Catostomus ardens

My step-son Cole is a good fisherman. He picked up fly casting quickly, and his favorite place to fly fish is Hyalite Creek. Every time he has been there, including the first time he fly fished, he has caught aggressive rainbows in fast water. The fish size coincide with the creek size, but their appetites and willingness to eat flies make it a special place for those looking for clean water during runoff, or a quite place to fish with a three weight.

But Cole has tenacity and hope when fishing, and he hasn’t hit that place in his fly fishing career where they type of stick really matters. He will catch fish on whatever is working, whether it is a fly rod, a landing net, or our family spinning rod. So, we fish a public pond near our home once a month or more, and depending on what’s working, he usually catches something on a Panther Martin or a worm, or a fly. Last month we were at the pond, and as I often do, I get the kids fishing and then try to figure out what is going to work on a fly rod. I tied on a #16 pheasant tail with an indicator high up on the leader and flipped it out. A 9 inch rainbow ate it in minutes. This happened a couple times quickly, too quickly to turn the rod over to one of the kids. Once I did, Cole hooked a Utah sucker, Catostomus ardens. I was astonished that a sucker came up from the depths of this pond to eat a pheasant tail suspended nine feet from the surface. He was astonished because it was about 10 inches long—the biggest thing he ever caught on a fly.

Now I introduce you to Pepper. She is a 4 month old border collie puppy with a penchant for smelly shoes and, as it turns out other smelly things. See, we are moving from this house, and last summer the kids had an idea to build a pond for frogs. They hollowed out a chunk of the yard next to the veggie garden, and began plopping things into it like store bought koi, minnows trapped in sloughs nearby, and this year, the sucker. But, yesterday I decided we needed to start filling it in, and began that by kicking in a few of the river rocks that rimmed its edges. In the remaining six inches of water --what was left of the deep end--Mr. Utah sucka feesh came flopping out. I felt terrible, because I had no idea the fish had survived all the grubby fondling at the pond, let alone a trip home and thirty some days in our backyard! My yellow lab Duke pounced on him. Given the way he salivates when I catch trout, and the way he catches and massages gophers with three bites and a gulp, I thought I would let him have the fish.

Baby Bianca silently observed all this from my arms, but as the wind blew, I left Duke, the sucker, and silent little Pepper to the overgrown soggy grass in the back yard. B and I went downstairs, played with her toy instruments, and it crossed my mind that before dark, I should bury that fish in the garden so the puppy wouldn’t bring it in that night. Well, after we played for about thirty minutes I decided we needed a snack, and carried Bianca upstairs, down the hall, and as I turned to the kitchen, I saw this…

There really isn’t that much more to say, except that a warm, dog-slobbered Utah suckerfish covered in dog hair and carpet really isn’t symbolic of glorious death, nor does it give puppy Pepper the delightful puppy breath that so many oogle over. I still haven't checked to see if the doggy door got slimed or not. I am sure I will forget before I am done typing.

Important in this story is that with gregarious kids and dogs, I sometimes let things go that I myself would never do--anymore. I don’t have the heart to kill a fish anymore, and I wouldn’t kill a sucker or a trout or a gopher unless it were suffering. I find myself even braking for the baby ground squirrels in the road this month. But I remember what it was like to be a kid, and I killed a lot of fish when I was that age. I liked to eat them, I liked to slice them open and see what they had been eating, and I liked to “match the hatch” by trying to find crawdads, dragon fly larva, pink power bait, or whatever else they were stuffed with.

So, I just shrugged when they asked if they could take it home, and I figured it would die a noble death by raccoon or skunk in our back yard long before Pepper got her pointy little puppy teeth on it. But he didn’t and I am left at 10:36 PM to contemplate the will to survive. In our human tendency to anthropomorphize other species, I assumed that fish was too dumb to live very long, because he sure looks stupid, and he is from Utah. But there it was, a month later living in six inches of dusky green water, maybe a little bigger than it was when Cole caught it. And I marvel at the curiosity of Pepper. She is so much like Bianca. And as an adult, I thank god for Peppers and Coles and Biancas, that keep me bright eyed and keep me seeing the “nuisance”, the “invasive species”, as something full of wonder, as something capable of inspiring awe.