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Written by Bob Ellsberg
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Thursday, 01 September 2011 00:00 |
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The great beast stirred. Lifting off the murky bottom, he slowly swept his monstrous tail. The bright sun blazed as he drew to the surface, rising four fathoms. There was no fear in his prehistoric brain, just a little confusion. It had been decades since there was anything in his domain that could offer a challenge. Of all the creatures that the wide waters hid, he was dominant.
He emerged from the green waters as if a gray and white island were being revealed by the ebbing tide. His huge head was like the tip of an iceberg— what was seen on the surface was just a hint of the massive power below. Casting a baleful eye upon the river, he searched the horizon to see what had dared to interrupt his feeding.
A small vessel, barely longer than he, was bouncing lightly in the flooding current. The beast’s pale eye, looking as big as a billiard ball, caught view of a rising angler, gray and weathered, preparing to do him battle.
 For more than sixty years I had been waiting for this moment. On a thousand grimy bait shop walls are cheesy plaques offering “The Fisherman’s Prayer.” I’d memorized it as a youth. “Lord give me grace to catch a fish so big that even I, when telling of it afterward, will never need to lie!”
This was my great fish, and like Jonah, I found myself praying for a little help. I was not going into battle unarmed. As much as an angler could be, I was prepared to make war with the noble Goliath. In my hand I held a wonderful fishing tool. The G. Loomis Bucara rod was strong and powerful; it could land most anything that swam. My bright Shimano reel, recently serviced, had the best of gears and the drag ran smoothly. It would not fail me. Filling its brass spool was nearly a quarter mile of 80-pound test. The new synthetic lines, gifts from space-age research, were thin and strong. Would my weapons serve me better than Ahab’s harpoons? Only time would tell.
When the fish broke water, my boat mate, Milford, captaining his little Smokercraft, let out a whistle of awe. “Well, we’re not taking that one home,” he pronounced dourly. Always the pragmatist, it took him no time at all to figure out that a 10-foot fish was twice as long as the acceptable limit. I was way past caring about a meal—this was a fish of a lifetime. A photo of him next to the boat would be trophy enough.
“Next to the boat” played no part in the ancient sturgeon’s plans. The huge fish, sporting a body that had scant need for evolution for the last ten millions years, turned into the wind and tide and headed upriver. The line flew off the whirling spool, but this wasn’t my first rodeo. I was not going to panic.
Careful Control
Most big fish are lost because anglers don’t have faith in their equipment. As the reel screams and the spool spins, they panic, tightening the drag, thumbing the spool, putting too much pressure on the system. Those actions invariably lead to snapping the leader or line, or pulling the bend out of the hook. The whole system was designed to let the fish tire himself—they always run out of oxygen before you run out of line. Well, almost always.
Assessing the situation, Milford figured that this battle might be cutting into some good fishing time. “You could just break him off, or I guess we could pull the anchor and chase him.” That was Milford-speak for: “Let’s get this over with; after all it’s not my fish!”
Throwing him a dirty look that he smilingly ignored, I gave him my take on the situation: “I’m losing a lot of line, but he might stop before I’m too deep into the spool. You ought to get ready to pull the anchor.” Milford wasn’t too excited about that prospect, but he gave a token effort, puttering up to the bow and moving a few things around.
The fish meanwhile was not understanding the “getting tired” concept. The line was fleeing the reel so quickly that I figured it was time to panic just a little. To be sure the drag was tight enough to give the fish solid resistance, I gently put my thumb to the spool. Bad idea. The thin line, like a spinning saw blade, zipped right into the flesh of my opposing digit!
I yelled an appropriate obscenity and tried to get a little motion out of my fishing partner. “I don’t think the reel is going to stop him, hustle up on that anchor line.” Moving with the urgency of a thoroughly unmotivated octogenarian, Milford shuffled along, trying to find a place to move the landing net that had covered the rope.
By now the line, airborne as the fish ran shallow, had disappeared into the horizon. Over two football-field lengths of “wondrous spiderweb” were under the fish’s control, and the fish was in no apparent need of rest.
End of the Line
As if there weren’t enough problems, two big fishing sleds were headed back to the dock, running dangerously close to where my line was headed. Naturally they weren’t much concerned with getting in my way. We were so far from their boats that they had no way of knowing I was playing a fish, let alone one that was nearly under their craft.
