The Haunting;
It was May 1996 as the trolling motor cut through a glass still water, on my home lake at Lake Conway AR. I can remember it was an unusually warm day for May even for Arkansas standards. I had been having a fair day of fishing when I pulled up to one of my favorite clusters of Cypress trees, before calling it a day. I can remember dipping my jig down in about six feet of water in the shade of those cypress trees when I felt a very hard thump and the sudden pull of a heavy fish on the end of my jig pole.
I initially thought Bass, Catfish, or Drum… as I was able to turn the fish away from the cypress roots and got him to come to the surface. It was though the fish knew it had to take another approach and suddenly made a mad dash to the surface and began to make a head shake. It was in those few brief seconds that I realized I was looking at a 3-4 lb. class black crappie. It was truly the biggest black I have ever seen on the end of my Line. No sooner than I got to see the fish, it made a mad power dive in between two cypress trees rubbing my 8lb test on the tree and breaking me off and gone forever.
Gone!!! Was the feeling and the reality set-in, I may never in my life-time ever get a chance at a black crappie as large as that one was? Still to this day… does the memory of that fish stick with me. I know that I will always remember that fish until the day that I die. I often wonder as I talk to my fishing buddy's what fish did they lose? What fish has haunted them?
Sometime the story s of the ones that got away, are just as good as the trophy’s and stories that we caught. But you can bet, for those of us who have fished for any amount of time, have these kinds of stories. We all have those fish that we remember, that got off on us, and now gone forever, But in the memories of our mind.
I think that anybody who is just starting out as fisherman should be warned of this. This incredible sport we call fishing has a dark side, and those who make it their passion will be haunted. They must be warned they are setting themselves up to be haunted in the memories of…The Ones Who Got Away. Tight Lines.
