Some anglers make a career out of big fish moments, catching bucketmouths that wow the Instagram crowd and become a viral sensation almost overnight.
Others catch a giant fish with sizable girth and length measurements that becomes a fish replica that hangs proudly on the wall for many years to come. And for still others, an enormous fish is the focal point of a treasured photo that hangs in a den or office, a picture that captures a moment in time that will never be forgotten.
Not me. Instead, I’ve made an angling career out of staring at an empty hole in the water, the kind of hole made by a big fish that got away.
Take, for instance, the huge largemouth bass I hooked a few years ago on my eight weight Temple Fork fly rod. One minute, the silvery fly I was throwing that day — a Murdich Minnow, a smallmouth classic up north, and as it turns out, a pretty good fly for Texas largemouths too — was pulsing its way through the water with each strip of the clear intermediate line that I was throwing.
And then suddenly, it was gone, disappearing in a hole in the water created when a huge largemouth bass ate it just a few feet away from me. Trying to channel my inner Flip Pallot or Lefty Kreh, I tried to hit the big bass hard with a textbook strip strike.
Instead, I weakly hit the fish with a full-fledged trout set, as my guide friend Rob Woodruff, calls it, raising the rod tip like there was a 12-inch rainbow at the end of the line and not an 11 or 12-pound bass.
For 10 or 20 seconds, it was the thrill ride of a fly angler’s lifetime as the line surged out of the rod guides and heading for parts unknown. And then suddenly, as I dreamed of seeing fly line backing I hadn’t seen in a good while, the line went limp. And with the excitement over, all that was left to do was reel in an empty fly line and think about what might have been.
It’s a feeling that I’m unfortunately familiar with. Take, for instance, a long ago trip with my friend Doug Rodgers, to the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico. As we fished with Matt Pyles in a fabled run called Texas Hole, the strike indicator on my nymph rig suddenly disappeared from sight.
For a brief second, I stared at the hole in the water on one of America’s top trout tailwater streams. And then I remembered to lift the rod and strike hard, driving the hook point into the jaw of a big San Juan River rainbow or brown.
When I did, nothing happened. In fact, it felt like there was nothing but dead weight at the other end of my fly line. Perplexed, I turned to Pyles, who was rowing the drift boat, and asked what he thought.
“Sometimes, when you hook a really big trout here on the San Juan, it takes them a second or two to realize that they’re hooked,” he shrugged as he dug into the oars once again.
Seconds later, the big trout came to life and headed downstream at a high rate of speed. It wasn’t long before my fly line had evaporated out of the reel, my backing was being exposed quickly, and the Temple Fork five weight fly rod was bending double.
That’s when Pyle’s gave me the bad news, noting that with all of the drift boat traffic in front of us, there would be no way he could give chase and keep up with the fish. Instead, I was going to have to apply some serious heat and pray for a good ending.
I did as instructed and tightened the drag, starting to do battle with a big trout heading for parts unknown. Unfortunately, the heat of battle doesn’t go well with a big fish, a tiny fly, and 6X tippet.
Before long, I was muttering again and reeling in empty fly line, wondering aloud how big that trout might have been. “Oh, he was big, all right,” grinned Pyles. “A fish that does what that one did is usually six, seven, or eight-pounds.”
Perfect, I thought, thinking about my growing collection of the ones that got away.
A number of years ago, I stared at another empty hole in the water, this one right after my topwater popper hit the surface on a small East Texas lake. As it did, a huge bass I nicknamed Orca leaped from the water, arcing through the springtime air like a bass in an old Heddon Lures advertisement.
Fishing with my buddy Rob, he yelled out something about hammering the hook home into the jaw of the five-pound plus bass. I tried to do just that and felt resistance for a few brief seconds. And then again, there was another empty fly line to reel in.
Seeing a trend here? Good, neither am I.
And then there was that sultry late summer morning a number of years ago with Randy Oldfield, one of the best bass guides of all-time in East Texas and a man who has seen numerous double-digit fish come into his boat.
That particular morning, despite the slowly building heat of an August day, I had hoped to fish one of the state’s best bass lakes with one of its best guides, catching the bass of a lifetime.
And I almost did. In fact, on my third cast that morning, I flung a Bill Norman DD-22 crankbait in a Tennessee Shad finish towards a roadbed that had been submerged when the Sabine River Authority had closed the dam on the river and created 27,264-acre Lake Fork.
At Randy’s instructions, I brought the crankbait across the old roadbed and into the ditch laying on the other side. About halfway back to the boat, my lure hesitated. Or actually, it stopped. When I continued cranking, there was suddenly solid resistance and I grunted hard and told Randy that I had a fish on.
He asked if it was a good one and I said, “I don’t know yet.” Seconds later, we both knew when the big Lake Fork bass rolled on the surface 35 yards from the boat. In fact, we both realized in an instant that I not only had a good one, but I also actually had the fish of a lifetime on!
As I fought the big lunker, the bass kept thrashing her head and trying to dislodge the hooks. I kept cranking and brought the fish towards the boat. But as Randy swung the net over the side of his bass rig, the hefty largemouth saw the flash of the net, made one final bid for freedom, and shook her head violently yet again.
And as she did, there was a sudden and awful sound of “SNAPPP!!!” as my monofilament line gave way.
As the fish disappeared slowly into the deep, warm waters of Lake Fork, I slumped back in the chair and wondered aloud just how big the biggest bass I had ever seen up close and person truly was.
To my question, Oldfield told me politely that I probably didn’t want to know. When I persisted, he told me again to let sleeping dogs lie. Finally, on my third query, he looked at me, grinned big, shook his head, and said “Lynn, that fish was at least 11 pounds or better, and quite possibly 12 pounds or better. And next spring, she’d probably have been a ShareLunker.”
All I had wanted to do in that moment — all of the moments above, really — was to weigh the fish on a certified scale, measure it for a replica, take a photo of me and the fish of a lifetime, and kiss it a la Jimmy Houston style before letting it swim away to fight another day.
What made the loss of that Lake Fork giant even more difficult to swallow is that I had to confess to Oldfield that I had not changed my 14-pound test monofilament out to the 17-pounds or better mono line that he had recommended. Too busy with work, family, and other things that week, I had thought “Will it really matter?”
As it turns out — and as it usually does when a guide gives an angler instructions of what to bring and what to do on a fishing trip — yes it did. And it’s a hard lesson that I’ve never forgotten and a bitter mistake I’ve never repeated since.
But in the end, even though the fish got away and I failed to get a career defining big bass replica and a memorable grip-and-grin photograph, I still smile big and remember the one that got away on a hot summertime day deep in the heart of East Texas.
Because sometimes, as I’m constantly trying to prove, or so it seems, the fish wins and gets away. And that’s ok because the memories of big fish battles that end up being lost somehow never seem to fade.
I know because I’m a real expert on the subject.
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