For those unfamiliar with catching bowfin on the fly, the most common order of operations is as follows:
- Find a sweet-looking backwater.
- Pole/paddle around until you find a fish. If you don’t find a fish, repeat step one.
- Sneak to a rod’s length away, lower a heavy pattern above the fish’s head, and jig until it eats.
- Admire the fact that you’ve landed a fish belonging to the last representatives of the Halecomorphi, a taxon that can be traced back to the Triassic Period. Just me?
As with any how-to or hero shot, this quick list doesn’t capture the nuances to this style of fishing — a windless back bay humid with anticipation, the low of an inexplicable rejection, the sudden eat from an ancient predator that’s spent the last ten seconds glaring motionless at your fly. The process, simple as far as fly fishing can get, demands a few less-than-ideal techniques. At the top of the list is the fight.
Almost all sight-fished bowfin fights begin right next to you. The fish eats your fly with almost no momentum and no room, meaning you must trout set vertically (a huge relief for all of us who trout set vertically on everything anyway) to have any chance of landing your hook into a bony mouth. Bowfin are fighters, but they aren’t runners, so you’ll then have to keep maximum pressure while the fish goes berserk at your feet until someone gets a net under it. The whole process is chaotic, beautiful, and easy enough to visualize while you’re on the hunt right up until it happens.
I decided I was due for a big bowfin. Luke must have agreed, since he volunteered to take paddling duties for my last morning on Lake Champlain. My destiny was confirmed when the largest bowfin either of us had ever seen materialized out of the reeds, glided under our canoe, and glared at us from an uncomfortably close-quarter angle. A monster female. Nobody moved. The hour leading up to this moment was the perfect amount of time to grind, sliding through dozens of clearings in the grasses without seeing a fish, before an opportunity like this was produced.
Now we had to make it count. A slow early-summer breeze caught our canoe’s bow and slowly swung us out from over her, giving me enough distance to lower my jig pattern onto the fish from behind. We stared. She stared. It seemed like the fish had the proportions of my leg. I gave the fly just enough of a pulse to kick the tail — one jig, another. There was a flash of white as the mouth opened, then the fly was gone and my rod was bent.
The water on the side of the boat was a familiar maelstrom of mud, grass, and bronze scales. I loved it, missed it after a long winter — and the fish was heavy, so heavy. She made a short dash for the weed mat nearest to us, and I leaned the rod butt up to pull her back. She countered by digging under the boat, I mounted a response, and the rod snapped just above the lower mid-tip ferrule. I snatched at the limp fly line, felt the enchanting weight one more time, and the fly came sailing back to me.
Bowfin fishing can easily be a team sport — the driver and the angler have different roles, but they are constantly communicating, searching, and encouraging. This also means that when something goes wrong, the whole team feels it. I think Luke even tried to apologize about not netting the fish sooner, but I wouldn’t hear it — the ass kicking was mine to own.
I’d broken my last eight weight a year ago, almost to the day. That rod had been around for almost a decade, surviving plenty of other ass kickings in the process, before my canoe rolled on top of it. This time at least, we hadn’t destroyed anything of sentimental value and the canoe was still floating.
On the ride back to the launch, I found myself debating which disaster I’d want reversed more. Did I wish for my personal best bowfin to be hovering in the net, in the eye of a storm of broken reeds and stirred-up backwater? Or did I want my old rod — the one that had become an extension of my body over the years and met its demise a year ago — intact and throwing loops with me as we grew old together? Am I a fisherman first, or just a sentimental fool with a weird hobby?
At this point I’m too set in my ways to change what I prioritize and too late on either choice to make a difference. Whether that’s enjoying a dinosaur fish subculture or mourning an inanimate object, I’m very much at peace with what fishing makes me do and feel. I selfishly think if we were all that way we’d have a lot more fun, but that’s just me.
But as far as breaking rods go, I do know that you can’t warranty a PB.
