Journal of a Minnesota Angler

When Ken and I returned from our Dead Moose Adventure, my wife relayed the afternoon’s events at the homestead to us.

Before we left, my son said he wanted to practice casting, so I tied on a speed craw to my son’s fishing pole. It was just like the one he used when he almost caught a fish.

On his very first cast the line tightened. He told my wife that he caught a fish. My wife thought he got it hung up on a rock and couldn’t believe he did it on his first cast. She thought she would have to listen to him whine all afternoon about wanting to cast, but there was no way for them to recover the line.

It wasn’t more than a few more seconds that she realized he wasn’t being overly optimistic. He really did have a fish on the line. In a panic, she offered to help him reel it in, but he would have nothing of the sort. “I can do it, mom!”

He fought the fish for what felt like an eternity and about 5 feet from the dock, it jumped. It looked to be about 14-15″, the same size as the one I caught the night before. But after the splash settled, the fight was over. The fish had gotten off. The only thing at the end of the line was the speed craw that had worked its way up the line about 6 inches. The hook–and fish–were gone.

My son was completely dejected. He stood on the dock staring at the water for 10 minutes or more. When I came home, he was watching a video with his sister and cousin and didn’t want to talk about it. I felt really bad for him. Not just because he lost the fish, but because it was my fault.

Before we left for our our trip, I tied a figure 8 loop at the end of the line so I could loop the line around the butt of the fishing pole to keep the line from tangling. When I tied the speed craw on, I simply ran the loop through the eye of the hook, put the lure through the loop, and tightened. Apparently, the figure 8 couldn’t hold the massive power of the ginormous fish my son hooked into.

I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I haven’t had so much as a bump on my line off the dock in all my years at my in-laws’ cabin. Ken has claimed he’s caught bass off the dock, but I’ve never had any proof. So when my son said he would practice casting, I expected it would simply be that–practice.

I learned two lessons that day. First, I’ll never be so casual about tying on a lure again. Whether for my son, or anyone else. And second, any cast could yield a fish. Even in what you think of as dead water.

We’ll never truly know how big my son’s almost-first-fish was, but even a 10-incher like the ones Ken and I were catching would have been an accomplishment for a 6 year old. I only hope the experience doesn’t discourage him from chasing the next fish.