THE CONCEPT OF A TROPHY
By A.M. Giacoletto
Orange and yellow hues shined on the hillside through the smoky air. Fire season and August coincided, hand-in-hand, during my Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming youth. At this time, we lived in Montana, but my family and I were three months from moving to the Cowboy State. Not only did smoky skies resulting from forest fires mark the association between late summer and living in the mountains of Montana, but it also meant my dad, a career wildland firefighter and fire manager with the U.S. Forest Service, was often absent on fire assignments. We accepted his regular departures during the summer (also fire season) because he brought more cash home; additionally, wildland firefighting was a critical job living in the northern Rocky Mountains to manage our forests and protect our communities. Not to mention he loved his job.
In high school, one of my science teachers requested my dad speak to her environmental science class, one I found myself enrolled in, on fire ecology. His opening stated, “Other than a starting pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals,” my dad grew up in the Gateway City, “I can’t think of any other job I’d rather have.”
The creek trickled and chattered to the flow washing out of the high country and past the bridge we parked next to. Rarely could my dad find time to go fishing in late August, but this day landed between assignments and granted him time to take his middle of three boys (me) to cast for a few trout. He took me fishing more times than I could count by this point. His fishing-obsessed middle child kept my dad busy on the water throughout the year; however, this day proved unique and no ordinary trip compared to those in the past. This day was the first time my dad ever took me fly fishing.
Trophy is a common term among anglers, hunters, and sportsmen alike, yet one with significance in describing how we experience the sport of not only fly fishing but sport fishing at large. Often, the term evokes images of giant kyped, “buck-nasty” brown trout with bellies so big it spills over the posing angler’s fingers, or a chromed scaley monster known as a tarpon reaching the size of a motorcycle, which is held up by three or more people (landing a tarpon is a team effort) in chest deep teal-blue water with a sandy beach in the backdrop.
Try hunting, often linked to fishing in concept and includes cross-participants, and one’s imagination fills with pictures of hunters donned in camo resting behind hooved critters with antlers so large, complex, and branched-out a New Year’s Eve party could hang all their winter coats without crowding.
From both fishing and hunting, living rooms, man caves, offices, and studies with an abundance of shoulder, European, and fish mounts come to mind – a room all hunters and anglers dream of if they're being honest. A room that evokes awe and entrancement from house guests who inevitably demand the stories behind the more impressive specimens or the one that catches their eye for various reasons. The fly fisherman asks, “Where’d that brown come from?” while the big game hunter may inquire, “You went to Africa? Tell me about that springbok,” and your buddy who enjoys cheap beer, a day on the lake, pops the collar of his polo, and joined a frat in college (probably attending a southern school) may pose, “Dude! Nice marlin? Mexico?” Sportsmen (and women), we’ve all dreamt of this room, and for those of us unable to afford the trophy room make up for it on social media. Every time we post a large brown trout or recently tagged bull elk, there is a primal instinct to show off our quarry to the village. Maybe it stems from our ancestors receiving praise when returning to the village post-hunt and gathering success, or maybe it originates from a desire to be loved and respected; regardless, the desire to show off our game and fish trophies is rampant within our souls, and I don’t think the urge is necessarily a bad thing, yet in the age of Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, the negative side-effects shine too often.
I’m old enough to remember the brag boards in front of the local sporting goods stores and bait and fly shops.
For those too young, these were cork boards with various fishing and hunting pictures pinned by one tack at the top of the photo. It was the pre-social media location to post your trophy pictures and these shots typically captured moments from people in the local community, so familiar faces often collaged the board from end to end with smiles posed behind the large racks of deer and elk, the blood-soaked fur of a large boar black bear, a stack of birds with loyal dogs bookended on both sides, giant catfish with whiskers longer than a shoelace, stringers stacked with crappie and bluegill, and grip ‘n’ grins with trout twice the length of a newborn baby.
I’m also young enough to live through the initial social media surge before adulthood.
First, MySpace (a pre-Facebook) exploded on the scene during middle school, then by high school Facebook took over as the dominant force in the sphere. Post-high school, Instagram, and Snapchat arrived, and in college TikTok (better known as “the brain rot app”). Content shifted to the digital realm – brag boards included. The photo of an old man in camo and rubber boots hoisting a large catch by the gills (he clearly ate the damn thing) turned into a well-groomed Gen-Z-er with brand new waders, a shiny new rod and real, sponsorship tags, brand-name clothes, and a photo so well posed for and edited it was clearly choreographed.
Today, Instagram reigns as the hunter’s and angler’s social media of choice, which makes sense – it’s the digital brag board, but the brag board has its differences. Brag boards are localized to a shop and community, so non-hunters and non-anglers aren’t going to see it, at least an abundance won’t. Instagram and social media posts reach people far beyond the local fishing and hunting group, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Social media can spread awareness of fishing and hunting, thereby keeping these sports relevant and recruiting new sportsmen and women; however, when it goes wrong (such as when members of a prominent hunting brand are caught poaching a deer on private land in 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or when they post a video of shooting a black bear six times with a 9mm pistol – you know who you are), it can cause animosity from non-hunters and non-anglers toward our communities and incite movements against us. Additionally, and worse, it harms the resource when fishing influencers pose with their trophy trout for too long, keeping it from the water, or when a certain fly fishing guide poaches a giant trophy brown trout in Wyoming on a closed section of water (without a fishing license), and the photo of said fish ends up on the cover of one of the largest (now defunct) fly fishing magazines. These actions have negative consequences on the resources and the sport at large.
