What WAS That?

Why is there always ONE? And why does it always have to be THE one? One last question: is it too much to ask for a simple glimpse, no matter how brief?

Let me set the scene for you under the guise of understanding…

You know the small town breakfast table, right? Well, sometimes, tiptoeing all scrunched down while attempting to get my morning coffee incognito, I find myself trapped: “There’s the GON man! Ask him!”

Uh, don’t. Please. All I want out of life is to fill this Yeti cup…

Yeah, so you got this six-man committee; combined age, nine hundred, forty seven years. The last time any among the half-dozen clocked in for a day’s work was 1963. January of 1963.

And the aggregate of the world’s problems are my fault, because had I not been busted, the panel would have had them solved, packaged and wrapped in red ribbon within the next 10 minutes. I apologize in advance for interrupting the process.

It was kinda tough to ferret out the gist of the question since all could talk—at the same time—but none could hear. Sinclair Dam opening up full is quieter than this…

In the end, somebody had lost a certain fish within the last century, or two, and I’m supposed to know what it was. After all, that’s what GON guys do, right?

While mentally scrambling to come up with a reply, an epiphany must have tumbled right through the roof and clouted me on the brainbox. Guess that’s how they work, cause I ain’t ever had one.

Whipping the ever-present pen from my shirt pocket, I grinned and wrote the following on a napkin: “Forgot hearing aid. Going home to get it. Be right back.”

I knew that was something they could all understand. Been a week; their trucks ain’t moved.

Problem is… well… that fish!

Been there, done that.

Like a couple weeks ago on Clarks Hill with Troy Thiel, which you can read about by thumbing back a few pages.

We caught a bunch of fish. I didn’t catch ONE. And Troy and I never came to terms on what that ONE was…

Here we are: trolling, 9-foot buggy whip, 4-lb. test line. No big explosion of a strike, no u-shaped rod arch, only a side-to-side quiver that didn’t look right. I set the hook and discovered in one-millionth of a second that it warn’t no crappie on the other end.

Locomotive, maybe? Nah; more like a dump truck. Fully loaded. Struggling uphill. No jaw-rattling head shake, no jump, no calisthenics of any type.

That pretty much ruled out striper or hybrid; besides, you can always hear them screaming, “Yeeeeee-haaaaaawwwww,” while knitting shawls from all your lines.

Gar? Naw. He’d whip the surface into a smoothie, cussing me out all the while.

Troy thinks it’s a very large largemouth, but I can’t get a single range bull head-toss or maniacal line-stripping run out of it.

We’re still discussing it when Mr. Whatever steers the jig to his underwater tree. He loops the line once—I can still feel him—while whipping it into the following knots: Thumb, Reef, Figure Eight, Clove Hitch and Sheep Shank.

POP!

Good thing my dog wasn’t close.

OK, so it was a berserk beaver. Had to be. Slipped up behind the jig in a demented frame of mind, slid it between them yaller buck teeth and skiied along enjoying the free ride to his tree so he could ruin my day.

“But, I’ve never even seen a beaver in this lake” Troy said.

I rest my case.

From the best crappie fisherman I know, we move to the best saltwater fisherman I know. Same story.

I hooked something else that could give Bigfoot lessons in concealment while just off the coast near Richmond Hill with David Newlin.

I’ve boated fish over 100 pounds with David, but this? For sheer power, never felt anything like it. And never got a peep.

“That was about a 35-lb. black drum, but don’t worry because they’re so full of worms at that size you can’t eat ’em anyway,” said Capt. David. He always knows how to make me feel better. Personally, I think it was the prop on Amelia Earhardt’s plane; around and around and around…

But no experience—in all seriousness—will ever top the fish at Lake Blackshear, pre-flood, with Doyle Dowdy.

At the time, the lake had been backed up for over 50 years, which is plenty of time to grow monstrous stuff. We were catching schooling largemouth in the back of Limestone Creek just as fast as we could pitch a lure into the water.

Knowing that slobs preferred lying deeper under the school to pick off crippled baitfish with a minimum of effort, I snapped a heavy jigging spoon onto an equally muscular rod, a Lew’s No 4 graphite Speed Stick. It’s only about as stiff as the boat paddle.

First cast. And sometimes, you just know. You know?

I managed to move the fish upward maybe a half-dozen feet before it decided deeper was better. In an instant, the rod was slammed down across the side of the boat and was under more pressure than a fat woman’s flip-flop.

Line stripped, but I never managed to lift that rod an inch, all the while knowing that if I couldn’t get the fish on top above Blackshear’s submerged forest, there was no chance.

I’ll never forget the heartbroken look on Doyle’s face as things parted and the rod tip whipped back above the surface.

Twenty-three pounds, fifteen ounces; ain’t no doubt…