Hook

From the website anchovies...archives:

In the movie Jurassic Park III, one of the characters -- having survived an episode on a boat, in the river, and atop an abandoned crane, all the while assailed by a prehistoric monster he'd referred to as a triciploplotz -- is musing about having once sunk the family boat trailer, truck, and the tow truck that tried to rescue the first two. He ends the reminisce with a wistful "I missing fishing".

For those of you who've fished without the incursions of special effects, I'm sure you can recall a fishing anecdote or two that were cause for great mirth and laughter after the fact, especially when there were no fatalities. I've related, for your amusement at my expense, an epic or two of my own, with fishing as a subtheme. I'm sure the stories told by the fish that witnessed those epics are now feeding hole lore in a few picked streams in Colorado and Wyoming.

Chatting with friends the other night -- one of whom has shared some of those same misadventures -- I was regaled with an astonishing fish story they'd had with another acquaintance. One that, even 20 years later, still makes 'em laugh to recall it. It made me laugh to hear of it.

This other acquaintance -- a perky lil' blonde, all of about 5' 1" and 105 lbs if that -- had never been successful at fishing, in so far as actually catching a fish. Eager to give her an experience she'd remember, two of my friends took her to a trout farm in the mountains west of Denver. If any of you have been to a "trout farm", you know the drill: a pond or two full of trout willing to bite on almost anything, and what is caught is paid for by the inch.

Soon after their arrival, my friends had settled in and quickly caught a couple fish each. Their trainee was not faring so well, though she was getting plenty of 'hits'. For her phone number, from the trout farm staff.

Finally, one friend sat down with her, and patiently for the fifteenth or so time explained to her the basic mechanics of fish-catching. The bottomline of which was: "when you feel a fish bite -- a tug on your line and pole -- you need to set the hook quickly". He left her repeating to herself, "set the hook...set the hook...no, you can't have my number...set the hook..".

Finally, a fish came along that took her bait with apparent vigor, sufficiently so that no one present doubted that she could fail this time. With a squeal of excitement, she apparently recalled my friend's advice, and set to applying it.

Savagely.

She bent forward, almost like a samurai bowing to an opponent before a match, and then with a tremendous YANK, jerked back the pole over her head, using every last ounce of fiber from her very existence to set the hook. The fish -- a rainbow trout, perhaps 11" long or so -- came out of the pond with the velocity of a Patriot missile, seeking an in-bound Scud. Over her head it shot, scattering guests and admirers like a bowling ball through pins, as it zeroed in on a chain link fence about 20 feet behind her. According to witnesses, no one present had ever before seen a rainbow trout fly.

Let alone, having heard one scream.

With a metallic, reverberating BWANG, it hit and ricocheted off the fence, landing limp and quite dead on the ground, as only a non-flying fish with no parachute and practical knowledge of the practice, could.

My friends -- already on the ground for the in-bound -- were still there, now convulsed.

As one of her facility admirers was cleaning her fish -- now elongated to a length of perhaps 14" -- he slit the stomach and, as he started to gut it, the head flopped backward, hanging there by only a broken piece of spine. He exclaimed aloud to all within earshot: "She broke it's neck!!!"

More than just my two friends were on the ground convulsed in laughter this time.

If Steven Spielberg decides to do another sequel of Jurassic Park, I suggest he cast Captainette Hook in a starring role. Not only might she still have the looks for the movies, but with a fishing pole in her hands, that triciploplotz will be the one that's running. In the other direction.

Besides, it'll never get her phone number.