Description
The pursuit of trophy trout requires considerable patience and a set of skills that differentiates the pursuer from the casual fly fisherman. In early chapters, the author discusses general techniques related to hooking and landing large trout, identifies the conditions that produce them, and presents some widely held views about their capture that are half-truths, bordering on myths. Later chapters cover the conditions under which large trout can be captured and the specific techniques needed to capture them. Many large trout caught by anglers are not wild and wary fish, fish the author calls "Rogue Trout," but, instead, are either stocked brood fish or trout stocked by private organizations.
Stocked trout are poorly adapted to survive in the wild, failing to seek cover or structure and feeding indiscriminately. Often stocked trophies are caught simply because they were feeding alongside other trout. In contrast, catching rogue trout in local waters requires going after them selectively. The search for trophies involves looking for specific places where they're more likely to feed, such as in transition waters, next to power water, and in small eddies or backwaters. Their capture involves patiently waiting for signs of feeding activity, enduring inhospitable weather that renders them more vulnerable to capture, such as cold weather or high water periods, and fishing the super hatches.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
John Mordock was born in 1938 in Cumberland, Maryland at the same time as his father started the first yacht club on Western Marylands' Deep Creek Lake, now a noted two-story fishery mentioned in John's book, Fly Fishing Two-Story Lakes and Reservoirs. John moved to Northfield, Illinois, north of Chicago, in his youth, where his father taught him to fly fish and he grew up canoeing and fishing Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin lakes and rivers. His grandfather, Charles T. Mordock, who lived two blocks west of Lake Michigan, also fly fished Mid-Western waters, as well as those in Utah when he visited his brother, William, who lived in Salt Lake City, and in California when he visited his daughter, Kay, who married James D. Adams, a lawyer who also fly fished. John's grandfather was either a frequent guest or a member of the Coleman Lake Club, the first fly fishing organization in the Mid-West, and his Uncle Jim was a member of the Golden Gate Anglers and Casters Club, and outgrowth of the San Francisco Fly Casters Club. His Uncle Jim took John and his cousins on a pack trip to fish for trout in California's High Sierra, above Yosemite Park, when John was approaching his teens. As a teenager, John also fished Northern California's Klamath River with his relatives.
The only period when John hasn't fly fished since he took up the sport was when in Hawaii surfing, snorkeling, and completing his doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology, which included courses in animal behavior. His graduate studies made him skeptical of claims unsupported by empirical data, a condition that characterizes much of the lure about fishing and which led to his book, Capturing Rogue Trout. John moved from Hawaii to Pennsylvania in 1966, where he fished in the Poconos, and then in 1969 to New York, where he fished, and continues to fish, in the Catskills and Adirondacks. In the early 1970s, John joined Trout Unlimited and the Batten Kill Flyfishers, a group of 10 anglers owning riverside property on the Batten Kill, a wild trout stream up until recently. Since 1975, John has made a summer trip to major Western rivers, with his last 10 trips to Calgary's Bow River and nearby streams.
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