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Bashing local angler for keeping trophy trout is bad reaction to great catch

An unlikely comparison comes to mind when viewing the photo of Rob Thomas and his trophy trout (Herald, July 8).

Thomas caught the big rainbow while fishing the Animas River right in town. The picture – and the reaction to it – calls to mind the story of an old Cuban fisherman who sails alone one morning out into the Gulf Stream.

Santiago has been ostracized by his fellow fishermen and deprived of his young helper because of his unrelenting bad luck. He prays for a change of fortune as he prepares his bait. He survives an epic battle with a giant marlin only to have the fish decimated by sharks on his long voyage back to shore.

Thomas, a disabled man who fishes the Animas regularly, also said a prayer before he cast into the river. His catch put up a fight that broke his fishing rod in three places before he was able to land it. While the River Trail provides some disabled access, landing such a trout from a wheelchair is another, admirable matter.

Despite his defeat, Santiago wins back the respect of his peers and the devotion of his protégé. Ernest Hemingway published the story in 1952. The Old Man and the Sea was cited as a major reason he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1954.

For his good fortune, however, Thomas has drawn the ire of many fellow anglers. They are angry with him for not releasing the fish, a female, back into the river where she might spawn in years to come and perhaps be caught again. He has also been taken to task, mistakenly, by some who believe that it is not legal to keep large trout anywhere in town.

The anger is not appropriate. Thomas, like many locals, is a “meat and potatoes” angler. These folks eat what they catch, and in many cases, regularly supplement their food budgets with trout. It remains a big reason why the state operates hatcheries and stocks thousands of trout every year.

His catch was also legal. Regulations allow anglers to keep four trout per day from the Animas between the 32nd Street Bridge and Lightner Creek. Even on the “Gold Medal” stretch, four miles of water from Lightner Creek downstream to the Rivera Crossing Bridge near Home Depot, Thomas’ catch was legal in terms of size. Gold Medal regulations allow an angler to keep two fish 16 inches or longer per day, but the method of take is limited to artificial flies or lures only.

Catch-and-release fishing is a proven way to keep high numbers of fish in waters where anglers have plentiful opportunities to catch them. Fly anglers practice it religiously. But it remains a wise recommendation, not a commandment.

And one fish is not the key to solving the problem of low numbers of trout in the Animas River. That answer may very well lie in moving forward with the Superfund program in the river’s headwaters. For example, the Arkansas River, long plagued by mine runoff problems from Leadville, now boasts 102 miles of Gold Medal water after years of hard work and mitigation.

We would all be better served if we echo a few readers who kept their reactions to the photo short and sweet:

Great job, Rob. That one’s a keeper.



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