"Terrible Moments" Turned Into a Life of Angling

Most people I know who truly love fishing became obsessed with it after a nerve-shocking event that permanently tattooed the mystery of the sport on their psyches. My friend Steve Huff had it happen to him as a kid, being dragged across the macadam of a bridge in the Florida Keys at night. For me, it was being pulled into a muddy South Carolina pond by a catfish that was longer than my leg. For London Times fishing editor Brian Clarke, it was a giant pike: “Then the great fish turned, swam languorously towards the far bank, my little reel jammed, my rod was educated to the horizontal and the line broke with a sickening, low-key switch. I stood there staring after it uncomprehending, held for long moments in a kind of emotional death. It was a terrible moment then and it is terrible now.”