Playing by the Rules

So there were bugs everywhere. Salmonflies…golden stones…little yellow sallies, and the fish were going nuts.


Me and Stinky Pete were up the West Fork below the dam. It was the warmest day that we’d seen since last September, and we had decided to leave our waders behind. The water was fine until you reached that critical depth that, if you went beyond, you’d flash-freeze any hope of fathering a child afterwards. Think of it as a cheap vasectomy.

Occasional cotton ball clouds provided puddles of shade that kept us from getting overheated. A bald eagle sat on top of a dead tree, letting us know whose fishing hole this really was.

The big stonefly that was crawling up my shirt reached my neck, so I plucked him off and tossed him in the river. He struggled to reach the shore, and you could almost hear his tiny screams for help as a hungry rainbow sucked him down.

The mass quantities of food that were floating on and flying over the water, had stirred up the fish like Oprah at a 200-foot Vegas buffet table. It was a frenzy of slurping and gulping, and no scrap went to waste.

Almost every cast produced a trout, and the ones that didn’t were because the fish were eating the live bugs floating around my fly. I hooked onto a fat rainbow that took off down river. He was only 17 inches long, but it was a good thing that I was using 2x tippet because in the heavy current he felt like he weighed 15 pounds.

As I horsed him into the shallow water, I worried that the hook was going to unbend from all the pressure. But I managed to bring him to the net and release him.

After a couple of hours, the hatch slowed, and the fishing tapered off along with the bugs. Me and Stinky headed back to the truck.

When we reached the access where we’d parked, the game warden was waiting. He checked our licenses and asked how the fishing was. Before he left, I thanked him for the job he was doing and told him how I thought that the penalties for breaking hunting and fishing laws should be harsher. Because those resources belong to all of us.

He said, “Did you hear about the guy who lost almost $1 million because he was fishing without a license?”

I told him that I hadn’t, so he showed me an article from the Washington Post that he’d found online. It turns out there’s an annual event in North Carolina called the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament. Peter Wann reeled in an 883 pounder, a tournament record by 50 puonds.

But Peter had forgotten to buy a $15 fishing license. After thinking about it for a few days, tournament officials disqualified his catch and awarded the $912,825 grand prize to the guy who caught the next biggest marlin – a 528 pounder.

“For the integrity of the Tournament, Big Rock has no choice but to enforce the rules and disqualify the fish,” they said in a statement.

I said to the game warden, “That’s a pretty steep fine for fishing without a license.”

“That’s why you gotta play by the rules,” he replied.

That got me to thinking.

A feller can get in a lot of trouble for not doing the right thing. That’s something that General Stanley McChrystal should’ve considered before he trashed President Obama and most of his top advisors in Rolling Stone.

He was already on thin ice for pissing off our allies and publicly disagreeing with the White House. He may be a great general but he forgot one of the most basic rules of employment – don’t talk bad about your boss. Even if you are “disappointed” with him.

In Afghanistan, men and women are risking their lives to achieve the President’s goals to defeat the Taliban and disable Al-Qaeda. When their boss bad-mouths Obama, it puts into question their reason for being there.

It’s kind of like being on the show The Apprentice and saying on camera that you think Donald Trump’s wig looks like the rear end of a sheltie that’s been rolling around in cow pies and vomit. You know you’re going to hear the words, “You’re fired!”

The President had to replace McChrystal for the morale of our soldiers and for the good of the continuing war effort. And maybe the general learned that if you’re going to go fishing without a license, it could wind up costing a lot more than you imagined.

I don’t know, I guess I think too hard about these things.