The poor, old man. I would catch him again having hooked him once before.
There's a town at the end of a western highway; an hour's drive through canyon-land ends at a trailhead, whose trail snakes in parallel to a shallow, freestone river that lacks soft-water; ten miles upriver alongside this river that holds no trout the water has cleaved hundred foot tall boulders.
The pools created by these fissures house some whitefish and many impressively sized charr.
These fish were the apex predators of such rivers, spanning the pacific drainages, inland as far as western Montana, through Nevada to California's Bay Area where they were given the name "Dolly Varden." They were exterminated in 90% of their historical territory.
However, unlike the disappearance of the terrestrial charismatic mega-fauna, when these fish were extirpated they were erased in the collective consciousness, too.
The Bull trout's caricature isn't found on ball caps or bumper stickers. They're the U.S.'s lost, great beast. Considering their continuous, tenuous existence seems dependent on their forgotten status, one hopes they remain the local and purist's best kept secret.
"Beluga Joe" was a third larger than his pod-mates. And though my jig-headed streamer's outline was apparent in the depths, I'd missed an exploratory bite from a 30 incher the previous morning. I set the hook hard when I saw Joe turn toward my fly. He reacted little and then ambled upstream to the depths, where he broke the line off on a cavern wall.
A week later I hooked him on a stonefly pattern. After netting him, I saw what looked like fungal growth but turned out to be my zonker streamer lodged in his left pectoral fin. Two weeks later I caught him for a third time while fishing during a rare July rain. He'd just begun spawning and began to show wear.
I'll wait a few years before casting into Joe's stretch again.