Lost Fish, Caught Memories

There’s little doubt that as time passes, those fish that never quite made it to the the net or the hand are the ones most remembered. For me, there are too many to count, but one or two stand out. Like the bonefish that swam by the boat during a big tournament; had I been faster on my feet, I would have netted that fish before he had another chance to go get tangled in the mangroves and we would have been the first team in the history of the tournament to catch a grand slam on fly. There are even fish not cast to because they were so large they didn’t look like our quarry. Sad but true. And there were fish that I was glad not to land, like the 500-pound blue marlin that broke a custom-made fly line. All still vivid pictures in memory.
In his Virtual Fish blog, Nick Mills recites a quote from Lord Gray of Fallodin’s 1899 book, Fly Fishing: “It is our lost fish that I believe stay longest in memory….” And he recounts a few stories from his own memory bank, like an Androscoggin rainbow that shook his brother’s composure. On MaineToday.com.