Welcome one and all to Angie’s “Fish Tails of Terror”. Has anyone ever noticed from the way I tell a “Tail” that I’m a little on the sick, demented and evil side? If you are a true Angie Web Site follower, you’d notice that I just love to maim, torture and kill my characters whether they be real or imaginary. Why is that you ask?
Well, I almost failed my “Creative Writing Course” in college because the professor said I was just too negative and dark. How dark you dare ask? To the point that I use to scare him and my fellow students. He said I needed to lighten up a bit. So I did.
For my final paper, I wrote a beautiful story about a happy family that went on a picnic. The story line went like this... It seemed that dad wasn’t spending enough time with the kids due to the high stress job he held. He worked long days and weekends so he could provide his loving family with the finer things in life. So at the picnic they bonded with all the love and understanding of “Little House on The Prairie”. They then decided to forsake money and go back to sharing each other’s time. Who cared if they were poor as long as they were together!
That’s when the South African killer bees came out from the forest and stung them all to death. Well, that was sort of light. Wasn’t it?
I now give you...
“Awwwwwwwwwwwww breathe in that fresh morning air. Mmmmmmmmmmm nothing quite like it.” The fly fisherman Kent Luftkins, spoke to him self in a whisper. Least he disturb the serene quiet beauty of first light.
He observed the sunrise over the Northern Cascades and thought to himself how the pretty pink hue would make a lovely colored Orvis Fly Fishing Shirt. He would email them right away and suggest that they make a shirt in that color. He felt strongly that others with his exceptional taste would buy it just like him.
Creeping along the bank as stealthily as possible so that the fish wouldn’t hear the crunching of his felt soled boats and be put on guard, he arrived at the head of the pool. He had read somewhere that fish had extraordinary hearing in one of the Kaufman books so he wasn’t going to take any chances. Though he always wondered how the jet sleds being as noisy as they were caught so many fish. They have to be snagging the fish he thought.
With a slow cast he let his fly go about 10 feet. He was an excellent caster and could cast 20 feet with ease. The next cast flew in a cascading loop the whole 20 feet of his line and he smiled happily to himself envisioning what a fine picture he must be making this lovely April morning and was sad that no one was there to see it or film it.
Then his rod was buried down with a tremendous speed. He went into shock. This had never happened before in all of his five years of fly fishing and he was at odds at what to do since he had never really caught a fish before. He had just always believed in the art of fly fishing not the catching of them. So holding on for dear life he watched in amazement as the line came off his reel and thought that the music of his reel screaming was rather cool.
When the line stopped peeling off, he thought that he better start reeling. When the line got to the shallows he was amazed again when it shot back out into the deep. This was incrediable fun, he thought. So this was what all the effort was all about. If he would of known that it was so satisfying he would of switched to gear long again.
Then the fish came up and he saw it. It was three and a half feet of brilliant chrome and he again thought about a new Orvis Shirt color. It shot out again but this time he was ready and kept the rod up and in control. Our fishermen began to dream of the fine picture he was of a man. He began to think of the photo possibilities. Would the infamous magazine Fish N Fly put him on the cover of it? Did he tie the special fly that caught this beast and could he become famous from it? What a fine picture this would make and he could make triplicates of it and give it to his two friends in all the world. Oh, and what about the internet forum he posted on? He’d be the first person in months to catch a fish! Now it would be his turn for glory.
Now the fish was ready. He felt it was ready. The fly fisherman began to shake. He had never seen his query before. He had only read and dreamed about them. What if he hurt it? What if it was already hurt? What would he do? How would he land it? These were all thoughts scrambling in his confused mind. He told himself to calm down. This was just a fish after all. If stupid gear guys could do it all the time, surely he could.
Keeping the rod up high instinctively, he dragged the fish toward shore but it strangely held back kind of started swimming towards his knees. He tried to leap back for he knew somehow that the fish was going to swim between his legs and it surely was! The fish as if in slow motion swam through his legs and then went down stream the line was halfway wrapped around his leg. Then to his amazement the fish in all its luminescent beauty swam back up towards him against the forces of nature and all that was instinctive.
As he looked at the fish laying on its glorious side looking sideways at him he noticed he was sweating. Before reaching down to pull the fly from its mouth he took the tip of his bandana and wiped the sweat from his brow. Then to his shock the fish glared at him, its eyes turning as red as his bandana and it smiled showing fang like teeth. He had never read about this before and then the fish came thrusting out of the water in full force. It was jumping to escape but it was jumping towards his...
Then the fish latched on to his scrotum with all the strength of a strong 18 pound aquatic muscle that swam for its food out in the currents of the ocean for two years . The teeth punctured through his sac into the soft fleshy bags that held hundreds of yards of man juice, like a king salmon crushing a golf ball sized skein of juicy red eggs. The fly fisherman screamed in agony and dropped his rod instantly and he barely watched the $1500 piece of equipment slowly drift down stream pulling the line wrapped around his leg taut.
