Strange twist on the one that got away

The first Friday of school's-out-for-summer deserves a good fish tale.

The story starts last Saturday about noon when Jeff Schmitt ambled from his
camper-trailer and into the cold, driving current of the Guadalupe River below
Canyon Dam.

Rainbow trout fishing was good Saturday afternoon: "It was the best weekend of
the year, warm and sunny, lots of tubers in the water."

The Guadalupe River is full of tubers, warm-weather partyers who float the
river each day in their innertubes.

Schmitt will leave the river to them for now, but in the offseason,
October-May, he and his wife, Cyndie, park their camper next to the river and
the Austin residents spend every weekend fly fishing for trout.

The story picks up at 3 p.m. Saturday, with the last cast of this year's
7-month-long fishing campaign.

Schmitt, a past president of the Guadalupe River chapter of Trout Unlimited,
was casting a No. 10 San Juan worm with a tandem No. 16 prince nymph tied 18
inches up the 4-pound-test tippet, or leader. For non-fly fishers, those are
very small flies tied on very light line. Both flies will fit on the face of a
penny.

"I had just sat down and retied (the knots) and let some tubers go by," Schmitt
said. "That was fortunate."

A few casts later he had a strike on the San Juan worm. The impact told him it
was a big fish.


Read the rest at

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/o...04.5D.strait.1
0b42b319.html

Okay-I'll post the whole thing.The first Friday of school's-out-for-summer
deserves a good fish tale.

The story starts last Saturday about noon when Jeff Schmitt ambled from his
camper-trailer and into the cold, driving current of the Guadalupe River below
Canyon Dam.

Rainbow trout fishing was good Saturday afternoon: "It was the best weekend of
the year, warm and sunny, lots of tubers in the water."

The Guadalupe River is full of tubers, warm-weather partyers who float the
river each day in their innertubes.

Schmitt will leave the river to them for now, but in the offseason,
October-May, he and his wife, Cyndie, park their camper next to the river and
the Austin residents spend every weekend fly fishing for trout.

The story picks up at 3 p.m. Saturday, with the last cast of this year's
7-month-long fishing campaign.

Schmitt, a past president of the Guadalupe River chapter of Trout Unlimited,
was casting a No. 10 San Juan worm with a tandem No. 16 prince nymph tied 18
inches up the 4-pound-test tippet, or leader. For non-fly fishers, those are
very small flies tied on very light line. Both flies will fit on the face of a
penny.

"I had just sat down and retied (the knots) and let some tubers go by," Schmitt
said. "That was fortunate."

A few casts later he had a strike on the San Juan worm. The impact told him it
was a big fish.

"I went downstream immediately. I went with it, like I always do with big
fish."

There wasn't much else he could do. A 4-pound-test leader is barely larger than
a spider web.

"I kept going. When the water got deep, I had to swim maybe 20 or 30 feet
across a pool," while fighting the fish.

It went on like that for 30 minutes, until, a half-mile down the river, he
finally managed a glimpse of the fish.

"I had suspected it was a striper, but then I finally saw the stripes," he
said. "It was beautiful."

He wasn't alone in his appreciation for the silvery beast.

The epic battle had attracted 100 tubers who had given up their drifting to
follow Schmitt.

Having such a large posse turned out to be good.

At the half-mile mark, near what is known as the "S" curve, the big striped
bass made a bid for freedom, trying to clear one last gravel rapid and make it
into a large, deep pool.

"The fish wanted to get in there and rest," Schmitt said. "I knew it would be
over if he got in there."

Over for Schmitt, that is, not the fish.

So, "I got two tubers to block the entrance to the hole, and the fish turned
and went back upstream."

Now he was in hot pursuit again, but this time he and the fish were heading
into the racing current.

It was a struggle.

A quarter-mile upriver, the fish called timeout and settled into a deep hole.

"He was resting, getting his energy back," said Schmitt, who was fatigued
himself.

Schmitt couldn't apply a lot of pressure on the tiny tippet, and he couldn't
afford to give the fish a break, so he got two members of the tuber posse to
wade into the pool in hopes the striper would move out.

The strategy worked.

"The fish moved downstream, and I tried to keep him near the bank," Schmitt
said.

That worked, too. Schmitt finally maneuvered the striper into shallow water and
put both thumbs in its mouth.

He lifted it, "like a bass angler lips a big bass."

Schmitt had expected a burst of flopping energy, but the fish was done.

He put the fish back in the water and tried to revive it. No luck.

"It was so beautiful," he recalled. "I felt bad."

But not as bad as he would later, after he cleaned the fish, put the meat on
ice and drove back to Austin.

Schmitt had no scale at the scene, but by calculating from its measurements —
40 inches long with a girth of 25 inches — the striper weighed at least 31.5
pounds, 9 pounds heavier than the current state fly fishing record and, even
worse, within a pound of the line-class world record.

Alas, this summer fishing tale ends with the familiar punch line: Man catches,
eats record fish.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/o...04.5D.strait.1
0b42b319.html

In article ,
(BMBMD) wrote:

Schmitt had no scale at the scene, but by calculating from its measurements —
40 inches long with a girth of 25 inches — the striper weighed at least 31.5
pounds, 9 pounds heavier than the current state fly fishing record and, even
worse, within a pound of the line-class world record.

Alas, this summer fishing tale ends with the familiar punch line: Man catches,
eats record fish.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/o...04.5D.strait.1
0b42b319.html

WOW!! A 31 pound striper on 4 pound test. That is preety amazing.

Steve Sullivan wrote:

WOW!! A 31 pound striper on 4 pound test. That is preety amazing.

He didn't deserve the record, though, because he was assisted by the
float tubers. :-)

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