| Last Weekend I went Flathead fishing w/ my bro. Didn't catch anything for about
2 hours and felt like giving up. Just as my brother told me, "We aren't going to catch
jack." His line started peeling out. We ran over to get his rod and his line was
disappearing rapidly as the fish ran downstream. He closed the bail and started
pull the line tight but it was difficult to tell what was going on because the line had
become so slack. Then he realized that the fish had turn and was running upstream.
He reeled the line tight and finally felt the fish. Solid. He told me it was a big one.
Then it ripped out about 30 yards of 30-LB test on a reel with the drag turned way up
and his thumb on the spool to slow it. Both of our eyes opened wide. "This is really big,
my brother said in a serious tone. I got the net. As time went on, we became aware of a
major problem. The fish was snagged. But with a little grace and some fisherman ingenuity
it was freed and the battle continued. Finally it was close to the boat. He brought it up
to the surface and I netted it without hesitation. Treating the enormous, beautiful,
whiskery beast, of which I have never seen an equal, as business as usual. In times like
this there is no room for error. This was one of the best days of my brother’s life and
it was my duty as a fisherman and brother to do everything I could to make it happen.
I netted it on the first try. I grabbed the net by the hoop to try and pull it in the
boat but it was too big. I used two hands and my bro. provided a third as we hoisted
the whale into the boat. Then the celebration began. I hugged my brother. I can't ever
remember hugging my brother. It was huge. The head was twice as wide as mine. I've been
fishing since I was 5 years old. I’ve fished for months without hardly missing a day of
fishing, sometimes going multiple times a day. At that moment I was looking at the
culmination of years of hard work. It was perfect. We put it back in the net to weight
it with my brother’s ridiculously heavy-duty scale. I use to make fun of him for having
such a scale but at this moment all my doubts vanished, leaving me with nothing but
respect for the man. The scale went up to 55lbs. The fish bottomed it out! And it wasn't
even all the way out of the water!!! My brother and I exchanged excited glances. I asked
him if he knew what the state record was. We figured that it wasn't much more that 55
because not very much of it was in the water so as big as it was we knew it wasn't even
close to the record. So we let it go. We were suspicious of the scale and found that 55
lbs. on the scale equaled 50 lbs. So in the end we estimated it at 51 lbs.
|
