THEY OUGHT TO WRITE country songs about losing fish. As every angler knows, breaking it off with a big bass or untying the knot with a beautiful trout is as painful as any other split, and just as likely to drive you to drink. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, yours or your equipment’s; the end of an attachment is always a heartbreaker. But until Nashville gets this right, these six stories about the fish that got away will help you commiserate. And when you’re ready to get back out there—and inevitably lose another one—try to remember that there are plenty of other…well, you know the rest.
DEEP MYSTERY
There are lost fish that sting; there are lost fish that haunt. But of all the varieties in the catalog, the ones that smolder in memory are the ones that puzzle—the fish that provide just enough information to tantalize your imagination, but not enough to complete the picture. When even their identity remains a mystery, you’re left to speculate endlessly as to what nature of beast you were connected to.
Andy Cook and I were drifting North Bay in Wisconsin’s Door County, the rocky peninsula that extends into Lake Michigan. We had no particular plan; we just thought we’d launch the 14-footer, piddle around, and make some casts. It was a gloriously sunny June afternoon, the kind you wish you could bottle and uncork on demand.
The thing about these Lake Michigan bays is that you never know what you might catch. In addition to resident northerns and smallmouths, various salmonids can show up, their movements triggered by changes in water temperature and the availability of forage. There are also herds—somehow “schools” doesn’t capture their farm-animal dimensions—of massive carp.
The fish bored into the emerald depths, bending the rod to the cork and conveying an unmistakable impression of mass and power.
So when something clobbered the black Woolly Bugger I’d tossed toward a steep ledge, I honestly had no idea what it was. What became clear in frighteningly short order, though, was that I wasn’t about to stop it anytime soon. The fish bored unseen into the emerald depths, bending the 9-weight rod to the cork and conveying an