Rules are only rules
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably caught yourself doing or thinking something that—upon closer inspection—seems completely stupid or limiting. Maybe you’ve unconsciously persuaded yourself that there are right and wrong ways to hunt a deer or present your fly to a brook trout. And yet, upon closer inspection, the conventions of today are revealed as the heresies of days gone by.
My intention here is not to mount a relativist argument. Surely, the world of fishing and hunting does contain some reliable truths: good anglers and hunters have the ability to maximize their odds—that’s true. But, it’s also true that no angler or hunter possesses the omnipotence to determine the outcome of a single hunt or fishing trip—barring a ‘miracle’ like that which is written in the Gospel of Luke. Snobby as it may sound, even ‘blind squirrels’ sometimes happen upon a nut. If you’re privy to the story of the record Idaho mule deer that Grover Browning shot in 1960, you know what I mean. The details of a pre-digital age story get pretty fuzzy after a half century of hearsay, but reliable accounts suggest that Grover—like virtually all hunters— had no hopes or ambitions of shooting a record buck on what turned into a record-setting day. Grover took aim at a nice-looking buck that happened to walk within range, and in pulling the trigger on his rifle, took his place in the annals of mule deer history. I imagine lots of very similar stories exist behind other record catches and kills.
Without a doubt, many bass fishing enthusiasts would be surprised to learn the story of the heaviest largemouth bass to be caught legally by an angler and recognized formally by the International Game Fish Association. Manabu Kurita’s 22lb, 5oz, record bass wasn’t fooled by a plastic worm, spinnerbait, or even a swimbait—it wasn’t even caught on the species’ native continent of North America. Kurita landed the absurd fish in Japan’s Lake Biwa, using—of all things—a live 10” bluegill as bait. The popularity of bass fishing is tough to convey, and countless professional and recreational anglers spend untold hours every year pursuing what only Kurita has accomplished— albeit, with very different methods. The use of a live bluegill as bait might seem blasphemous to many dedicated North American bass fishers, and in certain fisheries management zones, would be a ticketable offense for local game wardens. And yet, Kurita’s bass cooccupies first place in the largemouth bass record books.
For years, an upstream dead drift was considered the only ‘proper’ way to fish a dry fly to European and North American trout. However, after decades of evolution in dry fly fishing, a skated dry fly is among the most prestigious ways of taking the most sought-after salmonid fishes in steelhead, and Atlantic salmon. If there’s a moral to stories like these, it’s that angling conventions occasionally become too constraining! All this talk about ‘rule breaking’ has me thinking about ways to spend the remainder of my week: should I go throw massive streamers to late-season muskie in one of Canada’s largest cities with tarpon fly gear? Perhaps live bait fishing for October channel catfish would be a better option. You’d have a hard time finding literature to validate these approaches as ‘proper’ ways of fishing in the fall, but that won’t stop me from trying. I have no expectations of landing a record fish this fall, but knowing that my approach to fishing is somewhat novel makes it feel as if something really, really good has the potential to happen each day.
Today, countless fishing and hunting shows, blogs, and magazines are in circulation, telling you that bass should be taken with artificial lures, and that whitetail deer are best hunted from a tree stand. And so, it’s worth remembering that rules—unless written in law—are often meant to be broken.
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