you must release certain threatened species, like bull trout in the Big Lost River and the Yellowstone cutthroat trout anywhere. A recent study in Montana determined that 20 percent of all trout caught and released will die within six days, even with single barbless hooks. I always cringe when I hear other anglers brag about spending a day doing just catch-and-release for fun.
Moving to Minnesota, I was surprised that rainbow trout are catch-and-release only for the streams that feed Lake Superior. The rainbow is the most famous native of Idaho, and the upper Snake River is full of them. The Snake runs through the middle of the town in eastern Idaho, where I still own a house. It’s a bad day if you can’t walk down to any of the bridges in town and not go home with at least two rainbows for dinner.
Trout are my favorite inland fish. I try not to fish where I might catch a fish on an endangered list because of the one-in-five chance of it dying afterward. Landing fish is fun, but I fish to eat. I’ve been fishing in Miners Lake for trout since I moved to Ely, and this last weekend, I was ice fishing for lake trout on Knife Lake out in the Boundary Waters. When we got out to our camping spot, I discovered that my ice fishing gear didn’t follow me to our campsite, but our guide had enough stuff to lend me. I’m the one with the fishing gear in the family since I’m the angler, and my husband describes himself as a proud eater of what I catch.
We caught five big, plump lake trout. We had fish chowder for dinner out on the ice and now I have a freezer full of fillets. The only thing wrong with the trip was that our guide caught two and my husband – who hardly ever goes fishing – caught three. The only thing I caught was a pulled muscle in my upper back from jigging with a rod longer than I like to use for ice fishing.
Idaho has managed to revive the sturgeon fishery in the lower Snake River, which now has a limited lottery-based season. The rules on sturgeon are tight. Anything caught in Idaho that’s over 100 pounds has to be released, even during Sturgeon season. I’d love to catch a sturgeon someday. I was excited when we moved to Minnesota to discover that the state has a sturgeon season. I’ve been plotting my St. Croix River or Red Wing trip to try to catch one.
The Idaho catch-and-release rules on sturgeon affected one of my most memorable fishing trips. My fishing buddy, Bob, and I were out where the Snake widens out into American Falls Reservoir, wading the shallows in one of our spots for brookies. It wasn’t a great fishing day. The only thing either of us caught all morning was a bunch of undersized yellow perch.
In the afternoon, Bob’s stepson Chase joined us. Things picked up once Chase showed up. He caught a pair of almost-new bull-nosed pliers and a 10-foot towing chain – on a 10-pound test line, no less! I’ve got pictures if you don’t believe me. Then Bob did a crazy cast and hooked Chase in the hand. It took five minutes to safely get the hook out.
The Idaho Fish and Game Conservation Officer was working our fishing spot that day. He was offshore in his boat but close by. I looked at Bob, and Bob looked at me, and we both looked at Chase, who’s a tall, beefy guy. Idaho’s rules on catch-and-release on anything over 100 pounds are strict because of the sturgeon fishery in the lower Snake River, and we didn’t want to get into trouble with that state CO watching us from his boat. So, Bob and I hooked Chase under the arms and threw him back into the river since he fell under the catch-and-release rules.