From The Great Train Robbery, 1903, directed by Edwin S. Porter.

This is a blog post with footnotes. [1]

Reno Fly Shop has a podcast, and it’s good. It’s an interview format with some national fly fishing personalities and some Nevada or California locals with local knowledge. The episodes are each about an hour, which is just right for my morning stumble around Rice. The host, the shop owner Jim Litchfield, is a generous and engaged interviewer, but the podcast always gets around to Pyramid Lake and the Truckee River. That can be a bit of a stretch for some of the national fly fishing personalities, so the locals have a decided advantage.

A recent podcast was with Meredith McCord, who is not local to Reno, but like me is from Houston. She spoke at Texas Fly Fishers last year. I don’t know her, but from the audience Ms. McCord seems lively and personable, with a Southern Girl’s penchant for girly casual wear and plenty of well-coiffed hair. She also has a penchant for IGFA records.

The IGFA is the International Game Fish Association, which apparently exists to keep lists of world records and establish rules for catching big fish. Like fly fishing competitions, it has little to do with the rest of us.

On the podcast Ms. McCord was talking about her IGFA records–she holds about 9,000. [2] The talk on the podcast sooner or later got around to IGFA records for cutthroat trout, all of which are from Pyramid Lake. The IGFA doesn’t differentiate among subspecies of cutthroat trout, a cutthroat is a cutthroat is a cutthroat, so a westslope cutthroat from a tiny stream in Montana is in the same swimsuit competition as a massive Lahontan, and it’s no contest. On the other hand there are male and female records, not differentiated by the gender of the fish but by the gender of the angler. I’m pretty sure the records are kept separate so that a boy won’t need to feel bad about being beat up by a girl.

Following are the women’s records for cutthroat:

IGFA Women’s Fly Fishing Records for Cutthroat

If reports are right and ten- to 20-pound Lahontan cutthroat trout are reasonably common at Pyramid Lake, then these records are ready to be broken. [3] Even I could probably land a trout a bit bigger than two pounds on 20 pound tippet. Of course I’d have to change my self-identification, and nobody makes that kind of decision just to catch a fish.

Looking at the list, the second column is the problem. The second column represents a recent rule change that requires a minimum weight for record fish based on the weight of the tippet. The change was adopted after some records were already set, which is why some of the cells are blank: one way or another those records met the new rule requirement. The rule change might attest to the sportsmanship of IGFA rulemakers, but I suspect it probably goes more to the credibility of a 1 lb 12 oz fish being the record cutthroat for 16 pound tippet.

The change requires that for a fish to establish a record, it must weigh at least half of the weight class of the tippet. [4] You don’t put a bantam weight in the ring with a heavyweight and still call things sporting. Of course there’s a four pound tippet class for tarpon, and catching a 100 pound tarpon on a four pound tippet seems more like needless cruelty than sport, so, like I said, credibility is a better explanation than sportsmanship.

Because many of the women’s cutthroat records are oddly low, Pyramid Lake is prime for new records, particularly for women. Listening to Meredith McCord in the podcast I started wondering if Kris would like a record of her own.

The tackle side of establishing records is pretty straightforward. You can fish with any kind of rod as long as it is at least six feet long and is generally recognized as a fly rod. An Orvis Practicaster probably doesn’t cut it, but anything else sold as a fly rod is probably fine. Same goes for reels. [5] Your line can be any kind of fly line and backing. Really the tackle rule comes down to this: if you’re using tackle that’s generally recognized as a fly rod, reel, and line, then from (a) inside the knot attaching your leader to the tippet to (b) inside the knot attaching your tippet to your hook, your class tippet, the one that tests 2 or 4 or 16 or 20 pounds, has to be at least 15 inches long. That’s pretty much it: at least 15 inches inside the knots. It can be longer, but it can’t be shorter. [6]

Now once you sort out the whole gear thing, the conduct thing [7], and the species identification thing [8], you get to the real problems: the weight and length thing, and the fly thing.

Notwithstanding that I’ve got this whole list going on of fish-I-caught, I’m not a particularly ambitious angler. I want to catch a fish in Kansas, but in Kansas I’d be perfectly happy if it was a six-ounce sunfish. I also understand that from the fish’s perspective fishing is a pretty cruel thing to do. I’m not going to stop fishing, but all in all I want to play a fish quick and get it back in the water so that it can go on about its business of killing and eating stuff and fish sex. I’d kill a fish and eat it, but I don’t really like to clean fish. I’d just as soon put the fish back.

But when I put them back I want them to survive, and our notions of how to handle fish for fish survival are evolving. There are the great guidelines from KeepEmWet Fishing, most of which involve keeping the fish wet, using a net, using barbless hooks, and reducing handling.

I’ve assumed that IGFA records were all established with dead fish, and that’s not right. While there’s nothing I see in the IGFA rules that prohibits killing fish, IGFA is a partner of KeepEmWet, and has adopted its own rules, guidelines really, for releasing fish. [9] However good the angler, and however good the angler’s intentions, [10] establishing a record requires handling, and there’s a tension between any handling and keeping a fish alive. The IGFA has established procedures for handling and weighing fish aimed at release, and the pictures in my head of dangling dead fish are wrong, or at least unnecessary to establish a record. [11] Still, all in all, all of this folderol seems a lot of trouble, and I’d just as soon not bother. If sometime Kris wants a record, I’ll surely help, but I don’t think I’ll mention it to her. Don’t you mention it to her either.

