What is a Quitting Fish? It may be an unusually fine fish you catch towards the end of the day and decide anything more would be anticlimactic. Mary insists you "call" it, like calling the pocket in a game of billiards. "The next fish will be the Quitting Fish." And there'd better be one, or bad luck will follow. In fact, she insists you must keep fishing until you do catch one.

Where did Mary come up with this? As a scientist, it could be from many years of observation. I, however, suspected it came from the situations where she's told someone, Meet me at the parking lot at 4:30, then become so engrossed in what she was doing she lost track of time. A Quitting Fish would give her two great possible excuses: Gee, they were on such a great bite I couldn't walk away from it! Or, Just as I was ready to reel in I hooked a good one and it took me awhile to land it. This sounds much better than: I know I was supposed to meet you, but I kept futilely casting instead.

This was what I thought until this past fall. On what I figured would be my last excursion, with a thunderstorm rolling over the horizon, I foul-hooked a fingerling bass in the eye socket. Although I managed to release him without obvious damage, I was appalled at the idea of that being my final fish of the year. It haunted me, driving me out to fish during those super-busy pre-holiday weeks when women have a thousand duties, which always conflict with my desire to climb Hawk Mountain during the raptor migration and my passion for deer hunting. There's hardly time to breathe during November and December, but I made time to fish.

Sure enough, the first trip after that unlucky final catch, I was skunked. Perhaps there IS something to Mary's superstition, I thought. Then I found myself shipping gifts only ten minutes from the Little Lehigh. It was what the Irish call 'soft weather', in between a drizzle and a fog, and there were refreshingly few anglers on the normally-crowded fly stretch. Something tiny was hatching. With my vision that's about the best identification I can manage. I put on a #16 black ant, a strategy that sometimes works for me on this stream. I got several of those extremely annoying compound inspection-and-refusals. Squinting and fumbling, I tied on a diminutive Pale Evening Dun, hoping it was close to the color of the naturals. This impressed the trout even less.

I should mention I go through four psychological stages when fishing the Little Lehigh. After careful presentations with a workhorse favorite fail to work, I try (invariably futilely) to match the hatch. Stage 2 is "looking for the stupid ones", when my usual slow fishing pace speeds up to the point where I beat the joggers as I travel along the banks, taking a few rapid casts in each fishy-looking spot. Then I decide I'm spooking the fish and start whaling out long casts. That was how I lost the Pale Evening Dun, in the shrubbery on the far side of a pool, and the emerger I replaced it with was lost on a snag just before I entered Stage 4.

Stage 4 is the Desperation Stage, and I was particularly desperate this time because of the hoodoo of the Quitting Fish. I admit that every time I've had better-than-lukewarm success on the Little Lehigh, I had reached Stage 4: The point at which I am so pissed off at those picky trout I burn to seriously annoy them in return. I searched my fly boxes for the most irritating fly I could insult them with. In one corner of an obscure box was a #20 Royal Coachman dry fly I'd tied years ago just to prove I could. With a vengeful sneer I fastened it to my tippet, touched it with floatant, and stalked carefully toward my chosen pool.

A large trout was hovering about 20 feet out. Take this! I snarled, and laid the gaudy little Coachman over him. Three casts provoked no reaction, nothing new for me on this stream. I cast up beyond a bankside rock then heard a splashy rise. Just coincidence, I thought. That couldn't have been to this fly. My next cast was to the edge of a current tongue, and a trout promptly came up and sucked in the Coachman. That was to my fly! I don't believe it! In my amazement, I totally forgot to strike. Another float over this fish didn't move him, so I pitched the fly upstream of that first, visible trout. It floated above him, he rose confidently and took it, and this time the tiny hook bit firmly into jaw cartilage. I don't believe this, I kept thinking over and over as I played that trout. But reality intruded as I realized I'd come dressed for work in pin-stripe slacks and white fashion boots. I was thus reluctant to slide down the muddy bank or kneel to land this fish, and he was too large to lever out on a 7X tippet. Finally I found a spot to beach him, 15 inches of brown trout so fat that, as the commercials used to say, it took two hands to handle him.

That left me short a hand to extract the tiny Coachman from his jaw, but I managed at last and he spurted away into his watery element. I looked at the fly, looked at the water, and shook my head in disbelief. That was certainly one to remember.

That's when I realized the true mystique of the Quitting Fish. And understood that I, too, had possessed a superstition about Quitting Fish for many years, ever since I'd left a warmer clime where I could fish year 'round; Moreso each year that increased responsibility and other activities trimmed even the warm days of winter out of my fishing season. For some time my season has ended in October at the latest, and for five bleak fishless months I'd sustain myself on the memory of that last fish of the year. That's why it was so important to me that it should be a fine fish, cleanly caught, released as lively as ever. That memory would feed my dreams of the next season, and motivate me to tie flies, upgrade my tackle, and plan trips. That final uplifting experience was the link between last season and next season, my definition of a Quitting Fish.

This gave me some insight into Mary's motivation: A Quitting Fish each trip would link them together like pearls on a string, a series of treasured moments adding up to a life that's all about fly fishing. Somewhere inside her is a youngster who waded out into the water, rod in hand, and never wanted to come out.

--Rabbit Jensen--
Fall 2000 Issue