He tried in vain to pull the fish off, every time making the pain that much more unbareable because the slime wouldn’t let him get a good grip. After two minutes of fighting with the fierce creature and the line getting more taut he was about ready to pass out and couldn’t keep his balance. Struggling once last time to get the fish off he curled his hand up into a fist and struck the insane beast in the head. It was a little too late and since the gentleman fly fisher was not all that strong to begin with the blow made the fish latch on even tighter.
The fly fisherman fell over into the icy cold water the shock of having his scrotum being crushed making him light headed, the icy chill was a welcome relief. As his body became numb as it floated down the river the pain began to drift away as did his thoughts. They both just drifted and drifted away.
That afternoon, three guys in a drift boat while plugging came upon a body stuck in a log. His large hat bobbing up and down and one frozen blue arm hung upon the rootball of it. Most of the body was immersed and when the guys noted it was a fly fisherman because of his SOS suspenders that were deflated (a lot of good they did him) they debated for an hour whether or not to ruin their day and get help.
When one of the crew pulled in the $1500 rod and $500 reel they decided it would be worth it and they could sell the combo on Ebay. They ended their trip early, tied the body to the back of the drift boat, plugged two more runs catching a nice 12 pound steelie and got in a heated argument on whether or not to harvest the steelhead that was still alive clinging to the fly geeks balls. The fish wouldn’t pull off and they decided it wasn’t worth eating since it was probably sucking up some tasty semen.
The Sheriff arrived on the scene took some pictures and just scratched his head. He sent the steelhead alive to be examined by the local fishery biologist Kurt Kramer. Kurt ran a few experiments and determined that the fish was perfectly normal and it was just a freak accident of nature.
ONE WEEK LATER...
It was a hazy foggy morning. The kind of fog you could cut with a knife. (Hey, I’ve heard that one before.) A small group of fly anglers were standing on a bank. Their leader stood in front of them twirling the end of a handlebar mustache in one hand and holding a handmade eight weight fly rod in the other. He was lecturing on the experience of fly fishing. Here and there he’d throw a tip on how to cast better in, but since he already knew how to cast and was now only in it for the experience, he felt that topic was more of a priority. Casting better? The beginner could learn the hard way like he did.
After the two hour lecture, most of the students were using their expensive Sage Rods as prop sticks because they had fell asleep while standing. They were startled awake when the middle age instructor coughed rather loudly and splashed into the water instructing the six students to do the same but remain 15 feet apart. He also commanded that they all do exactly as he did. They were going to play the game “Shadow”.
He then raised his rod above his head and rested the butt on the top of his beige baseball cap. He then made an S motion and a chop (still above his head) and the line flew 15 feet. As the students mimicked, two students wrapped their lines around their bodies, two students stood in abject shock, and two students impaled their faces with sharp “Cop Car Flies”.
After mimicking their teacher for an hour they all started to get sweaty. The instructor especially, because it took such tremendous effort and stamina to cast above your head like that. It was kind of like waving a large flag in a parade. So he took his red bandana out from beneath his jacket and wiped his brow.
His students followed suit thankful to rest their numbed arms. That’s when the water started to boil. Several steelhead porpoised out of the water. The instructor was dumb founded. He had never seen such a site in all his life! The river was filled with 100s of steelhead. The most he had ever seen in his life was one about every six months.
He slowly untied his red bandana which was a nervous habit of his and held it in his hand. The rest of his class, not being told otherwise did the same thing. They were heedless of the action because they had never read in any useless fly fishing article, of this scene ever occurring.
A steelhead suddenly jumped out of the water snatching the instructor’s bandana. The instructor was dumbfounded staring at the icy water where the large steelhead about fifteen pounds had disappeared to. That’s when another steelhead swam between his legs, up out of the water and attached itself to the instructor’s scrotum. It wasn’t much of an exertion since the instructor was up to his thighs which is something fishermen should never do and he had to learn the hard way.
The instructor screamed in agony and the students just stood there watching not sure as what to do. One student who wanted his money back, even laughed. Then they all were attacked in the same manner.
It was a swift scenario afterwards. The class all fell over due to the pain and tried to swim the seven feet to shore. Then another wave of steelhead went for their throats, some being merciful and severing the main neck artery killing them instantly. Other students weren’t so lucky and had a slow painful drowning death. In a matter of five minutes the bodies were quickly drifting downstream to the many drift boats that would discover them. The only thing remaining at the scene, were six digital cameras and one student’s teddy bear. Not one student had thought about using his SOS Suspenders.
When the Sheriff was called to the boat launch that afternoon, he was at odds at what to do and called the area’s head fishery biologist, to come down to the scene. When Kurt arrived he was starting to feel like Quincy Jones and decided to do some investigating. It would be a long two weeks for our boy, Kurt.
