All right, Fish Heads. It’s time for the two semi-finals of the Big Fish Madness tournament, in which our Final Four fish square off to see which pisces is, pound for pound, the toughest around.

It’s the NCAA-style bracketology used by Versus.com to promote fishing shows on the Versus cable channel and their website as profiled in Thursday’s Fish Wrap.

OK. Here, it’s Steelhead versus Bluegill and Fall Chinook versus Shad. Imagine them the same size. Which ones are tougher?

Chinook v. Shad is an intriguing match-up. One big-school darling of the Northwest; the other a Mutant Herring from Heck. The draft horse on crack against a skinny little slime-ball.

Gotta like ’em. Both are anadromous, bite well and pull like hell. One big difference, though, is how big a leader and how much drag can you use.
For chinook, you can get them to swallow some hardware lure and crank down the drag until you could slow down a Volkswagen and still not lose them. However, Shad’s mouths are so soft and their power so strong, they’ll actually pull so hard that they yank the hook right out of their own mouth.

The Fish Hack is impressed by intentional lip-piercing without anaesthesia. Shad in a squeaker.

Steelhead v. Bluegill is a blow-out. The fish from the Farmers’ Pond ain’t in the class of the cold-water god of the Northwest. That’s why there’s Steelhead beer and The Northwest Steelheaders Association. No Northwest Bluegillers Association meetings where dudes down Bluegill Ale and talk about the 8-ouncer that got away.

That gives us an all-anadromous Finals. Steelhead v. Shad in a weekend fin-off. Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 11:29 am and is filed under Outdoor Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.