my white whale

“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick I've always bit a bit obsessive about my fishing. And after last week I crossed the line. You see Dan Drews taught me how he catches big shovelhead consistently. And well I was fishing and had a strike and set the hook into a really big fish. Im sorry I meant A REALLY BIG FISH. Which after a few minutes just simply came off, leaving me standing there trying real hard not to scream or cry like a little girl. So I fished. And fished. Every day, catching a few but knowing my big fish was just a cast away. My coworker took to calling me Ishmael of Moby Dick fame and one morning after wandering in way after daylight for the third night in a row my wife said "I think this is getting a bit out of hand". But then it happened. After the temperature hit 100 I waited till three am to hit the river. I'd switched to a heavy flipping stick and heavy mono the day before but now wasn't even catching the small and medium fish I had been catching. So I picked up a medium spinning outfit with 12lb line and began fishing with that. Five minutes later the fish hit. The spinning rod bent double and 15 minutes later it was still a standoff with me losing about as much line as I was gaining. My arm began to hurt a bit but eventually I was gaining. Then the fish just stopped. I didn't know if it was hung up or simply just resting. Out of my pockets came the cellphone and wallet and into the river I went. At 4 am. But when I waded out to the fish it began to move and five minutes later I had a deathgrip on a big lower jaw and drug my fish to shore. I think I'm going to take at least one or two days off from fishing...