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Learning to enjoy life again
BOND, COLO. - The trout rose and sipped a mayfly off the surface of the Colorado River. Joshua Williams caught the small disturbance on the water from the corner of his eye. Standing in a drift boat, he raised his fly rod and the trout rose again and gulped in the artificial fly on the end of the line.Suddenly, Williams was in trouble.He'd done this a hundred times before on the rivers and creeks around his home in Virginia, passionately throwing a fly at rising trout, holding the long rod in his right hand and gently stripping in the slack line with his left, a delicate two-handed operation.But on a recent Friday, the 22-year-old Army staff sergeant, who had spent a hellish year engaged in street combat in Iraq, had a problem.He didn't have a right hand.The trout surged into the current. Williams, holding the rod in his left hand, hung on.
Lampreys put a bite on lake trout
Lake trout, once the dominant predator on Lake Michigan, are so rare these days that salmon have replaced them as the fish of choice whenever a backyard boil is in order. While most longtime big-lake anglers admit today's salmon and steelhead are far more fun to catch, high-fat lake trout have a one-of-a-kind taste after being boiled with potatoes, salt and onions and smothered in melted butter. "They're a little better tasting, a little more moist," said Denny VanDenBerg of Kewaunee, who has been boiling fish for almost 50 years. "They might fight like a log, but then again, so do walleyes." Brian Frerk of Green Bay gives away almost all of the salmon and trout he catches while fishing with his 6-year-old son, Josh. He may not fully understand, then, the love affair with lake trout by those who grew up with them when they were the only game in town in the 1960s or who targeted them in spring or whenever nothing else would bite on slow days from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Humans are well designed for an omnivorous diet
QLast weekend we had cottage guests. We knew they were vegetarians and prepared menus accordingly. All was well until I declared I was going fishing, and invited them to come. This led to a tirade on the evils of fishing — fish have rights too, they feel pain, yada, yada. I kind of lost it, and the rest of the weekend was frosty. Now I feel guilty — and haven't wet a line since! Do you think fishing is really mean, or bad ethics-wise? AI shouldn't touch this one with a ten-foot fly rod. I'm a fisherman, and I eat the fish I catch. Yum! Moreover, the last time I dealt with a fish question (involving a Siamese fighter and a cat) I got more nasty letters than on any subject but gay marriage. But like a trout to the fly, I rise again. Animal rights advocates usually begin with the claim that fish can feel pain.
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