Fishermen have devised many methods to catch one of the world’s most popular game fish, the elusive trout.  But none that I know of have even attempted to master the “no tackle” techniques that I have developed.  That’s right; rods, reels, lines and lures are not necessary when you have mastered the skills of catching trout with “no tackle”.

I caught my first “no tackle” trout while my wife and I were acting as tour guides for two young men from the Netherlands that were vacationing in the U.S. for the first time.  We were preparing to have a picnic lunch on the bank of the crystal clear Jemez River that flows out of the Jemez Pueblo, an Indian reservation in the Northwest part of the state.

It was July, and the weather was mild and pleasant in the canyon, but as we walked up to the riverbank we noticed that the water level was only about 12 inches deep and about 40 feet wide, as the snow runoff had ended in early June.  I said to our guests, “it’s too bad that the water is so low, I was planning on going for a dip”.

Then without hesitation one of my Dutch guests said, “Vell vee’le build a daam”.  For a moment I forgot where these two young men were from, of course, the Netherlands, where dams, levies and dykes protect the entire country from flooding.  Dam or (daam) building was a part of their DNA.

So under their direction, we waded in and began stacking bowling ball size boulders in a straight line across the little river.  After a couple of hours stacking smaller and smaller rocks on top of the large boulders, the 4 of us had created a pool of water about 2 feet deep with the makeshift dam that spanned all the way across the small river.

We enjoyed relaxing in the water for a couple of hours and then we ate our lunch and prepared to leave. Then I realized that any trout that wanted to navigate that stretch of river wouldn’t be able to get thru our dam because the boulders & rocks were fitted too tightly together for them to swim thru them.  So I asked my guests to wait for just a minute so I could open a channel for the fish to move up and downstream.  I went to the edge of the dam and moved enough rocks to allow a channel of water about 5 inches wide to run around the rock dam.

As soon as the water began flowing around the dam a beautiful native rainbow trout about 12 inches long began struggling upstream against the swift current in the small channel that I had created. When it reached the point where I was standing and admiring its stamina, I slid my hands under it and lifted the extremely colorful little guy out of the water.

The 2 Dutch boys went nuts!  They screamed for me to hold on to the fish while they raced back to get their cameras.  And after they each took several pictures, I released the little rainbow and he continued his journey upstream.  The guys had never even seen a rainbow trout before, and I am sure that they told the story many times back in Holland about the crazy fisherman from America that caught a rainbow trout with his bare hands.

I'll tell you about the next time I caught a trout with my bare hands in another blog. It's an unbelievable tale and I'm happy that there was also a witness to this capture!