Until I was 30 years old, I wasn’t much of a fisherman. I’d take a rod and reel along on a camping trip, but I never expected to catch much of anything. In my mind, fishing was a relaxing pastime you enjoyed with friends and beer. Then my buddy Brian asked me to go fishing. I took him to a lake hidden in the woods I knew, and he taught me how to fish for bass. He showed me how to cast my lure along the edge of the lake, how to give the line a couple of tugs to “jig” the lure and attract the fish, then to reel it back in quickly.

I accepted his instructions affably, but with little faith, then popped open a bottle of beer and started to get into the rhythm of relaxation. Cast, tug, reel. Swig. Cast, tug, reel. Swig. Cast, tug, reel…. Whoa! Something hit my line. Hard. Really hard! I’d never felt anything like that before. My line started spinning out of the reel with a high-pitched whining sound. I cranked it back in as fast I as could, but the drag was set too low and the fish was pulling it back out faster than I could turn the handle.

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