I went into the archives at ASKABOUTFLYFISHING.COM to hear a live interview with Trapper Badovinac and they were discussing fly fishing on the Missouri River in Montana, which by the way is the longest river in USA.
What amused me was how Trapper told about measuring trout caught by his clients when he would be guiding on the Montana River. First, almost all trout fishermen have an optimistic outlook about their trout. They honestly feel that the trout is at least 3 inches longer than it actually is. Naturally, when he brought out the tape for the actual measurement, they were sorely disappointed. So if you do not want to be disappointed, just do not take a tape measure with you.
Now you have seen pictures of the trout being held at arms length closer to the camera to give the illusion of greatness? I have tried this with bass and was never satisfied as my hand would appear to be larger than my waist, not good. Well, somewhere and I can not remember where, I found a tape especially designed for fishermen. It was reduced to one half scale so the marks indicating an inch were in reality only one half inch. Therefore, a trout 8 inches long would appear to be 16 inches long when the picture was taken with the trout proudly shown next to the faux tape measure. (I suppose it would work as well if you had a miniature rod and reel for photos.) However, I did not have enough evil in my heart to use it.
But the best advice came from Trapper, who said; “Do not take a camera along if you plan on talking about the trout that you caught!”
From my perspective, it is all relative. If I catch a 14 or 16 inch wild trout in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in my eyes, it is a giant for that habitat. If I were to catch a 16 inch trout in the Davidson, I would think that it was small.
To hear more from Trapper B., just go to Fly Fishing Montana’s Missouri River.