Folded Tail Fish

Last sunday I saw something I don't see very often: a trout so old it had a folded tail. I've caught and seen some pretty big trout over the years, but only a few so old their tails looked like the end of a folded dishrag.

I had a customer once, an old guy who knew Starker and Aldo Leopold. I took him and his daughter on an upper Yellowstone float in late hopper season. My customer (can't remember his name) was cheerful and enthusisastic, but so old he couldn't stand up in the boat, and he couldn't really wade without help. It was so windy that day it was almost hopeless. Late in the day, just as it was getting dark, the wind stopped. I parked the boat and helped my guy stand about 3 steps away from the boat.

On the second or third drift he hooked a fish that at first glance looked to be about 15 pounds. It took forever to get him in. The fish looked that big because the only real look I got was the fish's head, which was enormous. When we finally got that fish to the net it was the first time I was ever dissapointed to see a 21 - 22 inch fish. It was a old male cutthroat, whose head was half the length of his body, somewhat like the old but growth-stunted brook trout that sometimes come out of high altitude lakes. His tail had so many folds in it too looked like a dishrag. I got a $200 cash tip for that fish: the best day-trip tip I ever got.

Last sunday I went over to O'Hair's Spring Creek (aka Armstrong's Spring Creek) to photograph Blue Winged Olives and to do a little fishing. But the hatch never happened. By 2:00 oclock everybody had gone home. There didn't seem to be any bugs or many fish in the creek. I walked up to the source pool above the top-end culvert. After fishing nymphs blindly into the deep water, without success, I put on a small wiggler and pulled it through the frothy top edge of the pool. A huge bright yellow brown about 24" nipped at the wiggler. I didn't get him hooked. But I got a real good look at that fish, from end to end. That fish too had a folded tail, and a huge hooked lower jaw. I've seen bigger fish than that one, but only once before (the afore mentioned cutthroat) did I ever see a tail like that.

I'd love to know how old those fish were.