Save That Trout Blog- Murray’s Fly Shop- Edinburg, Virginia
I had three friends who had great intentions of returning their very large trout to the stream so he would survive. Unfortunately these fellows were just getting into trout fishing. They allowed the trout to get downstream of them. In landing the trout they fought him so long that the stress caused the trout to turn belly up and die.
This could have been easily prevented! If a large trout gets downstream of you in heavy water in a location where you cannot chase him to get downstream of him, rather than fight him to death just break him off. To do this point your rod straight at the trout, take up all of the slack with your line-hand and jerk. This leaves the fly in his jaw and he swims away. I have caught many trout that have hooks in their jaws and they are fine. Eventually the hooks works itself out.