BIGGIE SMALLS

THERE WAS NO DOUBT it was a steelhead. Until it wasn’t. The grab had been so jolting, the head shakes so violent, that no consideration was given to the fish being anything but a steelhead. Yet there at my feet, in six inches of water, lay a brown smallmouth of grotesque proportions. Pulsing and flexing, flaunting its outsized strength.

I had caught plenty of smallmouths before, just never one that big or that mean. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Kneeling in the waning glow of an early-spring sun, there was little time for contemplation. I sent the fish on its way, returned to my station at the head of the run, worked out some line, and was promptly fooled again.

I felt in awe about the entire experience, coupled—admittedly—with a tinge of disappointment that the fish hadn’t been the “steelhead” I’d so coveted. Yet I was also left with a lingering, intense curiosity about these tributary-spawning smallmouth of the Great Lakes, which some 15 years later have progressed to the front of my