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There are few things in life more exciting than witnessing a fish taking a dry fly on the water’s surface. I concede that to normal, piscatorially challenged folks, that statement probably sounds fairly ridiculous. I further reason that anyone that does have the sense to agree with that testimonial, at the very least, enjoys fishing, or, more pointedly, appreciates fly-fishing on some level.

With a fly rod in my hand, there is only one species of fish swimming out there that’ll make me all but forget about trout, particularly during the dog days of summer when trout fishing can be downright frustrating at times. I’m referring to smallmouth bass, and they are, pound-for-pound and without equal, the hardest fighting freshwater fish in the country. Honest-to-God, if smallies grew to be 30-pounds, I seriously doubt we could catch them on conventional equipment with any consistency. I’m not kidding. That may sound like a stretch, but they really do torture equipment and fight that hard.

Last week, our family returned from a two-week vacation at my in-laws’ cottage in extreme north-central Wisconsin. No television, no computer, no alarm clocks and no telephone. In other words, we were totally “unplugged” and could not have had a better time. We walked, biked, hiked into the woods in search of blueberries, swam, and of course, fished. Our six-year-old, Anders, and I were fortunate enough to catch quite a few over-sized smallies on the fly rods. We found them running big weighted buggers off our lake’s deep breaks during the day, and most fun of all, on an all-white deer hair and marabou floater/diver from about 7:30 p.m. until dark.  After casting this large and ungainly fly into the shallower water near the shoreline, it’s allowed to sit for a number of seconds before it is aggressively stripped back to the boat. Usually, the initial plop of the fly into the water gets a smallie’s undivided attention, and all it takes to illicit a vicious strike is one or two strips of the fly line that cause the fly to dive slightly underwater and make a loud “bloooop” sound. I’ll tell you what; the smallies crushed that fly on the surface like they wanted to hurt it.

Zane Grey wrote a short story for the May, 1909, issue of Outing Magazine titled The Lord Of Lackawaxen Creek, where he described in detail of his memorable battle with an enormous smallmouth bass: “Then I struck with all the power the tackle would stand. I felt the hook catch solidly as if in a sunken log. Swift as flashing light the bass leaped. The drops of water hissed and the leader whizzed. But the hook held. I let out one exultant yell. He did not leap again. He dashed to the right, then the left, in bursts of surprising speed…the speckled trout wise in their generation, the black and red-spotted little beauties keep to their brooks; for, farther down, below the rush and fall, a newcomer is lord of the stream. He is an archenemy, a scorner of beauty and blood, the wolf-jawed, red-eyed, bronze-backed black bass."

Keeping Grey’s story in mind, this past week I found myself thinking often about a particular fish that Anders and I briefly encountered out on the lake. After setting the hook on an unseen fish, it promptly snapped my new $90 rod in two like dried kindling. I have no reason to believe that the fish in question wasn’t an enormous smallmouth. It happened so quickly and the fish pulled with such brute strength that I simply didn’t have time be angry or sad or blame the rod’s manufacturer - or myself for that matter. Anders looked on in wide-eyed amazement as I quietly gathered the shattered pieces in my trembling hands and we both wondered, had the rod and line not broken, whether or not I could’ve actually managed to land that fish.

If the definition of “poetic justice” is an outcome in which virtue ironically triumphs over vice, well, I suppose you could say that justice was served that day. Though, that doesn’t mean I have to accept it or like it.

Dan Brown’s weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankies Bait and Marine in Chisago City and St. Croix Outdoors in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.

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