In addition to the weight thing, there’s the fly thing. Saltwater anglers hate the 12 inch bite tippet regulation [12], which according to rumor is too short to effectively deal with tarpon. For freshwater anglers, the really dumb part of the IGFA rules is a prohibition against droppers. [13] Only single flies are allowed, one supposes to discourage snagging, but really? It’s not like fishing droppers isn’t one of those things done since Dame Juliana Berners, and everybody fishes at least tandem flies when they nymph. The last known person to fish a single nymph was in 2006, and that was only because he’d lost his dropper in a tree. From what I can tell all fishing in Pyramid Lake involves dropper-rigged nymph fishing or streamers, and the practice is to fish tandem streamers. The IGFA rule is inconsistent with how anybody fishes, and I’m not setting any records until the rule is changed. Hah! Showed them. Let them defend their vaunted credibility now.

[1] Lawyers love footnotes of all things. Some of the best stuff is always in the footnotes. I wish I could figure out how the text notation could jump to the footnote, and vice versa, but I can’t, so there you are. If you want to read the footnotes you’ll just have to do it manually. Sorry.

[2] Ms. McCord holds a lot of records, but I made up the number 9000. It just sounded good.

[3] IGFA measures things by kilograms, but I skipped straight to the stateside pound translation. If you want to get back to the IGFA designation a kilogram equals 2.2046 pounds.

[4] If you’re paying close attention, this is probably confusing because the chart gives the minimum weight for 16 pound tippet at 8 pounds, 14 ounces. Even by my low math standards that is more than half of the weight of the 16 pound tippet class. That’s because the IGFA doesn’t use good ol’ American tippet, but some kind of European stuff measured at 8 kilograms. The 16 pounds is an approximation of eight kilograms. Eight kilograms weighs more than 16 pounds. Who knew?

[5] The exact language of the reel rule is as follows: “The reel must be designed expressly for fly fishing. There are no restrictions on gear ratio or type of drag employed except where the angler would gain an unfair advantage. Electric or electronically operated reels are prohibited.” I guess that you couldn’t use a Tenkara rod because the reel for the rod isn’t expressly designed for fly fishing. Maybe someone could argue that the absence of the reel was expressly designed for fly fishing, and that counts for reel design. This is a shame, since I reckon that all of the saltwater Tenkara anglers are out there right now trying to beat the record for sailfish.

[6] At this point you should be asking yourself how the heck do I know that my leader actually tests at that weight? There are pre-tested tippet spools you can buy from companies like Courtland, which should provide consistent break points over the length of the line. This differs from how most of us buy tippet, which actually has less to do with the break strength than the tippet diameter. We don’t really care if our .015 diameter tippet measures a bit more than 8 lbs over its length. Record setters do, and you have to send your leader and tippet in for testing with your record application. You’d think these IGFA people think that fishers are all liars, or at least poor judges of their catch.

[7] This is gross over-simplification, but the conduct rules pretty much come down to catch the fish as you normally would, don’t actually shoot it, and except for netting or gaffing in the final stage, don’t let anybody help you land the fish.

[8] Take lots of pictures of the whole fish. Take pictures of the fish from every conceivable angle. If there’s going to be any doubt of the fish’s species, The IGFA recommends you take the fish to your nearest ichthyologist for identification. I kid you not. A photo has to show the full length of the fish. A photo has to show the rod and reel used to the catch the fish. I think a photo has to show the scale used to weigh the fish, and I think I’d send in a photo of the scale in the very act of weighing the fish. Scales are notorious liars, as anybody with a bathroom scale knows.

[9] One supposes best practices for keeping fish alive doesn’t include taking the fish to the nearest certified scale. The scale certification rules confuse me, but I gather that the best scales are spring scales—not digital as one would expect—and that Boga grips are considered good scales, but not good fish handling devices if you’re using them to hang fish up by the lips. Lip hanging is both hard on the fish’s jaw and on their internal organs, which will come as a shock to us largemouth bass anglers. IGFA will pre-certify your scale for a charge and a membership fee, or will certify the scale after the fact. Then of course you run the risk of having used a bad scale, plus you still have to pay the membership fee.

[10] Now if I were a particularly devious sort of record chaser, and I’d caught a record fish, then I might conclude that if I release a fish and it lives long and prospers, then somebody could break my hard won record next year with the same fish. I don’t know how the minds of record chasers work, so maybe none are that sort of devious.

[11] Apparently the best way to weigh a fish is in a cradle or a net, so you have to establish the weight of the sling or net and subtract it. I’ve got no idea what the IGFA requires to establish the weight of the sling or net.

[12] In addition to the class tippet rule there is also a special rule for bite tippet, which is important for fish like tarpon. That’s a whole other discussion. Twelve inches.

[13] If you’ve read down to this footnote, and you don’t know what a dropper is, then I’m a more engaging writer than I thought I was, or you’re one of my children and you’re humoring me. If you think about fly #1 tied to a fly line, and then fly #2 tied to a piece of line tied to the hook bend of fly #1, fly #2 is the dropper. The whole thing together is a dropper rig.