My younger brother and I spent years of summers circling a golf course pond. Over thousands of casts we learned the intricacies of an enclosed ecosystem, first with bream and bobbers and then with largemouth bass.
Neither of us will forget the day she picked up a purple plastic worm from a piling off the end of that T-shaped dock. When the hook slammed home, the pull was stronger than I'd ever felt. Cranking down on the reel, I battled her walking, rod angled one way and then the other to extract her from beneath sun-warped planks.
Little brother stood ready. He held a wide-mouthed net with a long metal handle. It was designed to scoop floating range balls from the pond, but we had commandeered it for a higher purpose.
I can still see the girth of that fish's white belly. When she turned near the surface, we saw a fish of magazines and TV shows, a bass that overwhelmed the imagination of two boys.
She dove, pulling drag. When she resurfaced, my brother lunged with the net.
The line snapped.
We both fell to our knees and watched as she tailed off into green murk. It was an early first dose of heartache as well as the moment that exposed so much potential.
A decade later, I stood knee-deep on a rock ledge in a mountain stream. The pool spread out wide and deep, tapering up to riffles at the head. Two good friends and the best dog waited patiently on a sand bank downstream as I mended the drift of an extended-body March brown mayfly. My other, older, brother developed that fly specifically for this stream and this season.
The rise was splashy. I lifted the rod tip to come tight on an 8-inch brown trout. While stripping in the fish, I turned to my friends, and with a head nod ushered them on to fresh water upstream.
Then, more sensed than seen, a long shadow streaked from beneath the ledge where I stood. A dorsal fin raised wake just as the shadow slammed into the 8-incher that struggled near the surface. The violence was exhilarating. I opened my fingers and line coursed through the guides.
My friends looked on and hooted as an oversized rainbow leapt three times while tearing upstream with the little brown in its maw. With the fish on the reel, I applied tentative pressure. The rod bowed and then sprang straight. I got the fly back. A piece of the small brown trout's jaw dangled from the bend of a half-straightened hook.
I sat down at the vise the next morning to tinker with tying large streamers in brown trout colors. I never fished that stream the same way again.
Years later, I sat alone on a little plastic kayak surrounded by a vast saltwater bay. The reed-lined backwaters yielded several redfish and seatrout on the falling tide. It was past time to begin the long paddle back, so I made several last casts to a creek-mouth oyster bar as the current died.
At a hint of resistance, the strip-set was instinctive. I drove the hook into something that felt heavy and inanimate, perhaps driftwood lodged on the bar. Then the driftwood swam. I struck again, hard. Coils of line sizzled off my lap, then stretched taut over tannic water. The spool spun in a blur, like there was no drag at all.
I saw the flash of a silver side as backing ran from the tip-top. With a palm, I slowed the reel and the kayak began to move.
A tarpon would have jumped. The season for bull reds was months away. Jack crevalle? Foul-hooked bull shark?
The question remains unanswered. When the 20-pound leader snapped, I was thankful the fly line was there to retrieve.
There have been big fish and photos and triumphs when all went as planned. But those are not the stories that flow freely when there's air at the top of a whiskey bottle. Around a streamside campfire, the embers that burn brightest hold the allure of a mystery. They show a glimpse of what's possible and leave us with the new purpose of goals unattained.