The Fish of My Dreams

A tale of big fish, chasing dreams and overcoming loss

“I’m not sure I have enough line to land this fish.”

I said, quickly realizing I may have been ill equipped for the fight I found myself in. We were in heavy current drifting around as I fought what felt like a gorilla on the other end of the line.

“This can’t be a trout. Not how hard it’s pulling.”

I was trying to convince myself it must be some other crazy bycatch like a catfish or carp.

“It’s a trout man,” said my buddy and expert Arkansas trout guide David Taylor who also happens to be one of the main guys at Trout Magnet. He had a plan based on the weather which was gloomy, dark and rainy and the excess releases flushing the banks with new water.

The first time the tail came up and kicked the fish back out of sight, I was in disbelief. A wave of nausea set in. I’ve never experienced that rush in fishing, ever. Not with 200 pound tarpon on a spinning rod in Florida or 50-pound catfish clamping down on my arm. I was suddenly overcome with nerves as I realized what was on the other end of my line was the fish of my dreams.

HOW THE DREAM STARTS

At 53 years old, I’ve been dreaming of big fish for decades. It’s started when I got into bass fishing at the age of 10. I had seen some huge bass caught on TV, and that sparked my pursuit. I had caught fish with my father earlier in life, but the pursuit really started with borrowing lures out of dad’s tackle box to trick bass on a local pond on my own. If I caught one or two bass a day, I considered it a great day.

Dad told me if I ever caught an 8-pounder or bigger, he’d have it mounted. And thus the dream began.

In high school, I still fished, but I was sidetracked by all the things that side track a young man. After college, I went right to work for the insurance division of Walmart. My career quickly turned to Information Technology where I quickly climbed the ranks, switching companies every three years as my skills quickly surpassed the pay scale at one company, and taking them to the next company meant huge income increases. I did this 3 times before I was 30.

At 27, I started freelance writing and shooting photos on the side for local papers and regional fishing magazines. At 33, I took a full time job in the fishing industry and moved my family from Arkansas to Kentucky. I went from making a solid 6 figure salary and being a well known commodity in the local information technology space to pursue another childhood dream, writing for a fishing magazine.

That writing career opened up a second dream as my interest in other trophy fish piqued. Over the next several years I caught giant stripers, snook, tarpon, redfish, alligator gar, walleyes and more. I picked up fly fishing in my last few years in Arkansas and was enamored with the giant brown trout caught out of the Little Red River. Thus the second fish of my dreams was born. But I soon moved to Kentucky and put down the fly rod as my career forced me to focus almost all of my time on conventional fishing and tournament fishing for bass.

I left FLW for Wired2fish in 2010 and was the architect of the explosive growth of that company until I left in early 2024. Upon leaving Wired2fish, I was finally free to focus on some other fish with a little more earnest. I immediately picked the fly rod back up and chased trout with more consistency. I also got serious about targeting trophy panfish from crappie to shell crackers as well as various types of bluegills.

REALIZING THE DREAM … TWO FOLD

I’ve taken on a few passion pursuits over the last year. I want to help good companies in the fishing space grow and win with my 25 years of digital marketing expertise. So I’ve been working with a few of my favorite companies already, and I really enjoy helping pass on what I learned about SEO, content, marketing, and providing value to anglers over the last few decades.

I also want to elevate panfishing to higher levels in the fishing space. So much of the focus is on bass fishing and the good content around panfish has been lacking from my vantage point. There are still so many folks who don’t understand the nuances of finding and catching bigger fish.

Which also leads me to my third passion pursuit which is creating better crossover anglers. I’ve been working for two years to build out a strategy to bring disciplines together from various genres in fishing to help expand anglers’ horizons and generate new ideas and better methods for targeting big fish of various species. Things like BFS, ultralight fishing, fly fishing, JDM rigging, livescope learnings on fish reactions, and piecing together how systems from one genre can lead to tremendous results in other genres.

I say all this because it’s part of the back story to me not only catching one of the fish of my dreams, but two this spring.

