How to catch a 37 pound salmon
Step One: Decide to go fishing less than 14 hours after major reconstructive maxio-facial surgery. This step is vital, as it will hone the reflexes and mind, making decision making much more efficient.
Step Two: With surgical packing in place, and your face swollen horribly, and pain of considerable magnitude your constant companion, wade chest deep into the river. At this point you will discover your waders have a split seam at the crotch. Slogging along with ice cold water filling your waders to the crotch, each leg with over 15 pounds of water provides an excellent workout.
Step Three: After 5.5- 6 hours, hook a salmon. Realize you have 17 pound test line on your reel, and thus you will have to play the fish carefully to avoid snapping the line. Spend over an hour slogging over 2 miles along the river while the salmon does it’s level best to make it all the way back to the Lake.
Step Four:
After an hour or so, both you and the fish will be exhausted. With much cursing and struggling, manage to get salmon into the shallows, where you can see it is huge and VERY determined to return to the deeper part of the river.
Step Five:
Having reached a state of muscle quivering, gasping exhaustion, slide the wader suspenders from your shoulders with one hand, holding the rod in the other, letting the salmon gain several meters of “ground” toward the deeper part of the river. When the weight of the water pulls the waders down around your ankles, discover you are wearing sweat pants, which are saturated and have also been dragged down around your ankles.
Realize you are not wearing underwear, and you are now flashing any and everyone. Try to grab your sweat pants and pull them up, It is at this exact moment the salmon will experience a burst of energy, and head towards the deep water with such force and speed that the line , stretched and tortured beyond it’s limit, snaps.
Step Six:
Disregard your state of undress, grab the folding knife in your sweat pant pockets ( down around your knees now) with one hand,snap open blade and –launch- yourself, waddling as fast as possible with legs splayed to keep the waders and sweats from tangling towards the salmon whilst wrapping bare line around your other hand. As it saws through your skin and hangs up on bone, it will aid you in retaining the salmon; twenty four stitches will repair the minor damage later… Jump on the salmon, stabbing it thr0ugh the gill plate ( gotta be legal here! ) and hold on for dear life whilst sensitive bits of anatomy are dragging over sharp rocks and gravel as you wrestle the salmon towards shore.
Step Seven:
After reaching shore with waders now hanging by one foot, sweat pants ripped beyond any hope of service, explain to the nice DNR agent that, no, you have not been intentionally committing “indecent exposure” While pulling on waders to cover your nudity… Show the salmon, now flopping feebly, pointing out that the knife is in the gill plate and the lure still hangs from the mouth, thus a “legal” catch. Ask the ever-helpful agent to cite the exact rule or law that says a knife can not be used to land a salmon. Explain further that, no, the heavy bleeding from your mouth is not an injury, it’s from surgery. The numerous scratches, cuts and bruises from wrestling with the salmon are best ignored at this point.
When the agent is busy laughing, state you are going to get a pair of pants from your vehicle. CASUALLY take the salmon and your pole with you. When reaching your car, … leave as fast as possible.
That’s how you catch a 37 pound salmon.
