The Big One

“The instant the flies touched, the skinny water exploded in a beaver-alarm ker-sploink, my rod bent double, the line rifled toward the riffle and then snapped back in my face like a bullwhip crack from Lash LaRue, and I found myself sitting down in the river with my pulse racing and that certain tightness in my upper left quadrant that folks of a certain age really don’t want to feel.” James Babb, editor of Gray’s Sporting Journal, writes about the big one in his own inimitable style.