(True) Fish Story

Cripes, you guys. I was ready to give up.

After four hours I had caught one tiny perch, grown hungry, gotten pretty damp, battled winds, and become increasingly frustrated with my lack of luck and the growing pain in my right shoulder. For the last half hour I had been saying, "One last cast."

I decided to troll along the rocks beneath the dike as far as the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad bridge where the Trempealeau River empties into the big water, about a hundred yards or so. Then I would hang it up for the day, land the boat, and go home and watch the baseball playoff games. It looked like the drizzle was about to turn into a bona fide rainstorm anyway.

When I caught the little sunfish there was practically no resistance on my line; it could have just been weeds. I killed the motor and reeled a little bit before it was clear there was even a fish on. I paused in a stoop to rearrange stuff on the floor of the boat and when I straightened to stand up my little sunfish seemed a lot bigger.

The fish made a run and the drag was suddenly screaming. For several minutes I battled the angry critter. Three more times I let the fish run before I finally worked him in close enough to the surface to see a big northern with a sunfish sideways in his mouth--the head out one side and the tail out the other. It looked like he was eating a sandwich.

When I finally pulled him close to the boat, the two fish had become separated. The leading treble hook of the Sonic lure was in the mouth of the sunny and the and trailing hook was in the side of the big slimer's mouth. He was pretty-well worn out. I held him alongside the boat and kept him horizontal in the water, just like a real fisherman had taught me to handle these big hogs a few summers ago up in Northern Ontario. As I reached down to get a hand inside the back of his gill the fish gave a violent toss and disappeared into the deep. I was left with a bloodied sunfish and a slightly broken heart.

I fished for two more hours. I'll probably fish for a long time before something like that happens again. Others have told me of similar experiences. It was an amazing thing to witness. I've caught a lot of northerns this summer but I sure wish I would have gotten that one.