In March, I was fishing on a small lake in Arkansas when I caught my first true 10-pound bass. In fact, my brother and I both caught 10 pounders. Up until that point I had 3 bass over 9 pounds but none over 10 pounds. Having spent most of my adult life in Northern Arkansas and Western Kentucky, I wasn’t exactly in the mecca of 10 pound bass. So I figured it would happen on one of my trips to Texas, California or Florida. So it was very rewarding to get it done in Arkansas on a lake not known for big fish. The fish of my dreams was finally realized.

But little did I know, I wasn’t done this year.

PERFECT STORM FOR BLESSINGS AND BIG FISH

My family has been through it. Not unlike most families. I’ve realized if you live on this rock long enough, you’re going to experience your fair share of hardships and tragedies. From collapsed discs in my back and rheumatoid arthritis in my wrist and hands, father time is coming quickly for me.

We also experienced some tremendous lows. From losing both my wife’s father and my father in the same year to having to endure PTSD and a loss of faith after the school shooting my wife survived. Experiences like those and the weeks and months that follow them have a way of breaking pieces of you off that can’t ever be filled back in.

Enduring what my wife went through in the wake of the shooting was hard. Collapsing my discs in my back a few months later was hard. Having suicidal thoughts daily for a period when the pain in my back was so severe and unrelenting was hard. Losing my faith in God was hard. Those things often compound to make you feel alone in the world.

The storm of those few years took a toll to get through. You harden yourself and just focus on the day and getting through that one. And then you get through a week. And then you get through a month. And then, at some point, you are through it. Not healed per se, but through it nonetheless.

I focused on fishing just as an escape during that period. For a while, I couldn’t hardly stand because the pain was too great, much less get in a boat. I would fish off the bank and fish small waters for an hour because it was all I could muster. For a time, I never thought I would catch a big fish again. Because I wasn’t sure I could fully recover enough to ever get back on the water. You start to lose hope. But I kept stoking the flames of my dream fish to keep my mind occupied with things other than pain.

After a while, I finally felt somewhat normal again. And fishing was something that kept me sane through it all. You need a focused distraction to keep your mind occupied. Fishing is very good about that. Those storms and the battle to get through them later provide a deeper appreciation for the blessings of life and the pursuit of passions.

EXHILARATION COMES IN ALL FORMS

Overcome with nausea and now experiencing this weird wobbling in my knees, I applied a bit more pressure to the big trout on the other end of my line. The 7-pound braid and a 9-foot rod designed to handle big trout and light lines were being pushed to their limits. I felt confident, however, as long as he didn’t get ahead of me in the current and start a fast run, we could keep him close enough to have a chance at netting him.

We chased him on the trolling motor, constantly having to spin the boat depending on how he took the line around it. I was finally gaining some ground as the fish began to tire and he was showing himself a lot more. After more than 7 minutes, both of us were virtually spent, refusing to yield to the other. I made the hardest pressure pull on him I thought the line could handle to get his head up, and with a long stretch and scoop, David had him in the belly of the net.

I was overcome with emotion. I was shaking physically, exhausted mentally and beyond excited and slightly in disbelief. I could not fathom what I was looking at. A brown trout longer than two feet with a giant body to boot. Measuring 29 inches and roughly 10 1/2 to 11 pounds.

I caught my double digit bass this year on a 5-inch swimbait on 20-pound line. I caught this giant brown trout on a 1/16-ounce D2 marabou jig. From one extreme to the other. I never had a doubt I would land that 10-pound bass on my swimbait gear. I was all doubt when it came to landing that 10-pound brown on 7-pound line and a 1/16-ounce jighead in heavier than normal current.

While I was excited and relieved to finally land that 10-pound bass after all these years, it paled in comparison to how that brown trout made me feel. Maybe it was closing a loop on a 40-year commitment to myself. Maybe it was the frustrations of hard years being released. Maybe it was just me beginning to accept again that God has blessings still for me and a renewed purpose to fulfill.

Fish are natural healers. Therapeutic and soul cleansing. While most anglers find folly in their fishing endeavors, I find purpose and fulfillment that has nothing to do with numbers or weights. As anglers, the reward should come in figuring out the puzzle better than others to outsmart the savviest of our quarry.

I hope you have or can experience something similar. May you find the fish of your dreams and may it heal you too.