To be fair, I’m not dissing grip ‘n’ grin trophy shots. I post pictures with fish and animals, and I’m willing to bet most hunters and anglers reading this do as well, so don’t take me as saying “pictures bad” or “social media posts with fish and animals bad.” In fact, I believe trophies are worth celebrating in the appropriate fashion.
Trophy game animals and fish are often categorized into objective metrics. In the case of game animals, hunters created the Pope and Young and Boone and Crocket clubs to score and record harvested trophy animals. The prior operates as an archery-only scoring club (because of the difficulty found in bow hunting), with lower scores required for scoring, and the latter is attainable with any weapon but requires higher scores than Pope and Young to achieve trophy status. Various animals have species-specific scoring metrics. For example, to reach the Boone and Crocket trophy class with a mule deer, one must harvest a buck whose antlers score 180 inches (numerous measurements from base to tip on each point, width, and diameter are added together to create this score) for a “typical” entry (antler growth indicative of a typical specimen) and 200 inches for non-typical (antler growth non-typical for the species, which entails abnormal features skewing the score higher). The 160 to high 170s bucks are considered “near-trophies” and 140-160-inch muleys are considered “quality bucks,” while on the post-trophy side, a 200-inch-plus buck (typical, 220-plus for non-typical) is considered a “once-in-a-lifetime trophy.”
In fishing, outside of state and world record books, no prominent clubs grant trophy designation setting the standard for the entire sport, but certain size classes of fish boast unofficial recognition among anglers for defining a trophy. I use the Boon and Crocket mule deer metrics as a baseline when defining trophy fish, and, in this case, I stick to common trout species, which excludes steelhead, salmon, bull trout, and lake trout because these species grow to large peak size classes and a few spend much of their lives at sea. Common trout (or typical trout) are rainbow, brown, cutthroat, and cutbow (rainbow-cutthroat hybrids) trout. I exclude brook trout because their size class varies on the opposite end of the large specimens mentioned previously, so the brooky’s benchmarks are lower than common trout. A “quality fish,” in terms of common trout, is around the 16-19-inch mark (keep in mind, these metrics are also relative to individual waterways); a “near trophy” is measured at 20-23 inches, and a trophy common trout tapes at 24-plus-inches. The “once-in-a-lifetime” trophies for common trout are 27 inches or longer, and the closer to 30 inches and beyond the the rarer the specimen.
In comparison to mule deer, a 16-19-inch common trout is comparable to a 140-160 scored muley, at 20-24 it matches a 160 to high 170s buck, common trout measuring 24 inches or longer is a trophy or “Boon and Crocket trout,” and a knocking on a 30-incher is the equivalent of a 200-plus timber ghost (existing in legend and stories more than reality). Obviously, the species in question are different in countless ways, but the comparison between them makes such concepts palatable.
Other anglers argue a large trout is “defined by weight, not length.” This claim is valid. A trout five pounds or greater typically finds itself around 24 inches in length (it depends on the build of a fish; a trout two feet long can weigh anywhere from 3-7 pounds), so describing a five-pound common trout, regardless of length, as a trophy (or Boone and Crocket trout) is accurate.
Trophy hunting and fishing, particularly hunting, comes with a negative connotation to numerous people. Non-hunters in particular turn trophy hunting into a boogieman and a cause pseudo-activists and anti-hunters rally behind, yet when the facts and cultural components of trophy hunting align, we find a different story. I argue trophy hunting is one of the most conservationally sound modes of hunting. First, the idea that trophy hunters kill animals without remorse, chop off the head, and leave the remains to rot and sink into the ground is false – every legal hunt is a meat hunt, so we assume that a trophy hunter is hunting under a legal context (anyone hunting outside of a legal context is poaching, an act trophy hunters detest) and thus harvests the meat from their kills. Because trophy hunters are selective, they kill fewer animals over numerous years than those who shoot the first legal animal in firing range. Trophy hunters selectively harvest mature, generally male, animals that have a high likelihood of successful reproduction in their lifetimes. Animals that reach maturity prove their fitness in their abilities to survive nature’s wrath, predators, disease, and hunters over numerous years, so their strong genes are valuable and should be allowed to maximize procreation over numerous years before harvest.
I’m not bashing on meat hunters. Honestly, hunting from the exclusive perspective of food is a tradition dating back to humanity’s dawn, but, let’s be honest, no one in the modern age (in the first world) hunts because they have to; anyone able to afford tags, a rifle, bullets, a truck, gas (especially in today’s prices), camo, quality boots, a frame back, and equipment to hunt regularly can afford a trip to the grocery store or local butcher. With the high number of hunters, specifically in the West, selectivity is arguably more important than ever to practice. Trophy hunting is a selective harvest, and when used properly is an invaluable conservation tool.
