Because of a very special fish, today was a very special day. I caught an arctic grayling. Grayling are not the best known species in the salmon family because there are hardly any of them left in the lower 48 states. They are still found in healthy numbers in Alaska and Canada, but there are only about 5% of the original population in the lower 48 states. They are completely gone from their former home in Michigan and there are only a few places they can be found in Wyoming and Montana. I caught this one in Montana.
The last grayling I caught was 18 years ago in Alaska. They were so common in the river I was fishing there I didn’t think much about it. But during my lifetime I have seen them disappear from several rivers in Montana and Wyoming. They were never common in the Gibbon River in Yellowstone but they were there and weren’t extremely rare. I haven’t seen a grayling in the Gibbon for years. There are a number of reasons their populations have declined: climate change, habitat degradation, over fishing by anglers, and dewatering of streams have all played a part. So today when I caught this one I was really excited. My husband took a couple of photographs of it, but we were very careful not to ever take it out of the water and released it after it had a chance to rest in my net.
The Arctic grayling’s scientific name is Thymallus arcticus. They have the genus name Thymallus because they are supposed to smell like the herb thyme. I don’t think they do, but not everyone smells things the same. To me they are special because they are rare and because they are a very handsome fish. Their dorsal fin is huge and beautiful and their pelvic fins are pretty too. To me they represent what North America was like 400 years ago when the plains were virtually endless and the bison, grizzly bears, and wolves were common. What I wouldn’t give to see that for just a day.
So tonight I am not thinking of all the things we humans have done to this earth and all of the other organisms that have lived on it. Tonight I am thinking of all the grayling that are living happily in the stream I fished today. I won’t harass them again. I will just think about them.
What a handsome fish…and this from a person who knows pretty much diddly about fish. I know rainbows, bass, halibut, and some of the salmon (lived in California and now in the PNW), oh and sturgeon…but only the ones that wash up dead on the beach to the great pleasure of the bald eagle population. I had one of these moments when I saw my first native Brown Trout in my father-in-law’s back yard stream in Bishop, Ca. I couldn’t believe they still survived after L.A. stole all the water from that area.
Nice photo!