The one that got away...

so what was the one that got away for you?[/quote]
From what I remember, she was a cute little blonde, usually wore a purple ribbon in her hair..She was about 16 and definitely the prettiest girl and most "filled out" in our 4th grade class.. Secretary Treasurer of our 4H club and showed pigs at all the fairs.. Came from a rich family, wore Justin boots, Levi Jeans and her daddy moved em up to a double wide, when they came out.. I heard later that she became Miss Sow Queen up at the big Fair held in Shreveport every year. I still beat myself up for not going to sit with her in her momma's Ford Falcon when she said, she wanted to show me something.....

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She was about 16 and definitely the prettiest girl and most "filled out" in our 4th grade class

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16 in 4th Grade ... no wonder she was "filled out". Must have been dumb as a rock too.

Geauxt had him a rich, young, dumb, nympomaniac and lost it. I understand you a little bit more old man. My heart goes out to ya.


Fishing on the back side of Wallace lake bout 10 years ago. Throwing a white tiny torpedo with red head. Doing the lil yank and reel that makes the bait go all crazy. Right before I had to pop it over a long, it looked like a stick of dynamite went off under my bait. Set the hook and my rod almost broke in half. Fought that big bitch for forever it felt like. Left and right, right and left. Getting all tangled up in the weeds on the bottom. Finally I get the upperhand. I've got this 5 gallon bucket mouth heffer on the side of the boat. As I'm reaching out to lip her, something pops. I go flying backwards, fish disappears. Start cussing and look at my line. Bait is still there, but the back hook had pulled out. I still get sick just thinking about it.

I know the feeling. I was fishing Rayburn in the Spring tossing a 7 inch pumpkin seed bandit worm into the willows. I make a cast the worm hits the side of the willow and goes straight down. I lift my rod tip to start working the worm and it will not budge, feels like I am hung on a root or something. I pop the rod once does not budge, pop the rod twice still does not budge, I pop the rod hard this time to try and break it loose and it was like I hooked an semi on the interstate. The line started to go out to deep water, I cant budge this toad, drag is ripping of my real and I am hanging on for dear life. She tries to jump but cant, she is so fat that all that would come out of the water was her head and gills. We fight and fight and fight then she comes up one more time,shakes that big head and I see my worm going in one direction and the fish going back down. It was all in slow motion. Was a great experience but a painful one. This fish would have been in the 12+ range easily.

Four years ago in June

Location: New River, near Radford Va.(which is actually the second oldest river in the world next to da Nile)

My buddy and I just got done fighting off a massive hangover from the night before, I got out to the river later than I had planned due to said hangover. After having a fairly stellar first couple hours of raking rainbows and browns I decided it was about time to call it day.

Well, my buddy wanted to stay out for a couple more minutes so I decided to cast a few more times downstream from him. It wasn't more than two seconds after my fly hit the tip of the water that it was devoured by a monster rainbow. It was to say the least the most intense ten minutes handling a fly rod in my life. My buddy ran downstream with the net, I wasn't trying to fight so much as I was afraid it was gonna break the line. As soon as my buddy got within three feet of king lunker he slipped on a rock and caught my my line on his waiters, causing the line to snap somewhere, (still don't know exactly what happened).

So we sat there, him looking at me and me looking at him. Us both knowing that there was more than likely a record rainbow on the end of my line. My buddy kept apologizing all the way back to the truck, I don't think he had felt so bad over anything his whole life. As for me, I felt worse for him than for me. There will always be another day, but he has to live with that the rest of his life. I told him I wouldn't tell anyone. He said, "i appreciate that man, let's go get tore up". And that's exactly what we did, and he paid for everything all night.. beer, food, bud and everything in between.

All in all it was a great weekend, I don't really look at it as the one that got away nowadays. I look back at it being a fairly awesome weekend and a story I may tell our kids one day if he ever decides to piss me off.