The churning of their props did seem to affect the fish, however. He was now in water less than a dozen feet deep, and their chaos did give him pause. And pause he did, just in time. I had now run through all of my 80-pound line and was into my last hundred yards of backing, monofilament that had only half the strength of my power line. No one at the sporting goods store figured that I’d need more of the heavy line, so we kept the last few yards of lighter stuff. At the moment, that seemed to be a rather bad decision.
I made another crucial mistake. Milford had finally cleared all the junk out of the prow and had a grip on the anchor rope. “He’s finally stopped,” I offered hopefully, a comment that immediately sent Milford dashing (at much improved speed!) toward his rod, preparing to cast back into the river.
Figuring I had better do something to turn the tide my way, I started pumping the rod, trying to yard the fish toward me, recovering some line as he came. It was a good theory, but a 100-year-old monster with the help of a little floodwater was not easy to move. After a couple of futile minutes, I could tell the end was near.
“Have you gained some line?” Milford queried as he put a fresh anchovy on his hook.
“About two inches,” I replied, sarcastically if truthfully. “You’ll need to get up that anchor, he’s got me on the ropes.”
Milford grumbled something about wasting good fishing time and glacially ambled back to the bow.
Final Stage
Tiring of the pinch in its lip, the mighty “transmontanus,” crosser of mountains and swimmer of seas, turned its massive head and drove upriver, determined to flee the bothersome pressure that was keeping it off its feed.
I watched helplessly as the reel spun wildly. Finally I saw the bare bar of the spool, now lineless with only a tiny knot connecting me to the fish. The powerful fishing rod, master of shark, sailfish and tuna, bowed down as if in homage to the conquering Goliath far down river. I watched helplessly as the last of the line pulled the rod tip down toward the water, snapping the line at the knot, the sound reverberating like a gunshot in the northwest breeze. Collapsing back on my seat, emotionally spent, I was crushed.
Sensing that the interruption of his fishing time was finally over, Milford pulled out his backup rod from the bow. “Now we can try for a keeper!” he offered cheerfully.
I stared out into the gray Columbia, trying to get a handle on all the things I felt. There are a few moments in one’s life that you just know will never be forgotten. Memories and regrets of things that should have been done better, opportunity lost, never to be regained.
But I am, after all, an angler. I just can’t help but think that the incredible fish that had recently left me shattered might be even bigger when I hook him next year! And finally, as everyone knows, no fish brought to hand can ever be as big as the one that got away.
Bob Ellsberg’s column, Fishin’, appears monthly in RV Life and at rvlife.com.
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But I know when I had my 1976 Sea Ray 25 ft. sport cruiser, Spirit, and invited friends fishing on the Columbia or in the San Juans, often overnighters for several days, the most enjoyable part personally was the joy that came from watching them catch fish on my boat! It may seem a weird comment, but I think I actually got more pure excitement out of being in an objective position, watching and advising when asked, than from being in a subjective position, fishing pole in hand. And I've got pictures to prove it, with my grins bigger than the anglers'. Maybe Milford never took his young grandkids fishing, cuz it's a similar feeling - only the fish may not be as big. He should have been proud of your battle, not worried about the empty spot in his fish locker.
Great writing, Bob. You had me hooked from the first paragraph (though I'm not quite as big as a ten foot sturgeon). My heart raced during the whole fight, and like on so many occasions I've experienced, I was sure all along you were going to lose that fish! But you kept me on the line with the faint hope that Milford would actually finally lift that anchor, and allow you to recover some monofilament.
But alas, I can definitely relate to that shotgun blast, because that's exactly how I described to others the moment a 50lb Kenai King Salmon and I parted ways via my 15lb. Sockeye line.
Sturgeon have never been on my "to-do" list, but I know people with such lists, and I always enjoy hearing their stories. So keep them coming; at least if I haven't gone fishing myself for several years, I can still dream about it and think of it as my favorite hobby. Reading others' adventures should be just as exciting to a true fisherman as enjoying an outing in person.
And Milford, you should enjoy your friends' adventures as much as your own... maybe more.
Joel