The same logic applies to trophy sport fishing, yet the anti-trophy fishing crowd is smaller and nearly voiceless in comparison to anti-trophy hunting activists (at least in the United States; I hear the anti-sport fishing crowd is prominent in Europe, but I’m unfamiliar with European conservation politics). I hear the argument in favor of catch-and-release fishing to support pressure on popular fisheries, but catch-and-release isn’t an infinite resource even when practiced correctly. A mortality rate still exists in such instances and the more fishing pressure a system receives the higher the fatalities. No angler, including myself, who fishes regularly is guilt-free from accidentally killing a fish in a catch-and-release context whether we realize the fish died or not. As the popularity of the sport increases and the big-name rivers receive increased fishing pressure annually, numerous fisheries can no longer sustain the same quality when everyone aims to catch as many fish as possible daily. Artificial-only and fly-only sections help, but modern nymphing and float/indicator/bobber tactics in fly fishing can be nearly as effective as bait and spin fishing. I love catching a pile of fish, as much as the next fly fisher, but can the pressured systems sustain high catch rates for months on end, year after year? Accessibility to the sport is a good thing, especially when producing advocates for the fishery, but a culture built to “catch every fish in the river” is writing a check in it can’t cash.
I’m no fishing saint, but I include myself in a group similar to the trophy hunters. One we can describe as “trophy anglers.” Fly fishers who chase a select few fish in the river, and pass on those who don’t fulfill our desired catch. Here we can define trophy under numerous definitions. An easy one is defining trophies by size while attempting to target large fish. Although we can’t totally control what fish grab our flies and the ones who don’t, trophy fishermen learn the habits of large fish and target specific holding areas with specific fly types, such as streamers, which reduce overall catch rates but can produce a larger average size class when performed properly. If one can accept fewer fish landed, this is a fun, exciting, and challenging method of chasing fish. It can remove pressure from the population because anglers avoid cleaning out entire runs and instead move from place to place searching for big fish holding water. This is also an excellent method to burn a few extra calories and see more water than nymphing a handful of runs for hours on end.
Perhaps the most iconic mode of trout fishing is dry fly fishing. Dry fly fishing can reduce pressure on a system based on its seasonality, irregularity, and difficulty. Dry-fly-only fly fishers only sight cast to rising or actively feeding fish, which occurs best at certain hours of the day and during certain periods of the year. They typically wait until a hatch kicks off and would rather sit at home and tie flies than fish other methods when dries are out of season. In this case, similar to chasing large fish, the self-created scarcity makes each hooked and landed fish more valuable because it occurs at a lower frequency. On the flip side, attempting to catch every fish possible and deep water nymphing makes each fish feel less valuable because of its abundance. Dry fly fishing technical water is the most difficult task in fly fishing as anglers are required to have high-level casting skills, which requires regular off-the-water practice, and numerous aerial mending techniques to prevent drag because on-the-water mending is the cardinal sin of dry fly fishing. Limited availability often scares people who feel they must catch a fish every trip to the river (and ideally numerous fish) to feel successful, but those who are patient and work at it find dry fly fishing rewarding and worth the effort. To the dry fly angler, fooling a stubborn fish to eat is the trophy rather than the exact size, and sometimes they don’t care if they land the fish – an exciting surface eat on a complicated drift is all the trophy needed.
Not all trophies are giant fish or dry-fly-caught specimens. To a first-time angler or hunter, their first-ever fish caught or game harvested is a trophy regardless of size. To someone who’s fished his whole life, but never on the fly, landing a 13-inch trout on a fly rod is a trophy, and to someone who’s fly fished the pristine rivers for trout for years, landing a baby tarpon is a trophy because it might be the only tarpon he ever lands. The last fish someone catches with a grandparent is a trophy because it’s with a special person. A 14-inch brook trout in a creek where they rarely surpass ten is a trophy and a monster relative to the context. “Trophy” does not and should not have an exact definition in fishing or hunting because the sentimental value of a harvest or catch makes it special.
The European-mounted elk is a reminder of the special memory and not what makes the story special on its own because sharing the story of how it happened is more valuable than the physical item.
Dad walked me to the river bank below a bridge and tied on a classic dry fly: the Parachute Adams. After weeks of casting instruction, my dad handed me the rod and pointed to a seam where fast current and slow water met. I threw a sloppy cast, the best cast I could throw, but it landed in the general area. The white post of the fly bobbed up and down as it rode the current to meet the lips of a fish halfway through. I set the hook and my dad coached me through the landing. “Don’t reel,” he instructed, “strip it in. Only use the reel if it earns it.” I dragged it into the wooden hand net with a black nylon mesh basket, which was popular in the ‘90s and early 2000s, extended by my dad’s left hand. In the net sat a rainbow trout of 12-ish inches so I unhooked it to hold in my hand for a moment. I caught countless rainbow trout by this age and numerous much larger, but this one was unique and one I’d never forget. I placed the ‘bow in the water and watched as my first fish – first trophy fish – on a fly rod jetted off into the river.