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Fishermen, as even non-anglers know, are apt to stretch the truth at times about the size and number of their fish, so I find a certain ironic symmetry in the fact that their most legitimate claim is often the least believed-the big one that got away. It's angling's most enduring cliche and perhaps its truest. For most of us, trout fishing consists largely of catching small fish, which has a charm of its own to be sure but doesn't offer much in the way of bankable information for those times when you tag a big one.

I should know. When I first began fishing places where large trout were a regular possibility, I lost a humiliating percentage of the ones I hooked. It got bad enough that I finally started paying some attention to the way practiced anglers fought fish and unpracticed ones, repeating my own mistakes, lost them. I've hardly become an expert-to know the good, as St. Paul says, is not to do the good-but knowing the good isn't a bad place to start.
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